...And Never Let HerGo

a little canister of Mace.
    There was some unknown component in this puzzle that they couldn’t grasp, some missing piece. They questioned one another and themselves, looking for some clue that would reveal Anne Marie’s whereabouts. As time went on, their theories grew more outlandish and improbable, anything to make it seem that she was safe. It didn’t matter if she had decided to step out of her everyday life without telling them. It didn’t even matter if she had run away with no plan to come home again. The only thing that mattered was that they needed to hear from her, because the most terrible emotional anguish known to humans is not knowing.
    Surrounded by her things, all the funky, sentimental, humorous, silly possessions that made this apartment so special to Anne Marie, this first real home of her own, it seemed to the people who waited there that at any moment the door downstairs would open and theywould hear her voice calling up to them. Their Annie had a lovely pansy-eyed face, but her voice could carry a mile when she chose to shout. She could make people laugh with that voice, a beautiful woman who could bellow like a fishwife and then giggle.
    Every creak of the old semidetached house made them hope it was her hand opening the door, her feet on the steps. They felt her essence around them wherever they turned. Annie was the most alive person they knew. And still, the more they willed her to come home, the farther away she seemed to be.
    For everything they found that seemed normal and safe, they discovered something else that was totally atypical of Anne Marie. The disorder alone would be anathema to her. Above all else, this told them she was gone. The fact that Anne Marie’s green 1995 Volkswagen Jetta was parked in its usual spot across the street frightened them, too. That meant she wasn’t off on some errand of her own; she had to be with someone else. But who?
    As if there might be some clue there, Kathleen looked to see what CD was in Annie’s player. It was one of her sister’s favorite singers—Shawn Colvin. Annie loved Shawn’s strong, sweet Irish voice and the songs she wrote and performed. She had programmed the CD to play the track with the song “Get Out of the House.”
    Many of Shawn Colvin’s songs spoke to Anne Marie; her lyrics were poems full of longing, lost love, the fear of danger and a need to be at home and safe again. But Anne Marie wasn’t home.
    At the moment when time becomes important it is relentless and unforgiving, and with each passing moment the fear and apprehension of Anne Marie’s family and friends grew more palpable. It was not possible that Annie should have left of her own volition, that she could have gone away without telling any of these people who loved her.
    Anne Marie and Mike should have been with Robert and Susan right now, maybe having coffee after dinner, maybe saying good-bye and getting ready to drive back to Wilmington. But instead, Mike was here, as worried as the rest of them. Kathleen knew that Annie was in love with Mike; she would have returned his calls. She would have called all of them back. Annie hadn’t returned any of her calls since Thursday afternoon.
    K ATHLEEN couldn’t wait any longer to take action. On Sunday, June 30, 1996, at approximately 12:15 A.M. , with the full support of her brother Robert and of Michael Scanlan, the man Anne Marie hadonly just begun to love, she called again to report to the Wilmington Police Department that Anne Marie Fahey was missing. “I called the police,” she said. “The Wilmington city police. I waited for what felt like an eternity, and they didn’t come, so I called Ed Freel.”
    The Freels were almost like family to the Faheys. Ed Freel was the Secretary of State for Governor Carper. Kathleen called him at O’Friel’s Pub, an Irish tavern owned and operated by the family. “I told him what was going on, and within a couple of minutes, there were two state policemen here.”
    Once it was official it seemed all the more terrible.
    W HILE they had waited for Anne Marie, for the police, for some word, five of the people who meant the most to Anne Marie forced themselves to believe that she was OK, or even if she wasn’t completely OK, that she was alive somewhere. And then they caught their breaths and took back even the thought that she wasn’t alive. Annie was too vibrant and beautiful not to be somewhere out there. It was just that they had somehow lost touch with