...And Never Let HerGo

intimacy. He didn’t believe that; he told me that sex could be, sometimes,
sport.”
    Debby thought he was simply arguing a point. And as so many women involved in affairs do, she told herself that Tom’s marriage wasn’t based on a sexual relationship—until she learned that Kay was pregnant so soon again.
    Tom told everyone he was thrilled about his wife’s pregnancy, and bragged to Father Balducelli at St. Anthony’s when his thirddaughter, Jenny, was born in November of 1983, only one month after Debby’s marriage ended. Less than two years later, in August of 1985, Kay would give birth to their fourth daughter, Alexandra. Tom never seemed to mind that he hadn’t had a son, and he characterized his daughters as “the most important part of my life. Nothing else comes close.”
    If Tom’s third child came as a shock to Debby, Kay’s fourth pregnancy hurt her deeply. “Tom told me that he couldn’t stop with an uneven number—so he had to have
four
children. He couldn’t understand why I was upset.”
    Tom rarely had his picture taken at family gatherings without a tiny girl in his arms. All of his and Kay’s daughters were extremely pretty, with high, rounded foreheads, heart-shaped faces, and huge brown eyes.
    Even though her divorce meant she was no longer one of the wives who came to parties thrown by her ex-husband’s—and Tom’s—law firm, Debby and Kay Capano maintained their friendship, walking together, setting up play groups for their children. Debby genuinely liked Kay and admired her. They never discussed Tom. Kay never talked about her personal life, anyway, although Debby always had. Now, of course, she could not. Her personal life was Tom. But in her mind, he was somehow a
different
Tom than the man who was Kay’s husband. By this time he was such a necessary part of Debby’s world that she could not walk away from him. As it was, when he was with her, it was for such a small percentage of his time. Whenever she felt guilty—and she did—she was able to tell herself that she wasn’t really hurting his wife. Kay had his name, his children, and shared Tom’s life. Debby was someone no one was ever going to know about.
    Debby, who was an excellent photographer, took dozens of pictures of her children and Kay’s, at home and on the beach at Stone Harbor. Debby’s family had a beach house there, too, and they all still met at the shore. Sometimes it was a bittersweet thing for her to watch her toddlers—and Tom’s—riding in a toy car together or hugging one another. Their lives had become so convoluted.
    There were moments when Debby looked up to see Marguerite Capano studying her, her face empty of expression. As off-putting as that was, Debby was sure that no one but she and Tom
knew.
He himself assured her over and over that everything was fine and they had nothing whatsoever to regret. For the moment, they were there for each other.
    And how on earth could that hurt anyone?
    I N late 1984, Tom accepted an offer to work for the city of Wilmington as city solicitor. It meant a substantial salary reduction; his salary at Morris, James had risen a great deal in the nearly eight years he spent with the firm. “I did it exactly backwards,” he would say somewhat ruefully. “Most people try to get these types of public-service jobs. And the tradition is you step from a job like that into a partnership with one of the law firms. I was
already
a partner at Morris, James, Hitchens & Williams. I left the law firm to become city solicitor.”
    His new job in the public sector wasn’t particularly exciting. He ran the law department for the city and supervised a dozen attorneys and an equal number of support staff. His office was responsible for prosecutions in Wilmington Municipal Court, and for defending any claims that might be made against the city. Most of the cases his department prosecuted were only misdemeanors, but Tom tried to appear in court every few weeks, taking an active role, “just to have fun.”
    He planned to stay on as city solicitor for only two years, and then return to his law firm. As the good son, Tom had always leaned toward public service jobs, and he was intrigued by the political scene in Wilmington—and in all of Delaware, for that matter. He had gotten his feet wet, although he didn’t expect to stay with city government. After two years, however, Mayor Dan Frawley, for whom Tom had campaigned in 1984, offered him another city job—one with