Gone Girl: 49. Nick Dunne, Fourteen Days Gone Summary & Analysis

Nick wakes up on Go’s couch with a hangover. Since the diary interview he has been drinking heavily, essentially doing nothing but waiting around for the police to get enough evidence to arrest him—an event Tanner has warned him is coming down the pike sooner rather than later. Go walks into the room with her laptop and delivers the news that the public once again hates Nick—someone leaked the information about the woodshed and its contents, and Nick is now in the public’s crosshairs once more.

As Nick and Go talk, they snipe at each other more and more—after so many days holed up in the house together avoiding the paparazzi, they’re getting sick of one another. Nick decides to go home, and before Go can stop him, he grabs his keys off the counter and goes out onto the lawn, dodging the paparazzi’s invasive and pointed questions. Go follows him and turns on the lawn hose, spraying the paparazzi with water and laughing. Nick is grateful for Go’s solidarity.

Nick arrives home and spends the rest of the day imagining all the different ways in which he’d kill Amy if he could. He becomes lost in a spiral of rage directed at all the women in his life who have let him down—Andie, Marybeth, Go, Boney, and Amy. He has tried his whole life to be a “decent guy,” but he feels that because of these “bitches,” he’s failed.

Late at night, there is a knock on the door. It is Bill, escaped from the nursing home once again, ranting and raving about a “little ugly bitch.” As Nick helplessly watches his father spew misogynistic vitriol, he realizes that he does not want to be the kind of man who hates women—he only hates Amy, and if he can find a way to focus that rage, maybe he can stop himself from becoming his father, the thing he’s always feared. He puts his father in the car and drives him back to the nursing home. On the lonely drive back home after dropping Bill off, Nick thinks horrible, terrible thoughts about Amy on a loop.