Gone Girl: 39. Nick Dunne, Eight Days Gone (3) Summary & Analysis

Realizing that his own “murder” of Amy is a lie—as is Tommy O’Hara’s “rape”—Nick begins to wonder if Hilary Handy, too, was falsely accused of stalking Amy. He tries calling Hilary again, and talks quickly as he tries to keep the reluctant woman on the phone. He explains that he has sensed a “pattern of behavior” in Amy that he wants to talk to her about. Hilary sighs, admitting that she has been following the coverage of Amy’s disappearance—and feels bad for Nick, not Amy.

Hilary explains that she was a transfer from Memphis in her freshman year of high school. Amy took Hilary under her wing, and Hilary became devoted to Amy as a way of feeling popular and making friends. As the months passed, though, and Hilary slowly started getting more attention than Amy, Amy became upset. Amy began “setting [Hilary] up,” though the poor girl didn’t realize it at the time. Amy got Hilary to dye her hair the same color as her own and enlisted Hilary’s help in prank-calling the Elliott house constantly to mess with her annoying parents. Amy is the one who dared Hilary to approach Marybeth on the street one day and tell her she wanted to be the “new” Amy.

Soon after, Amy accused Hilary of pushing her down a long flight of stairs—Hilary did no such thing, and always knew that Amy threw herself down the stairs. Amy framed Hilary—and after Hilary and her family were forced to move back to Memphis, Hilary received an anonymous note in the mail, a list of all the ways in which Hilary had let Amy down. Hilary wonders aloud what Amy would do to a man “who was dumb enough to marry her” if in high school she was already throwing herself down stairs out of spite.

Alone in his “haunted” house that night, Nick can’t stop thinking about whether Amy’s pregnancy is genuine or a lie meant to drive him insane. Nick had always wanted kids with Amy, and imagined himself being the perfect father—the kind of father he never had. Amy, however, didn’t seem to want children—until one day, she did. She went off birth control for a few months, but when nothing happened, they went to a fertility clinic, where Amy and Nick agreed to lie and tell the doctors they’d been trying for over a year.

Nick went on his own to the center three times to give semen samples, but Amy seemed uncommitted to following the regimen of medicine the doctors laid out for her. A year later, Nick received a notice in the mail letting him know that his samples would be destroyed. Nick left the letter on the table in an attempt to make Amy feel bad—but days later, found it in the trash. They never spoke about having children again.

Restless and lonely, Nick dons a baseball cap and drives into town to go to a bar. He knows he can’t go to The Bar for fear of encountering groupies or reporters, so he drives to a different joint at the other end of town and enjoys the anonymity—until it’s time for him to pay the barkeep, who recognizes him and angrily says he doesn’t want any of Nick’s money.  Moments later, a young and slender woman approaches Nick and offers to buy him a drink—she admits she knows who he is, but thinks he’s the victim of the public’s projection of guilt.

As Nick continues conversing with the woman, he learns that her name is Rebecca—and that she’s a reporter who’s been sent to Carthage to cover Nick. Realizing he has a strange opportunity to try and connect with Amy—wherever she might be—Nick begins telling Rebecca about the “wonderful” treasure hunt his wife set up for him in the days before her disappearance. He knows that he can take control of his story, and repaint himself as “a man who loves his wife and will find her.” As he waxes poetic about how cool and special Amy is to the reporter, inside his head, he calls Amy a “bitch” and wishes she would come home so he can “kill her” himself.