...And Never Let HerGo

it?”
    “No.”
    How the floral dress, in perfect condition, got to Anne Marie’s apartment was a big question. She had only one floral dress and she had been wearing it when she had dinner with Tom in Philadelphia on that last Thursday night. Had she changed into something else after she arrived home—if she
had
arrived home? Or had Tom brought it back to her apartment deliberately, just as he may have brought the box from Talbot’s and the food found on the counter?
    Kathleen believed that Tom had done just that, but there was no way to prove it. She told the jurors about that frightening Saturday night when they realized Anne Marie was missing, and about finding the letters from Tom Capano. Then she began to read the letters aloud, her sister’s secret letters. Her clear voice was the only sound in the courtroom as she read Tom Capano’s directives to her sister, coaxing Anne Marie to accept money and gifts from him.
    “Now,” Connolly asked, “as of June 29, 1996, did you have any knowledge that there had been a relationship between your sister and Tom Capano?”
    “No, I did not.”
    “Did you know they knew each other?”
    “I did know they knew each other. Wilmington’s so small and Annie working for the governor and Capano doing bond work, she would mention he might be in now and then because she had known I knew him from before.”
    “Had you ever asked Anne Marie whether there was anything between her and Tom Capano?”
    “No, I did not.”
    “Did you find any birth control pills in the apartment that night?”
    “I found a box of birth control pills. To me, it looked like a sample pack. There may have been like five months’ worth. They were unopened.”
    “Was Anne Marie’s toothbrush in the apartment?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you at some point inventory everything that was in the apartment?”
    “Yes. I was ordered by the court to inventory everything.”
    “Was anything missing that you recognized?”
    “Anne Marie’s keys were missing and her Walkman and her blue topaz ring.”
    The keys were the important item; someone had needed those keys to get into her apartment the night Connie Blake heard footsteps overhead.
    When the trial resumed after a lunch break, Kathleen read her sister’s diary aloud. If she heard a familiar, lost voice echoing in her words, still, in order to convict the man she believed was Annie’s killer, Kathleen had no choice but to reveal Anne Marie’s deepest secrets in a crowded courtroom. The diary had been published, but never before spoken aloud to strangers.
    Connolly asked Kathleen if Anne Marie had had plans for the future. Yes, she had savings bonds tucked away. She had had hopes for marriage and babies.
    “Anne Marie had plans to vacation with you in the summer of ’96?”
    “I think it was the third week in July,” Kathleen said. “She was coming to the shore with my husband [and me] and two other couples for a week in Avalon. She gave my husband a check for four hundred dollars.”
    “Do you have any reason to suspect that Anne Marie would have run off?”
    “No, I do not.”
    “Did she ever run off before?”
    “No, she hasn’t.”
    “Do you have any reason to suspect she would have committed suicide?”
    “Absolutely not.”
    “Had you ever seen her manifest signs of violence toward anybody?”
    “Anne was very gentle and sweet. She was not violent at all.”
    “Are you aware that she had told others that she had . . . exhibited violent behavior toward your father?” Connolly pressed.
    “If I remember correctly,” Kathleen answered, “my father used to take Anne Marie’s change and she got tired of it, and chased him around the house with a field hockey stick.”
    “How old was she?”
    “Probably junior high.”
    T HERE was a break before Gene Maurer began cross-examining Kathleen. In the hallway, reporter Donna Renae from WHYY-TV murmured to Kathleen, “You’re very brave.”
    “I always said this was Anne Marie’s last fight,” she replied quietly, “and I am going to finish it for her.”
    Most of the press and gallery were out in the hallway, phoning in stories, so that few saw that the Fahey family’s priest gave Kathleen a quick blessing as she knelt in the aisle of the courtroom before she took the stand again.
    Maurer questioned Kathleen intensely about when she had seen the twenty-seven-inch television set; whether the box from Talbot’s had been opened; and whether she had seen some Cézanne prints