And Never Let Her Go (26 page)

Although they talked on the phone as much as ever, Jackie hadn't seen Anne Marie purely for socializing for a while. They were both so busy, and Jackie thought it would be fun for the three of them to have dinner.

“I called Annie several times,” Jackie said. “She didn't want to go. December was a busy time for her, and she kept saying, ‘I have this to do—I have that to do.' ”

Tom came into Java Jack's often to see if Jackie had set up their dinner date, but she had to tell him Anne Marie couldn't make it. He urged her to keep calling, and she did. “I said, ‘Let's pick a date—pick a date in January.' And she couldn't commit to it. She kind of hemmed and hawed. She never said why. She told me she did not
want to go, and said, ‘Oh, we'll get together sometime,' but she made it sound more of an effort than anything.”

Still, Jackie didn't realize what the problem was. And she thought it would be beneficial for Anne Marie to get out and have dinner with two good friends. Finally, Anne Marie agreed to set a date in mid-January, but Jackie sensed that it was only because she had persuaded her to say yes.

Tom seemed pleased when Jackie told him that she had worked out a date with Anne Marie; the three of them would go to La Famiglia in Philadelphia in mid-January. Despite his tendency to meddle in her business affairs, Jackie was grateful to Tom for all the help he had given her in setting up Java Jack's and, because he seemed so sad, she really wanted to help him.

Anne Marie was sad too—sad that she hadn't known Mike was going to enter her life. Her friend Jennifer Bartels Haughton was in Wilmington for Christmas, and Anne Marie took Jennifer out to dinner at Toscana. Afterward they sat in Anne Marie's car for a long time, talking. Jennifer gave Annie her Christmas gift, and Annie started to cry. She cried for a long time. “She was crying because she said she didn't deserve Mike,” Jennifer remembered. “There were so many things about her that she hadn't told him and she was really scared she would lose him if she was honest with him.”

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon
thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is
cruel as the grave.

S
ONG OF
S
OLOMON
8:6

D
EBBY
M
ACINTYRE WAS
E
XCITED
about New Year's Eve 1995. It was the first time that she and Tom would be together on this holiday. She had promised him a lobster dinner with all the trimmings, and he seemed pleased about that. It was wonderful to be able to have Tom visit when Victoria and Steve were home, and he was so nice to them. Steve particularly admired Tom, and Tom seemed to go out of his way to be, if not a father figure, a grown man willing to take time for a boy. This time, however, neither of her children would be home on New Year's Eve. And Debby worked all day cooking and making sure that everything was perfect for her dinner with Tom. She set a graceful table with the china and silver that she rarely had occasion to use.

But Tom was late, and when he arrived at Debby's house on Delaware Avenue, he was in a foul mood. “He was moody, sulky, and depressed,” she would recall. “I asked him what I'd done wrong—and he would only say, ‘It's not you.' ”

That didn't help her feel any better. This night was to have been a celebration of their new beginning, the start of a year when they could be together all the time. Instead it was a disaster. Tom grudgingly ate the delicious meal Debby had prepared, picking at it indifferently. He didn't brighten up the whole evening and generally acted as if they had nothing to celebrate.

Debby didn't know what was wrong; she wondered if Tom regretted his impending divorce or perhaps felt sad to be away from his daughters on New Year's Eve. But she knew better than to question him too closely.

A
NNE
M
ARIE
and Mike were also together that night for
their
first New Year's Eve since they'd met. Anne Marie was able to forget for a while the lowering presence of Tom Capano; and she prayed that the year ahead, all the years ahead, would be with Mike. It seemed possible that night. It didn't matter that Mike was fighting off a nasty cold and they couldn't stay out as late as they might have; they enjoyed just being together. They watched Winterthur's fireworks explode into a million cascading colors and then headed for home.

But Anne Marie moved into 1996 apprehensively. Her friends and family knew that she was happy with Mike. Her very
close
friends knew she dreaded that Tom would destroy her new love. They also knew that she was hiding something else from Mike: her eating disorder. She realized that she had to tell him about that soon—but she hoped she would
never
have to admit to Mike that she had slept with Tom.

