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Summary
Nick Dunne, Three Days Gone
The search parties for Amy prove useless. Marybeth and Rand are frustrated, asking Nick to investigate two of Amy’s former stalkers. Rand and Nick also plan to investigate the mall at night, hoping for more information. Nick solves Amy’s next clue and finds the third, but doesn’t follow it yet and drives back to Go’s instead. At the mall, Nick, his school friend Stucks, and the group they’re with have a brief standoff with a group of drug dealers. Lonnie, their leader, tells him that he has seen Amy. She wanted to buy a gun.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Diary Entry, October 16th, 2010
Amy celebrates her one-month anniversary in Missouri, grimly noting that she’s becoming a good Midwestern homemaker. At a housewarming party, Amy is shocked by everyone’s niceness but struggles to make conversation with women she has nothing in common with. She feels out of place in Carthage, and people treat her like a specimen of strange New York-iness. At the end of their housewarming party, Nick’s father Bill screams at Amy, telling her to get out. She does, hoping Nick will follow, but he stays inside.
Nick Dunne, Four Days Gone
When Nick and Rand meet the detectives at an IHOP, they argue about how the investigation’s going. The detectives leave, unsatisfied. Nick tries to call Hilary Handy, a former stalker of Amy’s, but she furiously hangs up. Shawna comes over with a Frito pie, and Nick abruptly brushes her off. Their neighbor Noelle also stops by, and implies she’s going to the police with information. Nick drives to his dad’s house, directed by clue #3. He has no idea what it means, so he drives to Go’s house. Later, Nick gets a text telling him to open the door.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Diary Entry, April 28th, 2011
Amy remains miserable in Carthage, and is frustrated at Nick because he’s neglecting his parents. She’s bored, and goes for a snoop through Nick’s computer, where she finds a book proposal Nick’s writing. It’s a narcissistic memoir about his parents dying and his miserable Manhattanite wife’s snobby dissatisfaction with her life. She hates this, and also hates that as she stagnates, Nick has been improving himself, losing weight and cutting his hair. Amy worries he’s getting ready to drop her.
Nick Dunne, Four Days Gone
Nick’s 23-year-old mistress, Andie is standing on Go’s porch. She leaps on Nick, telling him how worried she is, and insists he touch her. He’s conflicted as he thinks of Amy. He recounts how the affair started and how he fell out of love with Amy. He tells Andie they have to be careful and that she has to keep a low profile. Andie says she loves him, demands he say it back, and also demands daily calls. Go catches them as he hustles her out of the door.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Diary Entry, July 21, 2011
Amy gets a call from Maureen, asking her to come help with something and wear short sleeves. It turns out they’re heading to a plasma donation center. Amy’s got a serious phobia of blood, but there’s no way she can escape. She manages to keep it together until she goes to the bathroom, where the sound of the plasma extraction machines makes her faint. She wakes up back in her house. When Nick comes home and she asks him where he’s been, she stops listening because she knows he’s lying.
Nick Dunne, Five Days Gone
Go yells at Nick about Andie and insists he hires a lawyer to manage his case. Nick returns to his house, and Go calls him immediately to tell him to watch the Ellen Abbott show. Ellen shows the selfie of Nick with Shawna, who then appears on the screen and says Nick was flirting with her. Nick is horrified. He drives to St. Louis to investigate Desi Collings, who Amy dated in high school. Desi is wildly wealthy and lives in a mansion; he invites Nick inside and they talk about Amy. Desi is pleasant but noncommittal and asks how he can help. Desi’s mother Jaqueline walks into the room; she looks like a much older carbon copy of Amy. She tells Nick to go, and to call their lawyer instead of speaking to Desi directly.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Diary Entry, August 17th, 2011
Amy has been tracking Nick’s mood, and writing hearts in her calendar for good days and black squares for bad. Amy has been feeling lonely and abandoned, and is heartened when Nick kisses and touches her, buying her treats and showing her his childhood haunts. Amy can’t help but wonder, after catching him rifling through their documents box, if he just wants more money. She forces herself to keep quiet.
