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Summary
Nick Dunne, Five Days Gone
Nick meets Gilpin and Boney at his house; they dismiss Desi as a suspect, though Nick protests. They move on to questioning Nick about where he was the morning Amy disappears. Boney points out some holes in his story, but Nick quickly counters her concerns. He can tell they’re suspicious of him. Nick slowly begins to admit that his and Amy's relationship was troubled, and then Boney tells him that they know he’s $200,000 deep in credit card debt, and that he increased Amy’s life insurance before she disappeared. Nick splutters in protest and shock, but he knows this doesn’t look good. He tells them he won’t say anything else without a lawyer present.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Diary Entry, October 21st, 2011
Nick’s mother Maureen dies from cancer, and Amy tries to comfort Nick. Nick, however, has returned to being grim and dissatisfied with Amy. Their only intimacy is sex, and even that is perfunctory and only for Nick’s benefit. Amy feels used. She worries about their marriage falling apart, though she tries to persuade herself it’s just a rough patch. She spends time with her neighbor Noelle and her three small children, which gives her the idea that having a baby herself might help things with Nick. Amy suggests this to Nick, but Nick shuts her down flatly, threatening that he will snap if she pushes it.
Nick Dunne, Six Days Gone
Nick prepares for a very public and televised candlelight vigil as Amy’s story goes national. The Elliotts are still supportive of him, but Go is worried that the media will turn the public against Nick. Amy’s parents aren’t doing well; Rand seems to be losing his grip on reality and Marybeth is drinking. At the vigil, as Nick is giving a speech, Noelle appears, grabbing the microphone and shouting that Amy was pregnant and Nick knew about it. Nick sees Andie in the crowd; she looked revolted while he was speaking, but she runs away from him when she hears about the pregnancy. The reporters close in on Nick, and he and Go run for their car.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Diary Entry, February 15th, 2012
Amy wonders if Nick’s endless anger with her is just a phase, or if he will be disgusted and resentful with her for the rest of their lives. She’s constantly watching him, waiting to see what he will do. He has started to be physically abusive, shoving her into the kitchen countertop during a fight. She’s scared he will hurt her again, so against her better judgment she goes to the unhoused community at the abandoned mall to buy a gun. She doesn’t know what it’s for, exactly, but she thinks she will feel safer if she has one.
Nick Dunne, Six Days Gone
Go interrogates Nick about the pregnancy as she speeds away from the vigil, and Nick protests that he had no idea. Go warns him that this is a tactic by the police to make him look bad. Rand calls, demanding to know if Noelle was right about the pregnancy; Nick tells him they weren’t even having sex very often, so it seems unlikely. Go shouts at Nick for lying, and Nick states bluntly that he didn’t kill Amy. Andie calls, and Nick goes to meet her, but quickly returns home to find out if the pregnancy rumor is true. Nick’s father shows up, and Nick sends him back to the nursing home. Boney arrives and tells him that Amy’s medical records prove it:: Amy was pregnant.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Diary Entry, June 26th, 2012
Amy has morning sickness. She can’t believe it, but she’s pregnant. She immediately tells Noelle, and then feels terrified that someone else knows. She doesn’t want to terminate the pregnancy, and she doesn’t want to divorce Nick, but she’s still worried he will hurt or even kill her. She doesn’t know what to do.
Nick Dunne, Seven Days Gone
Nick decides he can’t wait any more and hires high-profile lawyer Tanner Bolt, known for defending men accused of murdering their wives. The Elliotts aren’t answering his calls, which is a bad sign. He goes to New York to meet Tanner, who advises him to work on his public image. Tanner’s retainer is $100,000, which makes Nick jump, but Tanner assures him it’s good value for money. He tells Nick to look into Amy’s former boyfriend Tommy O’Hara, and says that he has to immediately break up with Andie. On the flight home, Nick figures out the answer to Amy’s final clue. It leads him to Go’s woodshed. When he opens the door, he’s horrified by what he sees.
Analysis
Nick’s confrontation with Boney and Gilpin at the beginning of this section revolves around gendered ideas of violence and Nick's own misogynistic preconceptions. The detectives question Nick about the morning of Amy's disappearance, hoping to uncover inconsistencies in his story from that day. Nick has an answer for everything, which means the conversation keeps coming to a dead end. Because Nick can’t guess what Boney is thinking, he’s not sure if his quick responses to all of her questions are making him seem truthful or too rehearsed. It’s clear to him that in a case like this, he must be the primary suspect. They don’t have enough evidence to actually arrest him, but he feels mounting discomfort about the assumption that he’s in the wrong.
