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

WHERE IS AMY, NICK?

---

Finally, I was inside, and the garage door came
buzzing down. I sat in the heat of the concrete space,
breathing.
Everywhere felt like a jail now – doors opening and
closing and opening and closing, and me never feeling
safe.
I spent the rest of my day picturing how I’d kill Amy. It was all
I could think of: finding a way to end her. Me smashing in
Amy’s busy, busy brain. I had to give Amy her due: I may
have been dozing the past few years, but I was fucking
wide awake now. I was electric again, like I had been in the
early days of our marriage.
I wanted to do something, make something happen,
but there was nothing to be done. By late evening, the
camera crews were all gone, though I couldn’t risk leaving
the house. I wanted to walk. I settled for pacing. I was wired
dangerously tight.
Andie had screwed me over, Marybeth had turned
against me, Go had lost a crucial measure of faith. Boney
had trapped me. Amy had destroyed me. I poured a drink. I
took a slug, tightened my fingers around the curves of the
tumbler, then hurled it at the wall, watched the glass burst
into fireworks, heard the tremendous shatter, smelled the
cloud of bourbon. Rage in all five senses. 
Those fucking
bitches
.
I’d tried all my life to be a decent guy, a man who loved
and respected women, a guy without hang-ups. And here I
was, thinking nasty thoughts about my twin, about my
mother-in-law, about my mistress. I was imagining bashing
in my wife’s skull.

---

A knock came at the door, a loud, furious bang-bang-
bang that rattled me out of my nightmare brain.
I opened the door, flung it wide, greeting fury with fury.
It was my father, standing on my doorstep like some
awful specter summoned by my hatefulness. He was
breathing heavily and sweating. His shirtsleeve was torn
and his hair was wild, but his eyes had their usual dark
alertness that made him seem viciously sane.
‘Is she here?’ he snapped.
‘Who, Dad, who are you looking for?’
‘You know who.’ He pushed past me, started marching
through the living room, trailing mud, his hands balled, his
gravity far forward, forcing him to keep walking or fall down,
muttering 
bitchbitchbitch
. He smelled of mint. Real mint, not
manufactured, and I saw a smear of green on his trousers,
as if he’d been stomping through someone’s garden.
Little bitch that little bitch
, he kept muttering. Through
the dining room, into the kitchen, flipping on lights. A
waterbug scuttled up the wall.
I followed him, trying to get him to calm down, 
Dad,
Dad, why don’t you sit down, Dad, do you want a glass of
water, Dad
… He stomped downstairs, clumps of mud
falling off his shoes. My hands turtled into fists. Of course
this bastard would show up and actually make things
worse.
‘Dad! Goddammit, Dad! No one is here but me. Just
me.’ He flung open the guest room door, then went back up
to the living room, ignoring me – ‘Dad!’
I didn’t want to touch him. I was afraid I’d hit him. I was
afraid I’d cry.
I blocked him as he tried to go upstairs to the

---

bedroom. I placed one hand on the wall, one on the
banister – human barricade. ‘Dad! Look at me.’
His words came out in a furious spittle.
‘You tell her, you tell that little ugly bitch it’s not over.
She’s not better than me, you tell her. She’s not too good
for me. She doesn’t get to have a 
say
. That ugly bitch will
have to learn—’
I swear I saw a blank whiteness for just a second, a
moment of complete, jarring clarity. I stopped trying to block
my father’s voice for once and let it throb in my ears. I was
not that man: I didn’t hate and fear all women. I was a one-
woman misogynist. If I despised only Amy, focused all my
fury and rage and venom on the one woman who deserved
it, that didn’t make me my father. That made me sane.
Little bitch little bitch little bitch
.
I had never hated my father more for making me truly
love those words.
Fucking bitch fucking bitch
.
I grabbed him by the arm, hard, and herded him into
the car, slammed the door. He repeated the incantation all
the way to Comfort Hill. I pulled up to the home in the entry
reserved for ambulances, and I went to his side, swung
open the door, yanked him out by the arm, and walked him
just inside the doors.
Then I turned my back and went home.
Fucking bitch fucking bitch
.
But there was nothing I could do except beg. My bitch
wife had left me with 
nothing
but my sorry dick in my hand,
begging her to come home. Print, online, TV, wherever, all I
could do was hope my wife saw me playing good husband,

---

saying the words she wanted me to say: 
capitulation,
complete. You are right and I am wrong, always. Come
home to me (you fucking cunt). Come home so I can kill
you
.

---