The physical side of Anne Marie's relationship with Mike was not nearly as intimate as it had been with Tom, and that was OK with her. Mike's restraint was a sign that he cared about her and took his Catholicism seriously. But they kissed and hugged and held hands all the time.

Anne Marie knew Mike was concerned that she was so thin, but unlike Tom, he didn't pressure her to eat. She hoped she could gradually explain more about her eating problems to Mike—about how she sometimes felt as if her life was slipping away from under her and she wasn't able to control anything but her appetite. But that could wait. It wasn't as though she was lying to him; he could see she had lost weight.

M
EANWHILE
, Tom would not leave her alone, and Anne Marie's way of dealing with him was appeasement. He had been so angry when she refused to accept the ticket to Madrid (although how in the hell was she supposed to come home again with a one-way ticket?). She didn't dare show him the side of her that was angry, too, and desperate to be free of him. By January, she decided that the best way to get away from Tom would be in small increments. If she could slip out of his life without fanfare, it just might work. It was clearly not possible to simply break up with him, but she hoped that she could convince
him she loved him as a friend and was appreciative of all he had done for her, and she hoped that gradually, gradually she would become less available to him. She understood that his ego and his feelings were involved. She truly did not want to hurt him.

Even though Tom had become very demanding about wanting to see her, Anne Marie tried to defuse that by having what was basically an E-mail relationship. She became very adept at finding excuses to avoid meeting him in person. Her head was filled with Mike—not Tom.

A few days after New Year's, Mike and Anne Marie ate at the old Charcoal Pit in Brandywine Hundred. Funny—Louie Capano owned it now, and it was still doing great business with both high school kids and people who remembered it from their youth. It had been more than a dozen years since Anne Marie waited tables there, and many good things had happened to her since then. She had a home now and a wonderful job and, she hoped, a future with Mike. They had fun together that night. Being with Mike wasn't anything like the tense and often miserable times with Tom. But then, Mike wasn't trying to keep her on a leash that steadily grew shorter.

D
ELAWARE
was hit by a roaring blizzard on January 8, and Anne Marie and Mike drove a friend of his to Dover, taking the drift-laden back roads in Mike's four-wheel drive. Anne Marie noted it whimsically on her calendar: “Death ride with Mike!”

Tom wanted to see Anne Marie on January 11; she avoided him by staying all night at Kathleen and Patrick's house. She was late to work the next morning because Jackie Steinhoff had, of all things, an attack of gout and was in terrible pain; Anne Marie took her to several clinics before she found one that was open. She contacted Tom as soon as she got to the office to apologize for not being home the night before. What Anne Marie E-mailed to Tom was all true, but she resented having to account for every minute of her time. And like Debby MacIntyre, Anne Marie always seemed to be apologizing to Tom.

Tom's E-mail to Anne Marie was rife with minute instructions on what she must do and references to their old times together. On January 15, he said he was on his way to two of his daughters' basketball games, “so don't worry about calling me until this afternoon after they all leave for Dover. Please call me so we can touch base. . . . Let me know if I can call you on 6636. Te Amo. [I love you, in Spanish.] Oh, forgot to tell you we also had the Olde Bay fries at DiNardo's and we dipped them in barbecue sauce. They were outfuckingstanding.”

Tom appeared uninvited at her apartment the next night, and Anne Marie could not shut him out, even though it made her ill when he tried to touch her. Her E-mail to him the next morning was studied and demonstrated her constant conflict about her desire to be free of him and her concern about hurting him.