Nick already has some seriously problematic ideas about men being wrongfully accused of crimes against women, and this scene only makes him seem more defensive. When Boney and Gilpin bring up his financial troubles and the recent increase in Amy's life insurance policy, Nick realises that he’s in over his head. He already feels as though Amy is making him jump through hoops, and the revelation about the credit card debt in his name is one surprise too many. The detectives' pointed questions expose the cracks in Nick's carefully maintained façade, and Boney is clearly playing on his fragile masculinity to get him to lose his temper. Nick knows that hiring a lawyer is going to make him look guilty; he was cocky enough to think that he wouldn’t need one previously to this, and was also keen to continue to look like the “good guy” he tries to be. Nick's defensive reactions and the detectives' placid, unrelenting scrutiny reflect how society often judges men and women differently in the context of marital problems.
Gendered ideas of violence work against Nick because of the overwhelming correlation between disappearing wives and murderous husbands. Nick splutters in protest against the idea that he’s like other men in this way, but only makes himself seem guiltier in the process. His reactions also reveal his own misogynistic preconceptions, as he struggles to comprehend the possibility that Amy has outfoxed him..
Amy's diary entry from February 15th also contains a sinister surprise, as her situation has apparently deteriorated so much that she decides she’d feel safer if she had a gun. This decision reveals Amy's escalating levels of desperation. She feels utterly isolated in Missouri, and suspects that Nick is already planning to harm her. Amy's decision to arm herself in this section also speaks to the novel’s theme of toxic masculinity. She knows that Nick is angry and insecure, and that he’s not above exerting dominance over her in order to get what he wants. Because she’s aware he could use his physical strength to hurt her, she wants to even the playing field with a weapon. This is a familiar narrative in stories of spousal abuse, especially in cases where the less physically powerful partner is isolated and estranged from their community by their abuser. Her need to obtain a gun reflects the gendered realities of fear and vulnerability that spousal abuse creates. She doesn’t feel empowered to leave Nick, nor is she sure she wants to. However, paradoxically, she is afraid enough of him to try and acquire a deadly weapon —just in case. This moment underscores the lengths to which Amy feels she must go to reclaim a sense of control over her life.
Nick also tries to reassert control over the story the media is telling during the candlelight vigil, to disastrous results. At the beginning of the chapter “Six Days Gone,” he discusses how the media dotes on the Elliotts’ loving marriage, and how their example is being held up against his and Amy’s. Nick is frustrated because the media are focusing on typically gendered ideas of bad male behavior as they paint a picture of him. Journalistic investigations into his past have turned up his colorful dating history in high school, and that he rarely visits his father in the Comfort Hill nursing home. While these might seem innocent and understandable in other circumstances, here they add to the idea that Nick is a man who abandons people.
This is exactly the opposite of Nick’s self-conception as a “good guy,” which is part of the reason he feels so frustrated. There’s also a good deal of arrogance in his method of addressing the media firestorm around him. Nick is so confident in his ability to charm and disarm people that he disregards all the advice he gets to lay low. Previously to this his good looks and easygoing personality had only worked in his favor. However, in these circumstances they make him look uncaring.
His attempt to appear innocent and to earn some goodwill backfires worse than he could have imagined when Noelle publicly accuses him of knowing about Amy's pregnancy. This accusation shocks Nick and the audience, intensifying public suspicion against him. Nick is completely blindsided by this information, especially as Amy hadn’t ever mentioned her pregnancy to him. The visual imagery in this scene is powerful, as Nick stands on the stage surrounded by candlelight and Noelle barrels up to the front of the crowd, children in tow. Instead of looking like a lonely, innocent husband, Noelle’s intervention juxtaposes Nick’s glib way of doing things against her own earnest and angry response to Amy’s disappearance. It also disrupts the image of the All-American hometown boy that Nick is trying to sell in order to make himself seem appealing. Nick is from Carthage, as are his family. However, he has only recently moved back there, and still has a veneer of wealthy New York-iness. This had previously been advantageous, but in this context it makes Nick seem facetious and unlikable, while Noelle’s locality and her unpretentiousness give her statements the ring of truth.
