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Now at our final stop, Amy was ready for me to know how clever she was. Because the woodshed was packed with about every gizmo and gadget that I swore to Boney and Gilpin I hadn’t bought with the credit cards I swore I didn’t know anything about. The insanely expensive golf clubs were here, the watches and game consoles, the designer clothes, they were all sitting here, in wait, on my sister’s property. Where it looked like I’d stored them until my wife was dead and I could have a little fun.
Nick leaves the audience in suspense in the last chapter of Part 1, wondering what could be in the woodshed after a cliffhanger. As it transpires, Amy’s meticulous execution of her revenge fantasies also includes gloating over her victories against Nick. By filling the woodshed with expensive items bought on Nick's credit cards, Amy stockpiles evidence that her husband murdered her. Her intention is to ruin Nick’s life by making it appear that he was preparing to enjoy all of these expensive treats after she was out of the way and he could “have a little fun.” Amy doesn’t just want to hurt Nick. She wants him to know just how clever she has been in doing so. The sheer detail and effort she puts into every facet of her revenge shows how deep her need for retribution runs.
“He’s glib, even as he murders his wife and child.”
I looked at the puppets. “So she’s giving me the narrative of my frame-up.”
“I can’t even wrap my brain around this. Fucking psycho.”
“Go?”
“Yeah, right: You didn’t want her to be pregnant, you got angry and killed her and the unborn baby.” “Feels anticlimactic somehow,” I said.
“The climax is when you are taught the lesson that Punch never learns, and you are caught and charged with murder.”
“And Missouri has the death penalty,” I said. “Fun game.”
Nick and Go find a set of macabre Punch and Judy puppets among the presents Amy leaves for Nick. The Punch and Judy puppets illustrate the way Amy has taken control over the narrative by this point. She’s so sure that the story she planted about her disappearance will ruin Nick that she’s desperate to gloat about it. The puppets represent the story she wants the public and authorities to believe: that Nick killed her out of anger and frustration, and that he didn’t care enough about the life of their unborn child to stop. It’s a brilliant insult, meaningful on every level. The reference the narrator makes to the death penalty in Missouri further heightens the stakes. It indicates Amy’s ultimate goal is not just to frame Nick but to ensure he faces the harshest possible punishment. Nick’s sarcastic remark of “Fun game" at the end suggests that he’s so overwhelmed by the awfulness of all of this that he’s turned to absurdity. Things are so bad that all he can do is try to crack uncomfortable jokes.
I’m going to hide out long enough to watch Lance Nicholas Dunne become a worldwide pariah, to watch Nick be arrested, tried, marched off to prison, bewildered in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs. To watch Nick squirm and sweat and swear he is innocent and still be stuck. Then I will travel south along the river, where I will meet up with my body, my pretend floating Other Amy body in the Gulf of Mexico. I will sign up for a booze cruise—something to get me out into the deep end but nothing requiring identification. I will drink a giant ice-wet shaker of gin, and I will swallow sleeping pills, and when no one is looking, I’ll drop silently over the side, my pockets full of Virginia Woolf rocks.
This quote reveals the extent of Amy’s vengeful plans, which she is willing to take to extreme lengths. She wants to ensure Nick's complete public and personal downfall before she disappears permanently. Her detailed vision of Nick's suffering—becoming a pariah, being tried, and enduring public humiliation—leads her to plan to fake her own death by suicide. It’s a dramatic, poetic suicide, however, where she aligns herself with the author Virginia Woolf, who died by drowning. The drama of this is part of the revenge for Amy, because of her obsession with poetic justice. She likes everything to feel fair, and to her a death this neat and lined-up with the original plans she made seems highly satisfying.
