...And Never Let HerGo

about babies, and formed play groups for their toddlers with the other young mothers in the group. She had no idea how Kay and Tom got along, however. Debby was chatty and Kay was not; she never spoke of her marriage in any intimate way. In the end, her fondness for Kay made Debby feel a great deal of guilt, but she didn’t seem able, nonetheless, to stop what was happening. “I felt terrible about what I was doing. I had a conscience enough to know that it would be wrong, but I was just so compelled by his persistence.”
    It took almost five months, but Tom was finally able to convince Debby that it was all right for them to be together, and they made love for the first time in late May 1981. He suggested that it would be kindest to everyone for them to keep their relationship secret, and that was, of course, the only thing they could do. The place Tom selected for a regular sexual rendezvous was as trite and predictable as a B movie: the Motel 6 on Route 9 near the Delaware Memorial Bridge. “I told my husband that I was taking a course once a week at the University of Delaware, but I was really meeting Tom in a motel,” Debby recalled. “Looking back on it, it was very demeaning, but I did it. I don’t even like to talk about it now.”
    Once the affair began, Debby felt even greater guilt and regret for what she was doing to people who trusted her. It never occurred to her how much she might be harming herself and her already poor self-image. When she was with Tom, he said all the words and phrases that soothed her conscience and made her feel like a valuable and beloved woman. But as soon as he was gone, the terrible doubts and yawning emptiness came back—worse than ever.
    Debby finally realized she couldn’t go on with the affair and she told Tom that she had to try to salvage her marriage. Kay was pregnant for the second time, and there certainly was no real future for Debby with Tom Capano. At first she wasn’t upset to learn that Kay and Tom were still sexually intimate; she had never really expected him to stay with her long. For as far back as she could remember, people had moved in and out of Debby’s life. She vowed to try harder in her marriage, and it seemed to her that giving Dave another child might bring them closer.
    She became pregnant almost at once, and her pregnancy was a welcome release. She didn’t have to worry about Tom’s persuasive arguments that they were meant to be together when she was heavily pregnant with her husband’s child. She and Kay continued their easy friendship—much easier now for Debby. They walked together, talked about babies, and she tried to forget that she had betrayed both Kay and her own husband. It was over.
    I N February of 1982, Kay Capano gave birth to a second daughter—Katie. Tom was ecstatic with his olive-skinned baby girl. A few months later, Debby and Dave Williams had a chunky blond son they named Steven.* Although Dave was thrilled to have a son, a new baby wasn’t the answer to a failing marriage. Nothing between Debby and Dave had changed. And it wasn’t long before Tom was back in her life.
    And then, as if in punishment for her unfaithfulness, Debby’s family plunged into eighteen months of one crisis after another. Her mother-in-law had a stroke, there were deaths in her extended family, and worst of all, her four-year-old daughter, Victoria, was diagnosed with a severe kidney disorder. In April of 1983, to save her life, it was necessary to remove one of her kidneys.
    “It sounds awful,” Debby would recall, “but I was almost thankful that there were so many things that I had to deal with—because then I didn’t have to face the issue of my marriage, which was looming over me.”
    In June of that same year, she confronted her feelings and knew that she didn’t love her husband. They no longer spoke, and they lived separate lives. A man she could never have was telling her constantly how much
he
loved her and needed her, while the man she lived with apparently found nothing valuable about being with her. When Debby tried to discuss her feelings with her husband, he told her that she was obviously disturbed and needed help. He suggested that she go to a psychiatrist.
    “I thought about it for a while,” she said. “And then I did.” She went to a therapist she had seen in high school after her mother left the family, and for the first time, she told her father that she was miserable in her marriage—and that she was