...And Never Let HerGo

excesses and mental problems, was still alive and living in her own apartment in Pennsylvania, and her father still took care of her—but Sheila wasn’t available to Debby any more than she had ever been. Debby and her sister were not close, her brothers were far away, and she had no one but her father to talk to about the things that worried her.
    Debby wouldn’t recall having felt any special attraction to Tom Capano when she first met him. He seemed to be a nice person, and a very friendly person. He did not, however, impress her any more than the other men who worked with her husband. But later on, when he began to take a special interest in her, that mattered a lot. “I wasn’t happy in my marriage,” she said. “I didn’t know how unhappy I was for a long time. My relationship with Tom wasn’t the reason for my divorce, but he fulfilled something in my life that I wasn’t getting in my marriage. He actually paid
attention
to me. He appeared to genuinely care for me—to like me, to be interested in me as a friend. And I was very flattered because my husband didn’t seem to be any of those things.”
    The group of friends from the law firm grew much closer together in the late seventies and early eighties. “We were all affectionate with each other,” Debby said. “And flirtatious, I guess. We hugged each other and kissed good-bye. Tom wasn’t any more or less flirtatious than anyone. None of it meant anything.”
    Debby really liked Tom because he was so much fun and so charming, and because he seemed like such a good husband. He was openly affectionate to Kay in a way she had never known in her own marriage. It was New Year’s Eve of 1980, at a party for the firm’s younger set, when everything changed. Debby was headed down a hallway when Tom grabbed her and pulled her into a bathroom. “He leaned me up against the sink,” she remembered, “and said, ‘I cannot control myself anymore—I am madly in love with you.’ ”
    “You couldn’t be,” she stammered.
    “Of course I could. You are the most natural . . . the most loving . . . the most
giving
woman I’ve ever known.”
    Tom had just told Debby exactly the things she had longed to hear for most of her life. “I hadn’t heard things like that from any man—
ever.
I was literally starving for affection, my marriage was empty, but I wasn’t dealing with it.”
    She looked at Tom and laughed and said, “You’re crazy,” even as she wanted to believe what he was saying. “I was so guilt ridden the next morning,” she said, “even though nothing happened. It was my own response that made me feel guilty.”
    Tom called Debby later in the week and apologized, but he was also opening the door a little wider. And he continued to call her. He knew what to say and he knew how to flatter her. “He hooked me,” she would remember. “I think he looked for a person like me. I think he was such a good reader of vulnerable women.”
    D EBBY did not begin a physical affair with Tom right away, but she might as well have. She thought about him all the time, and if she forgot for an hour or so, he was on the phone, complimenting, persuading, cajoling in his soft, deep, and ultimately compelling voice. She knew her marriage was in serious danger. Up until the stolen kiss on New Year’s Eve and Tom’s declaration of his love for her, she had coasted in her marriage and looked for appropriate ways to fill her time. She had never allowed herself to think of divorce. Certainly, she had never considered having an affair.
    Now with Tom importuning her constantly, she could think of little else. Debby had married with the full intention of being married forever, seeing Dave Williams not only as the love of her life but as a haven and a protector. Nine years later, she knew the marriage wasn’t working, although it would be a long time after that before she understood her own unrealistic expectations and see why it never
could
have succeeded.
    And nine years later, she was as desperate to be loved as she hadever been. That made her a sitting duck for Tom Capano’s blandishments and protestations of utter devotion. It never occurred to Debby that she was probably not the first woman Tom had focused on. “He made me feel that I was so exclusive—that I was the woman he had never had and always yearned for.”
    Debby’s feelings for Tom were all mixed up with the fact that she and Kay Capano had become friends; they exercised together, talked