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

Perfect
.
‘Now, exclusively, Nick Dunne breaks his silence, not
only on his wife’s disappearance but on his infidelity and 
all
those rumors
.’
I feel a gust of warmth toward Nick because he’s
wearing my favorite tie that I bought for him, that he thinks,

---

or thought, was too girly-bright. It’s a peacocky purple that
turns his eyes almost violet. He’s lost his satisfied-asshole
paunch over the last month: His belly is gone, the fleshiness
of his face has vanished, his chin is less clefty. His hair has
been trimmed but not cut – I have an image of Go hacking
away at him just before he went on camera, slipping into
Mama Mo’s role, fussing over him, doing the saliva-thumb
rubdown on some spot near his chin. He is wearing my tie
and when he lifts his hand to make a gesture, I see he is
wearing my watch, the vintage Bulova Spaceview that I got
him for his thirty-third birthday, that he never wore because
it 
wasn’t him
, even though it was completely him.
‘He’s wonderfully well groomed for a man who thinks
his wife is missing,’ Desi snipes. ‘Glad he didn’t skip a
manicure.’
‘Nick would never get a manicure,’ I say, glancing at
Desi’s buffed nails.
‘Let’s get right to it, Nick,’ Sharon says. ‘Did you have
anything to do with your wife’s disappearance?’
‘No. No. Absolutely, one hundred percent not,’ Nick
says, keeping well-coached eye contact. ‘But let me say,
Sharon, I am far, far from being innocent, or blameless, or a
good husband. If I weren’t so afraid for Amy, I would say this
was a good thing, in a way, her disappearing—’
‘Excuse me, Nick, but I think a lot of people will find it
hard to believe you just said that when your wife is missing.’
‘It’s the most awful, horrible feeling in the world, and I
want her back more than anything. All I am saying is that it
has been the most brutal eye-opener for me. You hate to
believe that you are such an awful man that it takes
something like this to pull you out of your selfishness spiral

---

and wake you up to the fact that you are the luckiest
bastard in the world. I mean, I had this woman who was my
equal, my 
better
, in every way, and I let my insecurities –
about losing my job, about not being able to care for my
family, about getting older – cloud all that.’
‘Oh, please—’ Desi starts, and I shush him. For Nick to
admit to the world that he is not a good guy – it’s a small
death, and not of the 
petite mort
variety.
‘And Sharon, let me say it. Let me say it right now: I
cheated. I disrespected my wife. I didn’t want to be the man
that I had become, but instead of working on myself, I took
the easy way out. I cheated with a young woman who barely
knew me. So I could 
pretend
to be the big man. I could
pretend
to be the man I wanted to be – smart and confident
and successful – because this young woman didn’t know
any different. This young girl, she hadn’t seen me crying into
a towel in the bathroom in the middle of the night because I
lost my job. She didn’t know all my foibles and
shortcomings. I was a fool who believed if I wasn’t perfect,
my wife wouldn’t love me. I wanted to be Amy’s hero, and
when I lost my job, I lost my self-respect. I couldn’t be that
hero anymore. Sharon, I know right from wrong. And I just –
I just did wrong.’
‘What would you say to your wife, if she is possibly out
there, able to see and hear you tonight?’
‘I’d say: Amy, I love you. You are the best woman I have
ever known. You are more than I deserve, and if you come
back, I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you. We
will find a way to put all this horror behind us, and I will be
the best man in the world to you. Please come home to me,
Amy.’

---

Just for a second, he places the pad of his index finger
in the cleft of his chin, our old secret code, the one we did
back in the day to swear we weren’t bullshitting each other
– the dress really did look nice, that article really was solid.
I am absolutely, one hundred percent sincere right now – I
have your back, and I wouldn’t fuck with you
.
Desi leans in front of me to break my contact with the
screen and reaches for the Sancerre. ‘More wine,
sweetheart?’ he says.
‘Shhhh.’
He pauses the show. ‘Amy, you are a good-hearted
woman. I know you are susceptible to … pleas. But
everything he is saying is lies.’
Nick is saying exactly what I want to hear. 
Finally
.
Desi moves around so he is staring at me full-face,
completely obstructing my vision. ‘Nick is putting on a
pageant. He wants to come off as a good, repentant guy. I’ll
admit he’s doing a bang-up job. But it’s not real – he hasn’t
even mentioned beating you, violating you. I don’t know
what kind of hold this guy has on you. It must be a
Stockholm-syndrome thing.’
‘I know,’ I say. I know exactly what I am supposed to
say to Desi. ‘You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I haven’t
felt so safe in so long, Desi, but I am still … I see him and
… I’m fighting this, but he hurt me … for years.’
‘Maybe we shouldn’t watch any more,’ he says, twirling
my hair, leaning too close.
‘No, leave it on,’ I say. ‘I have to face this. With you. I
can do it with you.’ I put my hand in his. 
Now shut the fuck
up
.

---

I just want Amy to come home so I can spend the rest of
my life making it up to her, treating her how she deserves
.
Nick forgives me – 
I screwed you over, you screwed
me over, let’s make up
. What if his code is true? Nick
wants me back. Nick wants me back so he can treat me
right. So he can spend the rest of his life treating me the
way he should. It sounds rather lovely. We could go back to
New York. Sales for the 
Amazing Amy
books have
skyrocketed since my disappearance – three generations
of readers have remembered how much they love me. My
greedy, stupid, irresponsible parents can finally pay back
my trust fund. With interest.
Because I want to go back to my old life. Or my old life
with my old money and my New Nick. Love-Honor-and-
Obey Nick. Maybe he’s learned his lesson. Maybe he’ll be
like he was before. Because I’ve been daydreaming –
trapped in my Ozarks cabin, trapped in Desi’s mansion
compound, I have a lot of time to daydream and what I’ve
been daydreaming of is Nick, in those early days. I thought I
would daydream more about Nick getting ass-raped in
prison, but I haven’t so much, not so much, lately. I think
about those early, early days, when we would lie in bed next
to each other, naked flesh on cool cotton, and he would just
stare at me, one finger tracing my jaw from my chin to my
ear, making me wriggle, that light tickling on my lobe, and
then through all the seashell curves of my ear and into my
hairline, and then he’d take hold of one lock of hair, like he
did that very first time we kissed, and pull it all the way to
the end and tug twice, gently, like he was ringing a bell. And
he’d say, ‘You are better than any storybook, you are better
than anything anyone could make up.’

---

Nick fastened me to the earth. Nick wasn’t like Desi,
who brought me things I wanted (tulips, wine) to make me
do the things 
he
wanted (love him). Nick just wanted me to
be happy, that’s all, very pure. Maybe I mistook that for
laziness. 
I just want you to be happy, Amy
. How many
times did he say that and I took it to mean: 
I just want you to
be happy, Amy, because that’s less work for me
. But
maybe I was unfair. Well, not unfair but confused. No one
I’ve loved has ever not had an agenda. So how could I
know?
It really is true. It took this awful situation for us to
realize it. Nick and I fit together. I am a little too much, and
he is a little too little. I am a thornbush, bristling from the
overattention of my parents, and he is a man of a million
little fatherly stab wounds, and my thorns fit perfectly into
them.
I need to get home to him.

---