Gone Girl

It is now mid-August, and Nick has been arrested, charged, and released on bail. As he awaits trial, Tanner and his detectives search for Amy. Nick continues to make internet videos asking Amy to come home.

He hears a ruckus outside amongst the news crews who permanently stake out his front yard. He opens the door to find Amy on the doorstep. She cries out his name and falls into his arms. He hugs her and pretends to be overjoyed for the cameras. She has twine hanging from her wrists and blood all down her front.

He pulls her inside and demands that she tell him her story. She claims Desi Collings kidnapped her. Nick says that she’ll never be able to explain away all of the things that she did. She says she can. Nick asks where Desi is, but before she can respond, the police knock on the front door.

Amy is taken to the hospital, where Detective Rhonda Boney holds her hand through the rape kit examination. Rhonda asks if Amy is up to some questions. Amy’s parents are waiting at the station to be joyfully reunited with her.

Rhonda Boney questions Amy, who tells how Desi kidnapped and imprisoned her. She accounts for most of the evidence that was found, except for the credit card purchases in the woodshed, and the increased life insurance. She says that the diary was essentially true, the entries were just slightly exaggerated and overly dramatic; no wonder that Nick wanted to burn it. The police are unable to shake her story, even though it is ludicrous.

Nick goes to the police station to pick Amy up, expecting they will hold her or arrest her for Desi’s murder. Instead, she is released. He takes her home, where he insists that she tell him what really happened to Desi. He doesn’t want to resume their marriage, he tells Amy, because Amy has actually killed a man and apparently gotten away with it.

Amy makes Nick take off all of his clothes, in case he’s wearing a wire. In the shower, with the water running to muffle any bugs planted in the house, Amy admits to killing Desi so that she could get back to Nick. She tells him how she did it, and she tells Nick that the baby was a lie.

Her failsafe against Nick telling on her is that she poisoned herself with antifreeze and kept the vomit.

Nick tells Tanner that Amy confessed to killing Desi. However, they have no proof of this, or of any of her lies. Tanner tells Nick to play along with Amy, while they keep working on finding evidence against her.

Nick and Amy argue. Nick wants a divorce and calls her a “psycho bitch” (394). She tells him she will not let him out of the marriage. She states that he would be his dad without her and that she has made him into the man he is now. Nick becomes so angry that he strangles Amy.

As he strangles his wife, reenacting visions from his imagination over the last few weeks, Nick suddenly realizes that, if he kills Amy, he will become a man he hates, a man like his father. He drops her. He realizes that she is right; he could never be with a regular, ordinary woman after Amy’s brilliance and insanity. Nobody else would kill to get back to him. He believes he helped make her this way, so he has to be the one to stop her. Prison is where she needs to be, where she cannot hurt anyone else.

Amy realizes that Nick isn’t as malleable as he was before and decides to take one more precaution, which will take time and planning to pull off. She also needs Nick to back up her story. The police are still investigating the case, and it makes her nervous, though the investigation is winding down. If Nick takes responsibility for the credit cards, the life insurance, and the items in the shed, she would be permanently in the clear.

Her parents have once again traded in on her life to get a huge book deal for a new Amazing Amy installment. Amy also plans to write a book: her own story in her own words. She is also convinced that she will eventually wear Nick down and he will love her again. For now, he sleeps in another room with the door locked, but she is sure she can change that, eventually.

Rhonda Boney, Go, and Nick are working together to find evidence against Amy. They simply do not have any credible witnesses, so Rhonda tells Nick that the only way to convict her is to somehow get a recorded confession. Go insists that Nick is in danger, and that he should get out while he can.

Nick stays. He says he will stay close to her until he can bring her down. For now, he is pretending to love her, appeasing her so that she will not kill him.

Amy has a book deal, and she is happy, even though Nick found the threatening vomit and left the washed, empty jar on the sink for her to find. Soon, she will have even better leverage. She will write the book the way she wants things to be, and Nick will agree.

Nick reports finding the vomit jar. Given that Amy didn’t react he knows that something is wrong.

Go and Rhonda stick around; they meet regularly and keep working on ways to crack Amy’s story. Nick’s father dies.

Nick decides the only way to end his relationship with Amy is to tell the real story: he begins writing his own book.

Amy hears Nick clicking away on his keyboard: she knows he is busy writing his own version of their story and it won’t be pretty. She knows she was right to take the precaution she has.

Nick delivers his manuscript to Amy. She counters with the announcement that she is pregnant with his child. She used semen she secretly stored from their fertility treatments to make herself pregnant.

Nick deletes his story; he will stay and protect his son from Amy. He tells Rhonda Boney that he cannot participate in the investigation anymore. When he tells Go he is about to be a father, she is devastated. She cries, realizing that Nick is trapped for good.

Nick insists that he will keep himself safe by being the best husband and father in the world. He is finally able to rise to Amy’s level; he can be a hero.

The baby is due tomorrow, on Amy and Nick’s sixth wedding anniversary. Her book will be published soon. She keeps thinking about what Nick said that morning when she asked him why he was being so wonderful to her. Instead of saying he loves her, Nick says he feels sorry for her. That is the wrong answer, and Amy is preoccupied with why he said that. He shouldn’t have.