Good Morning Tommy:

I want to apologize for my “outbreak” last night. I'm sure it must have scared (amongst other feelings) you. Quite honestly, I scared myself last night. Tommy, I had a lot on my mind last night regarding my appointment w/ Gary Johnson. . . . Right now, I need a friend more than anything else. There was a part of me that just wanted to be alone to think things out clearly. So, when I asked you not to rub my stomach, and you responded with how much I hurt you, I couldn't take feeling guilty about that with everything else that I am feeling. It is my fault because I was not communicating with you, and you didn't know how to respond. I am sorry for my behavior. Please try to understand that right now I have some things that I need to “work out” but I'm not sure where or how to start. I know that I am not ready to check into a Clinic, and confront my family, friends and coworkers about my situation. Blah. Blah. Blah. I am not making any sense (as usual) so I am going to sign off. Annie

Sadly, Anne Marie had once again given Tom too much information about herself, and thus, more weapons to use against her. He continued to find ways to draw her back into his life. She had set a date to have dinner with Tom and Jackie as far off in January as she could. Mike was in Bolivia on a business trip toward the end of the month, and if she had to go, that seemed the best time. Anne Marie picked Jackie up and they drove to Tom's house on North Grant. Jackie brought along a pasta maker for Tom—a housewarming gift and a thank-you for all his legal help. Anne Marie asked her not to mention Mike Scanlan during the evening. “They don't get along,” she said. “They don't work together well.”

Jackie had already mentioned Mike to Tom during a talk at Java Jack's, but she didn't tell Anne Marie; she vowed not to say anything further about Mike during dinner, however.

Tom seemed excited about living on his own and insisted on showing them around the whole house. They dutifully followed him up and down the stairways, admiring the many rooms. He had clearly gone to great pains to have pretty bedrooms for his four
daughters. Each of the girls had her own boom box and her own phone. “I want them to feel comfortable here,” he explained. “It's their home, too.”

The tour ended in the great room at the head of the steps to the garage. Jackie would recall that it was a warm room with a wine-colored couch that faced a television set in the left corner of the room. There was a big stack of oversized pillows that Tom said his daughters liked to hug when they lay on the wall-to-wall carpet to watch television.

They went to La Famiglia for dinner that night and Jackie noted that Anne Marie “wasn't in a great mood,” which was strange because she could almost always be counted on to be “real up and real peppy.” It had been almost four years since Jackie was so distrustful of Tom when he came to their old rental house to visit Annie. And she had long been convinced that he was, indeed, only a good friend. For some reason, Anne Marie had never confided in Jackie about their affair, or even that she was now desperately trying to avoid Tom.

At some point during the evening, Anne Marie excused herself to go to the ladies' room. As soon as she was gone, Tom—who had had several glasses of wine—turned to Jackie and asked desperately, “Why does she hate me, Jackie?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, surprised. “Why would Annie hate you? She doesn't hate you, Tom.”

“Oh yes, she hates me, hates me, hates me.”

Jackie tried to reason with him, but he had that familiar pitiful look. And Jackie knew that Anne Marie's dates with Mike were behind Tom's sad face. Jackie wondered if Tom had loving feelings for Annie after all. If he did, it would be too bad; she knew Annie was really enthusiastic about Mike and Tom didn't stand a chance.

And then Jackie put her foot in it when she tried to change the subject by talking about Anne Marie's surprise thirtieth birthday party that Kathleen Fahey-Hosey was throwing. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she could tell by the expression on his face that Tom hadn't been invited. “He just seemed shocked,” she said. “He said, ‘Oh no, I'm not invited,' and I kind of backpedaled and said it was probably just friends, just going to be small.”

It was too late; Tom looked stricken.

Later, Jackie would recall that the winter of 1995–96 had seemed such a great time for Anne Marie, now that she had met Mike. “You always kid around,” she explained. “Like, ‘Annie, is this the guy?' She would be like, ‘Yeah, I think so, but I don't want
to get too excited because you don't want to jump too far into a relationship.' But she was really happy. She finally met somebody she really cared for and who definitely cared for her.”

The awkward dinner at La Famiglia finally wound to a close and Tom drove them home to his house, where Anne Marie had parked her car. He tried to get them to come in and watch a movie with him, but it was after midnight and Anne Marie said they had to get home. Jackie sensed that Anne Marie could hardly wait for the evening to end.