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

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
THE DAY OF
Y
ou know how I found out? I 
saw
them. That’s how stupid
my husband is. One snowy April night, I felt so lonely. I was
drinking warm amaretto with Bleecker and reading, lying on
the floor as the snow came down, listening to old scratchy
albums, like Nick and I used to (that entry was true). I had a
burst of romantic cheer: I’d surprise him at The Bar, and
we’d have a few drinks and wander through the empty
streets together, hand in mitten. We would walk around the
hushed downtown and he would press me against a wall
and kiss me in the snow that looked like sugar clouds.
That’s right, I wanted him back so badly that I was willing to
re-create that moment. I was willing to pretend to be
someone else again. I remember thinking: 
We can still find
a way to make this work. Faith!
I followed him all the way to
Missouri, because I still believed he’d love me again
somehow, love me that intense, thick way he did, the way
that made everything good. Faith!
I got there just in time to see him leaving with her. I was
in the goddamn parking lot, twenty feet behind him, and he
didn’t even register me, I was a ghost. He didn’t have his
hands on her, not yet, but I knew. I could tell because he
was so 
aware
of her. I followed them, and suddenly, he
pressed her up against a tree – 
in the middle of town
– and

---

kissed her. 
Nick is cheating
, I thought dumbly, and before I
could make myself say anything, they were going up to her
apartment. I waited for an hour, sitting on the doorstep, then
got too cold – blue fingernails, chattering teeth – and went
home. He never even knew I knew.
I had a new persona, not of my choosing. I was
Average Dumb Woman Married to Average Shitty Man. He
had single-handedly de-amazed Amazing Amy.
I know women whose entire personas are woven from
a benign mediocrity. Their lives are a list of shortcomings:
the unappreciative boyfriend, the extra ten pounds, the
dismissive boss, the conniving sister, the straying husband.
I’ve always hovered above their stories, nodding in
sympathy and thinking how foolish they are, these women,
to let these things happen, how undisciplined. And now to
be one of them! One of the women with the endless stories
that make people nod sympathetically and think: 
Poor
dumb bitch
.
I could hear the tale, how everyone would love telling it:
how Amazing Amy, the girl who never did wrong, let herself
be dragged, penniless, to the middle of the country, where
her husband threw her over for a younger woman. How
predictable, how perfectly average, how amusing. And her
husband? He ended up happier than ever. No. I couldn’t
allow that. No. Never. Never. He doesn’t get to do this to
me and still fucking win. No.
I changed 
my name
for that piece of shit. Historical
records have been 
altered
– Amy Elliott to Amy Dunne –
like it’s nothing. No, he does 
not
get to win.
So I began to think of a different story, a better story,
that would destroy Nick for doing this to me. A story that

---

would restore my perfection. It would make me the hero,
flawless and adored.
Because everyone loves the Dead Girl.
It’s rather extreme, framing your husband for your murder. I
want you to know I know that. All the tut-tutters out there will
say: 
She should have just left, bundled up what remained