...And Never Let HerGo

every way she knew to convince Anne Marie that she was a good person, deserving of happiness—and she had begun to succeed. Typical of anorectics, Anne Marie had one part of her body that she hated the most: her legs. They seemed immense and ugly to her.
    “Write a letter to your legs,” Michelle suggested, and Anne Marie looked at her as if
she
was the one in need of therapy.
    It wasn’t as silly as it sounded at first; Anne Marie needed to defuse her legs as entities that had power over her. She had begun tocome back from her nadir point, she had cut way down on laxatives, was eating more, and now she had to “forgive” her fat thighs. Perhaps only another woman could understand.
    Anne Marie grinned gamely and went home to write a letter she had never expected to write.
    “I must admit,” she wrote,
    that I feel somewhat silly writing a letter to my legs.
    I have many insecurities surrounding my life, but the one most prevalent to me is the size of my legs. Below is a list of what goes through my mind on a daily basis:
    1. I cannot wear a skirt because people will see just how big my calves are.
    2. I struggle through the summer because we wear less, which means more of my body is being exposed.
    3. Every morning I wake up and talk myself out of wearing a skirt or a dress.
    4. I have complete anxiety every time Michael sees me in shorts because I think this just might be the last time. I get embarrassed for Michael if we are out in public and I wear shorts.
    5. I often look in the mirror when I get out of the shower and I yell at my legs.
    6. If I had thin legs, then perhaps people would classify me as thin.
    7. I will look at other women and say, “God, if I only had their legs, then maybe I would not be so ashamed of myself.”
    8. A day does not go by that I don’t spend some part obsessing over the size of my legs. Blah, blah, blah, blah. AMF
    Sullivan’s technique had worked; Anne Marie started laughing at herself as her painfully candid letter disintegrated into “blah’s.” Her calves were well developed after years of playing field hockey, but her legs were really quite good.
    O N Thursday, June 20, something happened near Philadelphia that frightened Anne Marie. She and her girlfriends talked about it in hushed tones. Aimee Willard, twenty-two, who was a college lacrosse star, left Smokey Joe’s, a popular Main Line bar, and headed for her home in Brookhaven. Her car was found on a Blue Route off ramp, its lights on and the engine running—but Aimee was missing. Hours later, her body was discovered in a vacant lot in north Philadelphia. Her skull was crushed and she had been raped and beaten. Aimee’s father, Paul Willard, was a Chester County, Pennsylvania,police sergeant, and the case was headlined in both Pennsylvania and Delaware media.
    Anne Marie and her friends wondered aloud how Aimee’s killer had gotten her to stop her car, and they talked about how they all had traveled the Blue Route often. The dead girl’s car had been found close to where Robert Fahey lived and to Katherine McGettigan’s old place. The apparent randomness of Aimee Willard’s murder disturbed Anne Marie particularly.
    On Friday night, June 21, Anne Marie’s brother Brian was packing for a trip to Ecuador. His wife, Rebeca, was Ecuadoran and her parents still lived there; he was going to join her for a few weeks. He had to stop by O’Friel’s to drop some things off for Jimmy Freel, with whom he coached high school basketball, and he found Anne Marie and Mike there. “They were just hanging around,” Brian said. “It looked like they had showed up there after work, and they were sitting at the bar, having a great time. They were holding hands and laughing, and I joked around with them for a little while.”
    Mike had been in Maine on business all week, and he and Anne Marie were glad to be together again. Anne Marie asked Brian if she could pick him up at the airport when he came home. He told her that of course she could, knowing how much she liked the ritual of picking up returning travelers. “I’ll call you with the time of my flight,” he promised. “What do you want me to bring you from Ecuador?”
    “Jewelry,” she said. “Pick out a piece of jewelry for me.”
    The next day, Saturday, June 22, Anne Marie and Kathleen went shopping together. They stopped at Talbot’s and Anne Marie tried on the taupe pantsuit in a size four. It cost almost $300, but it wasn’t the cost that made