...And Never Let HerGo

leaving Delaware for sixty days, and to own or possess weapons. Earlier, Gerry had forfeited his gun collection—most of it to the government—and his brand-new $35,000 truck.
    Gerry and his wife, Michelle, were arrested in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, at 1:30 A.M. Sunday, August 15, 1999, and charged with disorderly conduct for shouting obscenities at each other on a local street. Stone Harbor police chief Steven O’Connor said that they also pelted the arresting officers with obscenities. They were charged and released, but, for Gerry, it might be more serious; he was still on probation.
    For pleading guilty to interfering with a witness (Kristi Pepper), Louie was sentenced to one year’s probation. He was also ordered to undergo urinalysis within fifteen days and take two follow-up tests. He was forbidden to own or possess guns. And fined $25.
    Louie was also required to remain in Delaware for sixty days,but he begged for relief from that restriction, citing his need to travel on a moment’s notice for business and to caddy for his wife at golf tournaments. A few days later, the judge lifted Louie’s captivity in Delaware.
    Debby MacIntyre never again felt safe in her house on Delaware Avenue—not after Tom drew diagrams of every room and described the things most precious to her to a man he believed was a burglar. Frightened, she sold the little white house and bought a semidetached home. It reminded her of better days in her childhood, and she showed me the spot where her father had taught her to roller-skate.
    It was obvious that the one thing Debby always wanted and never really had was a happy family. She is a talented photographer, and the walls of her home are filled with pictures she has taken of her relatives. The best of all is a poster-sized picture of her father whirling his three-year-old granddaughter Victoria.
    Things that Debby used to weep over no longer concern her. When the Wilmington Country Club told her that they were revoking her membership permanently, she laughed. After what she had been through, it didn’t matter. And at almost fifty, Debby is starting out on a new career and a new life. It seems impossible to her now that she spent almost two decades trying to please Tom Capano. With counseling, she now sees her choices in life more clearly and she is certain that she will never again allow herself to be manipulated by any man. Her daughter and son have stood solidly beside her and she is very proud of them.
    Debby’s daughter, Victoria, and Tom’s daughter Christy were longtime friends, and they bumped into each other over the 1998 Christmas holidays. They have done something that their mothers have not been able to do—and may never be able to do. They are friends again.
    Debby thought she had seen and heard the last of Tom Capano, but she got a note from Father Balducelli in July of 1999. He asked that she come to his office at the rectory. “The first thing I thought,” she said, “was that he was going to tell me they didn’t want me on the church trip to Europe. I told him I would come right over.”
    The eighty-six-year-old priest, who had been Debby’s priest for more than twenty years, told her that he had something for her—something he had held on to since mid-June. At the time Father Balducelli was very busy with St. Anthony’s of the Hills, the camp he started for children. But now he was going away for a while and felt he had to give Debby the envelope someone had given to him.
    “It was a letter from Tom,” Debby said. “I had always wondered how I would feel if Tom ever wrote to me again. And the truth is that I felt nothing. I had forgiven him, I guess, a long time ago. I don’t hate him—but we had nothing in common any longer. Our lives aren’t connected in any way.” She could see that Father Roberto wanted her to read the letter from Tom, if only so he could report back that he had delivered it. He hadn’t read it, of course; he’d read only the cover letter Tom had given to him.
    Tom’s letter began as if nothing had ever happened, as if the past three years had only been a nightmare. “He said, ‘Please sit down and write to me, Debby, privately and sincerely,’ ” Debby quoted. “And he said I had hurt his feelings when I testified that he meant nothing to me any longer.
    “I’d hurt his feelings!” Debby laughed despite herself. “The problem was that there were three very important items missing from his letter. He didn’t