Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

hey, sweetie
, and I wave limply back. I close the door
and start packing.
It’s strange how little I own in this world when I used to
own so much. I don’t own an eggbeater or a soup bowl. I
own sheets and towels, but I don’t own a decent blanket. I
own a pair of scissors so I can keep my hair butchered. It
makes me smile because Nick didn’t own a pair of
scissors when we moved in together. No scissors, no iron,
no stapler, and I remember asking him how he thought he
was possibly civilized without a pair of scissors, and he
said of course he wasn’t and swooped me up in his arms
and threw me on the bed and pounced on top of me, and I
laughed because I was still Cool Girl. I laughed instead of
thinking about what it meant.
One should never marry a man who doesn’t own a

---

decent set of scissors. That would be my advice. It leads to
bad things.
I fold and pack my clothes in my tiny backpack – the
same three outfits I bought and kept in my getaway car a
month ago so I didn’t have to take anything from home.
Toss in my travel toothbrush, calendar, comb, lotion, the
sleeping pills I bought back when I was going to drug and
drown myself. My cheap swimsuits. It takes such little time,
the whole thing.
I put on my latex gloves and wipe down everything. I
pull out the drains to get any trapped hair. I don’t really think
Greta and Jeff know who I am, but if they do, I don’t want to
leave any proof, and the whole time I say to myself, 
This is
what you get for relaxing, this is what you get for not
thinking
all the time, all the time. 
You deserve to get
caught, a girl who acts so stupidly, and what if you left
hairs in the front office, then what, and what if there are
fingerprints in Jeff’s car or Greta’s kitchen, what then, why
did you ever think you could be someone who didn’t
worry?
I picture the police scouring the cabins, finding
nothing, and then, like a movie, I go in for a close-up of one
lone mousy hair of mine, drifting along the concrete floor of
the pool, waiting to damn me.
Then my mind swings the other way: 
Of course no one
is going to show up to look for you here
. All the police have
to go on is the claim of a few grifters that they saw the real
Amy Elliott Dunne at a cheap broke-down cabin court in the
middle of nowhere. Little people wanting to feel bigger,
that’s what they’d assume.
An assertive knock at the door. The kind a parent
gives right before swinging the door wide: 
I own this place
.

---

I stand in the middle of my room and debate not answering.
Bang bang bang. I understand now why so many horror
movies use that device – the mysterious knock on the door
– because it has the weight of a nightmare. You don’t know
what’s out there, yet you know you’ll open it. You’ll think
what I think: 
No one bad ever knocks
.
Hey, sweetheart, we know you’re home, open up!
I strip off my latex gloves, open the door, and Jeff and
Greta are standing on my porch, the sun to their backs,
their features in shadow.
‘Hey, pretty lady, we come in?’ Jeff asks.
‘I actually – I was going to come see you guys,’ I say,
trying to sound flippant, harried. ‘I’m leaving tonight –
tomorrow or tonight. Got a call from back home, got to get
going back home.’
‘Home Louisiana or home Savannah?’ Greta says.
She and Jeff have been talking about me.
‘Louisi—’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jeff says, ‘let us in for a second, we
come to say goodbye.’
He steps toward me, and I think about screaming or
slamming the door, but I don’t think either will go well. Better
to pretend everything is fine and hope that is true.
Greta closes the door behind them and leans against it
as Jeff wanders into the tiny bedroom, then the kitchen,
chatting about the weather. Opening doors and cabinets.
‘You got to clear everything out; Dorothy will keep your
deposit if you don’t,’ he says. ‘She’s a stickler.’ He opens
the refrigerator, peers into the crisper, the freezer. ‘Not
even a jar of ketchup can you leave. I always thought that
was weird. Ketchup doesn’t go bad.’

---

He opens the closet and lifts up the cabin bedding I’ve
folded, shakes out the sheets. ‘I always, always shake out
the sheets,’ he says. ‘Just to make sure nothing is inside –
a sock or underwear or what have you.’
He opens the drawer of my bedside table, kneels
down, and looks all the way to the back. ‘Looks like you’ve
done a good job,’ he says, standing up and smiling,
brushing his hands off on his jeans. ‘Got everything.’
He scans me, neck to foot and back up. ‘Where is it,
sweetheart?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Your money.’ He shrugs. ‘Don’t make it hard. Me ’n
her really need it.’
Greta is silent behind me.
‘I have about twenty bucks.’
‘Lie,’ Jeff said. ‘You pay for everything, even rent, in
cash. Greta saw you with that big wad of money. So hand it
over, and you can leave, and we all never have to see each
other again.’
‘I’ll call the police.’
‘Go ahead! My guest.’ Jeff waits, arms crossed,
thumbs in his armpits.
‘Your glasses are fake,’ Greta says. ‘They’re just
glass.’
I say nothing, stare at her, hoping she’ll back down.
These two seem just nervous enough they may change their
minds, say they’re screwing with me, and the three of us will
laugh and know otherwise but all agree to pretend.
‘And your hair, the roots are coming in, and they’re
blond, a lot prettier than whatever color you dyed it –
hamster
– and that haircut is awful, by the way,’ Greta says.

---

‘You’re hiding – from whatever. I don’t know if it really is a
guy or what, but you’re not going to call the police. So just
give us the money.’
‘Jeff talk you into this?’ I ask.
‘I talked Jeff into it.’
I start toward the door that Greta’s blocking. ‘Let me
out.’
‘Give us the money.’
I make a grab for the door, and Greta swings toward
me, shoves me against the wall, one hand smashed over
my face, and with the other, she pulls up my dress, yanks off
the money belt.
‘Don’t, Greta, I’m serious! Stop!’
Her hot, salty palm is all over my face, jamming my
nose; one of her fingernails scrapes my eye. Then she
pushes me back against the wall, my head banging, my
teeth coming down on the tip of my tongue. The whole
scuffle is very quiet.
I have the buckle end of the belt in my hand, but I can’t
see to fight her, my eye is watering too much, and she soon
rips away my grip, leaving a burning scrape of fingernails
on my knuckles. She shoves me again and opens the
zipper, fingers through the money.
‘Holy shit,’ she says. ‘This is like’ – she counts –
‘more’n a thousand, two or three. Holy shit. Damn, girl! You
rob a bank?’
‘She may 
have
,’ Jeff says. ‘Embezzlement.’
In a movie, one of Nick’s movies, I would upthrust my
palm into Greta’s nose, drop her to the floor bloody and
unconscious, then roundhouse Jeff. But the truth is, I don’t
know how to fight, and there are two of them, and it doesn’t

---

seem worth it. I will run at them, and they will grab me by the
wrists while I pat and fuss at them like a child, or they will
get really angry and beat the crap out of me. I’ve never
been hit. I’m scared of getting hurt by someone else.
‘You going to call the police, go ahead and call them,’
Jeff says again.
‘Fuck you,’ I whisper.
‘Sorry about this,’ Greta says. ‘Next place you go, be
more careful, okay? You gotta not look like a girl traveling
by herself, hiding out.’
‘You’ll be okay,’ Jeff says.
He pats me on the arm as they leave.
A quarter and a dime sit on the bedside table. It’s all
my money in the world.

---