Analysis
Guilt and public pressure to seem appropriately heartbroken shape Nick's day-to-day existence in this section. One of the biggest challenges in this regard is his ongoing affair with the 23-year-old Andie, one of his students from the class he teaches at the junior college in Carthage. Though he protests that he loves her, Nick's relationship with Andie reflects his frustrations with Amy more than it does any great commonalities with Andie. Andie, a young and very attractive college student, represents an escape from the complexities and annoyances of his marriage. Nick's affair with Andie provides him with the simplicity and admiration he no longer finds in his relationship with Amy. Andie idolizes Nick, treating him as if he is a genius and willingly performing sex acts Amy isn’t interested in, a dynamic allows Nick to feel desired and valued. Andie fulfils his need for validation and eases his sense of inadequacy. She even treats Amy with respect, asking hundreds of questions about her as if she is a celebrity whom Andie adores. The affair reveals Nick's yearning for ease and uncomplicated affection, which he can no longer get from Amy.
When Amy goes missing, however, Nick's relationship with Andie becomes a liability. Rather than being a welcome escape from the difficulties of his marriage, Andie’s insistence on seeing him and her sexual appetites suddenly seem like a burden. Nick objectifies Andie almost unblinkingly, and the only moments they spend together when he seems pleased to see her are when they’re actively having sex. Andie's involvement in Nick's life is part of his broader pattern of seeking escape from responsibility and conflict. Even when his wife is missing, Nick can’t communicate with Andie or comprehend why she might be feeling lost and guilty too. She’s gone from being a relief to being an annoyance.
Amy has never had any trouble fitting into her other environments, but in Missouri she’s more of a curiosity than an object of pure admiration. Amy's October 16th, 2010 diary entry shows her struggling to adjust to her new role as a Midwestern housewife. As a sophisticated Manhattanite, she finds it difficult to adapt to the slower pace and different cultural norms of the Midwest. For example, she commits a social faux pas by throwing out the Tupperware containers full of housewarming food the other stay-at-home spouses bring her. She’s forced to go and buy brand-new containers for all of them, and is shamed by their wondering responses to her lack of know-how. Because the women in Carthage come from a very different cultural and financial background to her own, she finds it difficult to connect with them and feels pressured to conform to their expectations. Her interactions with them are at this point mostly quite superficial, as she fails to meet the conventional standards of her new environment. This inability to fit in exacerbates her feelings of guilt and resentment towards Nick, who seems more comfortable in this setting as a Carthage native. Amy’s struggle to assimilate into Missouri life just fuels the animosity between herself and Nick. He resents her for being—in his view—insufficiently friendly to their neighbors. She resents him for the clear decline in their social and financial circumstances, and for the way he seems to blame her for everything else that’s going wrong.
Nick’s psychological strain grows throughout these chapters. The pressure of the investigation is getting to him, especially when it’s coupled with his guilt over Andie and his fear she’ll come clean about their affair. With every new clue of Amy’s he uncovers, he grows more certain that she’s involved in her own disappearance. This strain shows in his interactions with others, as he snaps at the detectives when they ask him questions and bickers with Go and Rand about the investigation’s progress.
As the police don’t seem to take their concerns at all seriously, Marybeth and Rand manipulate Nick into investigating Amy’s stalker Hilary Handy and obsessive ex-boyfriend Desi Collings. Hilary slams the phone down almost as soon as Nick calls her, protesting that she hasn’t heard from Amy since high school. Nick was expecting a different kind of interaction, and is startled by Hilary’s aggression and defensiveness. He’s similarly disconcerted when he goes to speak to Desi. Desi’s polished demeanor and overly courteous behavior irritate Nick's already-raw sense of suspicion. Desi's calm exterior is an insufficient cover for his clear arrogance and sense of superiority, making Nick feel uneasy and defensive. Their conversation is a thinly veiled testosterone contest, where Desi subtly hints at his own superior relationship with Amy and Nick’s inadequacies. Desi’s mother, cold and detached, adds to Nick’s discomfort. It doesn’t help that she is a dead ringer for Amy, so much so that Nick is surprised that Desi doesn’t acknowledge it. He can tell that there’s something strange going on, which is reflected in the increasing curtness of his responses to Desi.
