Gone Girl Summary & ending explained

Nick

Say my wife's name and I picture the curve of her skull, and everything locked away behind it. Five years married, and I still couldn't tell you what goes on in there.

That morning I woke at six to the sound of Amy making breakfast downstairs, humming. It was July in North Carthage, Missouri, and it was our fifth anniversary. I knew what that meant. Somewhere in the house there was an envelope with my name on it and the first clue of Amy's treasure hunt, the game she staged every year, the one I'd failed every year.

I didn't stay for breakfast. I drove to The Bar, the place my twin sister and I had opened with the last of Amy's money. Go was already behind the counter, pouring coffee for an old regular.

"Happy anniversary," she said, in the voice she saves for things she doesn't think are happy. "Is she doing the hunt?"

"She's always doing the hunt."

"Try to get one clue right this time."

I never did. On our first anniversary Amy had sent me around Manhattan after riddles about private jokes I'd apparently forgotten, and I'd ended the night empty-handed, with my wife crying in the cab home. Every year since, the hunt had felt less like a game and more like an exam I was destined to fail. I'd stopped studying for it.

We talked about nothing for an hour. Then the phone rang. It was Carl, the retired salesman who lives across the street from us.

"Your front door's wide open, Nick," he said. "And your cat's out on the steps."

I drove home too fast. The cat was on the porch, looking offended. The door stood open on its hinges. Inside, the living room looked like a fight had happened in it: furniture tipped over, glass smashed across the rug.

"Amy?"

Nothing. Not upstairs, not by the river.

Within the hour the house was full of police. A detective named Rhonda Boney walked the rooms with her partner, Jim Gilpin, and kept glancing at me the way you glance at a dog you haven't decided about.

"Anything unusual between you two lately?" she asked.

"No," I said. "Nothing."

It was the first lie I told the police. It would not be the last.