...And Never Let HerGo

and 1994 and 1995, were you still seeing Tom Capano?”
    “Yes, I was.”
    “What was he telling you about how he felt about you during that time period?”
    “He was telling me that he loved me very much.”
    “Had you had some arrangement whereby you would be sort of exclusively seeing one another?”
    “We were not exclusive, no,” Debby said softly. She had been so upset “because he hadn’t told me about her, and I had always told him when I was going out on a date with somebody, or who I was seeing, and he hid this from me.”
    Before Judge Lee called the lunch break, Debby testified about the mysterious changes in Tom’s great room—the new rug, the missing couch—and his explanation that he had spilled red wine on both the original carpet and the maroon love seat.
    Bob Donovan had been sitting in a spot at the prosecutors’ table where he believed Debby could look at him as she testified. Indeed, for most of the morning he thought they had held eye contact. He knew how vulnerable she was and how Tom had controlled her for so many years. At some point, Donovan realized with a sinking sensation that Debby wasn’t looking at him; she was staring into Tom’s eyes. During a break, he walked over to Debby and said, “You’re not looking at
him,
are you?”
    “I am, Bob,” Debby said.
    “Don’t do it, Debby,” Donovan pleaded. “He’s trying to get into your heart.”
    “It’s OK,” she said. “My heart is closed to him.”
    Debby would later recall that moment. “And it was true,” she said. “My heart
was
closed to Tom. But I intended to keep on looking at him as I testified. I wanted him to realize what all his lies had done and to know that I was no longer fooled by him.”
    Whether she was as strong as she felt at that moment remained to be seen. Debby’s marathon testimony had just begun, and so far she had to deal only with Ferris Wharton, whom she liked and who was not going to spring any surprises. Even so, for the rest of that first day, Debby answered questions about her seventeen-year affair with Tom—five hours on the witness stand as every shred of her private life became fodder for the media. Through it all, she stared at Tom and he glared back at her, sometimes shaking his head from side to side as if to say, Debby, how
could
you do this?
    He had once been so sure that she didn’t have the common sense to know how to behave at the proof positive hearing that he sent her tedious letters of instruction. Now she was here on her own, and at Wharton’s urging, she read those endless letters aloud for the jury. He’d told her what to say about the gun, about the cooler, about their relationship.
    At 4:55 on that long afternoon, Judge Lee called a halt to the proceedings. But not to Debby’s testimony; she knew that she might be on the stand all week. Yet, in a way, she had an absurd sense of freedom. She had slipped out of Tom’s control, and the earth hadn’t opened up and swallowed her after all.
    As Tom was led away from the courtroom in chains, he turned toward the reporters who waited for a word from him. His face a forlorn study, he said, “She broke my heart.”
    F OR much of Thursday, November 19, Debby again read from the letters Tom had sent her from Gander Hill. She also read her ownletters to him, letters written only eight months earlier. Clearly, she had still been conflicted—even after she agreed to tape his phone calls to her home. But then, she had never denied that she still loved Tom at that time.
    “Today, I received a letter from you,” she read from one of her letters to him,
    that was written from the heart and it made me cry for both of us who can’t hold on to each other. You think I have betrayed you. I have not. I have told the truth and we must both live with the truth.
    I know completely without a doubt that you love me. I never doubted your love. Some letters were horrible and I could not read them. But some of it was true. I had been walked over most of my life and by you for sure. I guess I let the men of my life walk over me more than anyone else.
    You can build me up and point out my strengths better than anyone . . . but you can trash me like no other as well. I’d like to think that I know you better than anyone, but maybe I don’t. Yes, we were one—soulmates. . . . There is no way that can be taken away, regardless.
    “Often I wonder,” Debby read in the hushed courtroom, “why all this tragedy had to happen. What