Kathleen gasp—it was the sight of her sister’s ribs, stark bones glowing white beneath her skin. She hadn’t seen Annie in just a bra and panties for a long time, and she was frightened by Anne Marie’s skeletal frame. Kathleen spoke sharply, and because she too was frightened, Anne Marie snapped back. It wasn’t a real fight, not even an argument. But it was something Anne Marie mentioned to Mike when she had dinner with him and another couple that night.
She also mentioned it to Tom sometime during the next week, and he acted as if he took it far more seriously than Mike had. He almost seemed pleased when she had tiffs with her sister or her friends. She was sorry she had said anything about it.
On Sunday night, June 23, Anne Marie went to Mike’s house for dinner.
On Wednesday, June 26, Kim Horstman and Anne Marie talkedon the phone. They spoke of Aimee Willard’s murder, still unsolved, and moved on to happier topics. “Annie sounded great,” Kim remembered. “Really great. We talked about her eating disorder and she said that she had gained a couple of pounds, and she was very happy about that. And that she had cut the number of laxatives she was taking in half. So she felt she was getting better. And we talked about her relationship with Michael—and she felt that was going very well, and she was excited about that. It was a very upbeat conversation.”
Later that day, Anne Marie met with Michelle Sullivan for her regular session. They spoke about her interaction with Kathleen, the fights they had had after their mother died. They probably touched upon the little argument Anne Marie and Kathleen had had in the dressing room at Talbot’s four days earlier, but Dr. Sullivan did not recall that there was any lasting animosity at all. As grown women, the Fahey sisters seemed very close.
Anne Marie presented the letter she had written to her legs and grinned at her doctor. Sullivan warned her not to cut out
all
laxatives at once, while praising her for rebounding. It was a good session, a hopeful session. Things with Anne Marie were suddenly so much better. They were both tired when it was over, but it had been worth it.
That Wednesday night, Anne Marie and Mike talked on the phone. “We were making plans for the dinner with her brother that Saturday evening, the twenty-ninth,” he recalled. “So we arranged a time to meet up. She was taking Friday off from work. She was really looking forward to having Friday off. She had some errands planned. The weather was starting to get warm, so she was in kind of that summer mood, and she needed a day to kick back.”
When Tom learned that Anne Marie had admired the pantsuit at Talbot’s—and that Kathleen had talked her out of it—he called the store branch in Greenville and said he wanted to surprise his wife with the pantsuit. The saleswoman, Kara Sullivan, checked and told him they no longer had it in a size four. But Tom was a very good customer, and she arranged to have it sent over from Talbot’s Christiana store.
Tom had made up his mind that he was going to bring Anne Marie back to him. Completely. When she had called him on June 12,
chosen
him to be the man she summoned in a real emergency, he felt sure it was a sign that he had triumphed over Mike Scanlan. Scanlan didn’t know what she was struggling with. He didn’t know about her financial worries, or that he, Tom, stepped in often to bailher out. He didn’t have the history with her that Tom had. Tom wasn’t even convinced that Anne Marie had given herself sexually to Scanlan—so he was puzzled about why she still dated him.
But lately, there was so little that Tom could get Anne Marie to accept from him. She would not take the money he offered her; she explained that she had cut up her credit cards and did not want to be in further debt. She even wrote checks to pay back the money he had already given her, although he refused to cash them. She assured him that she was trying very, very hard to get better, and pleaded with him to let her do it in her own way. Her E-mail was more apologetic than ever before, and yet somehow more assertive.
6/26/96:
[email protected] at Internet
Hey Tommy,
I would like to apologize for being such a downer today. I realize that your day had not been so great either, and I was not much help. I feel like some days I can handle my anorexia and other days I feel overwhelmed by the whole thing. Today has obviously been an overwhelming day. My
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