...And Never Let HerGo

of—well, when you were around Tommy, you thought you were in the presence of a god. None of the rest of us could ever hope to actually
date
him.”
    Tommy Capano was just under six feet tall, not as handsome as Joey or as dynamic as Louie, but he
did
have the full lips and classic nose of an Italian statue. More than that, he was such a nice guy with a wonderful soft voice. “When Tommy talked to you,” a woman who met him at a party said, “you had the feeling that you were the only person in the room. He focused
entirely
on you—no eyes darting around the room or over your shoulder.”
    Even the guys his own age who were jealous of Tommy because of his wealth and popularity, and because his father had bought him a sports car, admitted that he had earned his popularity. No one ever said he was less than kind to everyone. He was the leader, the one who would keep them together for reunions for decades to come. One of Tommy’s classmates was a diabetic who sometimes went into a coma. It was Tommy who kept the syringe of insulin just in case, and Tommy who didn’t hesitate to use it to bring his friend around.
    “You could literally trust him with your life,” a man who graduated from Archmere with Tom said. “He was always more mature than we were.”
    Joey, three years younger than Tommy and a year younger than Louie, attended Brandywine High School rather than Archmere. He was the huskiest of the brothers and the least academically inclined,but he was an outstanding wrestler in high school, competing in the 185-pound class.
    During the time that his big brothers were at Archmere and Brandywine High, Gerry Capano was still a little kid, in kindergarten when Tommy was about to graduate from Archmere in 1967. Tommy, Louie, and Joey were like three extra fathers to him, and he adored them. He still got pretty much everything he asked for. Nobody saw any reason not to spoil Gerry.
    Tom graduated from Archmere in 1967 and was accepted at Boston College. Louie, graduating in 1970, went to the University of Delaware in Newark. Joey went a year after that. Tom would remember his little brother, Gerry, sitting on his chest and begging him not to go away to college. It was a wrench for him, too; he considered himself as much Gerry’s father as Lou was.

Chapter Three
    R OBERT F AHEY S R . failed to get himself together when he was widowed. “After my mom died,” Brian remembered, “the family situation deteriorated—slowly at first, but completely after a while. My father eventually stopped working, and he had been a heavy drinker beforehand, but became an even more intense alcoholic.”
    Fahey’s own insurance and pension plans ran out. And the commissions due on policies he had written in the past slowed to a trickle, then stopped completely. The Faheys had done so much to help others before their world collapsed, and now, without asking questions or pointing a finger of blame, friends stepped in and quietly paid their electric and phone bills.
    While her five siblings were old enough to work, Anne Marie was not. Providing her with clothing and food was “haphazard,” according to Brian. “We tried to look out for each other as best we could. It was complicated. We couldn’t go and ask the neighbors for food or money, so we just tried to get by as best we could. We all just sort of hung in there together.”
    Most teenagers responsible for a nine-year-old could not have managed as well, but all of the Faheys were bright and resourceful, and devoted to family. In time the older brothers and Kathleen moved out, managing to attend college on grants and scholarships,until finally just Brian and Anne Marie were still living with their father. And when he was drunk, they stayed away from him. Anne Marie lost herself in books when she was sick and home from school. Sometimes she wasn’t sick but didn’t want to go to school, so she hid in the closet.
    As young as she was, Anne Marie had a fierce pride. She never wanted anyone to feel sorry for her because she didn’t have a mother, or a nice house or new clothes. She developed a persona that hid her insecurities and her sorrows; her laugh boomed louder than ever, and she was clever and full of mischief when she was with her friends. But she always went to
their
homes, because the Fahey children had long understood they couldn’t bring friends home.
    Anne Marie’s home life was unpredictable, to say the least. And like all children of alcoholics, she and