Gone-Girl-by-Gillian-Flynn

with creases from being folded too long, a pretty blouse that smells of dust.
Boney and I drive from the hospital to the police station in near silence. I ask
weakly after my parents.
‘They’re waiting for you at the station,’ Boney says. ‘They wept when I
told them. With joy. Absolute joy and relief. We’ll let them get some good
hugs in with you before we do our questions, don’t worry.’
The cameras are already at the station. The parking lot has that hopeful,
overlit look of a sports stadium. There is no underground parking, so we have
to pull right up front as the madding crowd closes in: I see wet lips and spittle
as everyone screams questions, the pops of flashbulbs and camera lights. The
crowd pushes and pulls en masse, jerking a few inches to the right, then the
left as everyone tries to reach me.
‘I can’t do this,’ I say to Boney. A man’s meaty palm smacks against the
car window as a photographer tries to keep his balance. I grab her cold hand.
‘It’s too much.’
She pats me and says, wait. The station doors open, and every officer in
the building files down the stairs and forms a line on either side of me,
holding the press back, creating an honor guard for me, and Rhonda and I run
in holding hands like reverse newlyweds, rushing straight up to my parents
who are waiting just inside the doorway, and everyone gets the photos of us
clutching each other with my mom whispering sweetgirlsweetgirlsweetgirl
and my dad sobbing so loudly he almost chokes.
There is more whisking away of me, as if I haven’t been whisked away quite
enough already. I am deposited in a closet of a room with comfortable but
cheap office chairs, the kind that always seem to have bits of old food woven
into the fabric. A camera blinking up in the corner and no windows. It is not
what I pictured. It is not designed to make me feel safe.
I am surrounded by Boney, her partner, Gilpin, and two FBI agents up
from St. Louis who remain nearly silent. They give me water, and then Boney
starts.
B: Okay, Amy, first we have to thank you sincerely for talking with us after what
you’ve been through. In a case like this, it’s very important to get everything
down while the memory is fresh. You can’t imagine how important that is. So
it’s good to talk now. If we can get all these details down, we can close the
case, and you and Nick can go back to your lives.
A: I’d definitely like that.