...And Never Let HerGo

to do to find their sister and bring her home safely. Early on, they decided that one of them would try to be in her apartment at all times. If she called, or if someone called
about
her, there would always be someone to answer the phone; there would always be someone waiting to welcome her back. And if someone had hurt her, he—or she—would have to answer to the family.
    The Faheys dealt with what they had to. They all had long experiencein working through trouble and tragedy. Frightened as they were, they didn’t panic. Robert recalled how disturbed his wife, Susan, was when there was no word from Anne Marie. “Susan had had no experience with chaos; she was raised in upper-middle-class America,” he said. “For us, chaos and turmoil were not intimidating; we had long since been forced to develop skills to cope.”
    They clung together that Sunday morning, all except Brian, who got the news of his sister’s disappearance when he was thousands of miles from home. When he’d left for Ecuador, he had told a friend not to give his phone number out to anyone, “unless someone in my family dies.” Brian’s in-laws didn’t speak a word of English, and if a call from the States came in while he and his wife were away, they wouldn’t be able to understand.
    When the phone rang in Ecuador on Sunday, Brian heard his wife answer it and say, “Hi, Kathleen,” and his breath slowed. “I knew it was bad news.”
    O N Monday morning, everyone in the governor’s office waited nervously. Anne Marie was almost always the first to get to work, but she wasn’t there at seven. Or seven-thirty. Or eight. They didn’t really expect her to be, as much as they hoped they were wrong. Now, Anne Marie gazed from the front page of the
Wilmington News-Journal,
her photograph visible through the window of every newspaper vending machine along the downtown streets, a beautiful girl with huge eyes and soft lips.
    One of the Faheys’ earliest decisions was to get word out to the public so that everyone would look for Anne Marie. They were in complete agreement with the authorities to release information to local newspapers as soon as possible. Sheri Woodruff, Governor Carper’s spokeswoman, helped the Faheys understand the workings of the media. Mark Daniels had taken the picture of Anne Marie to the
News-Journal
and asked for coverage that might elicit tips from the public. The short article about her was to be the first eight inches in what would become many miles of newsprint.
Carper Staffer Is Sought,
read the headline. “Anne Marie Fahey . . . was reported missing by family members at 12:15 a.m. Sunday. . . . Fahey, who works in Carper’s Wilmington Office, left without her wallet or vehicle. . . . Police have checked hospitals and with family and friends without success.”
    Because she was the governor’s secretary and because she was beautiful, wire services picked up the story of Anne Marie’s disappearance. Some reporters commented on the fact that Anne Mariehad disappeared exactly one week after Aimee Willard; it had become the practice of the media to link vanishings and murders, particularly when the women involved were young and lovely and lost from the same general area. But Aimee’s body, sadly, had been found within hours, and Anne Marie had been gone, according to news reports, for more than eighty.
    It took Brian until Monday morning to get as far as Miami, and it was afternoon before he landed in Philadelphia. Father James, his uncle, picked him up and took him to where he’d parked his car at the Friends School. Brian then drove straight to Anne Marie’s apartment, where he and his sister and three brothers pored over Annie’s address book, dividing up the pages. “We all got on a telephone somewhere,” Brian said, “and started to call all of her friends, and then tried to come up with a list of people who
weren’t
in the book that might have known her whereabouts.”
    Anne Marie had so many friends and acquaintances, and it helped to keep busy. They even called the family she had lived with in Spain on the faint possibility that she might have made plans to go back to the country she loved so much.
    They continued to find reasons, however far-fetched, to believe that Anne Marie was OK. Maybe she hadn’t read a paper or listened to the radio or watched television. Maybe she was really getting away from it all and she didn’t know that everyone was looking for her. Their explanations began to