...And Never Let HerGo

she truly needed someone. Gradually, she lost the people she counted on. Both of her grandparents died in 1984. It was more like losing parents than grandparents—she and her brothers and sister had found refuge with the elder MacIntyres many times.
    It was Debby’s greatest fear that her mother would survive herfather. Sheila Miller MacIntyre, for all her neuroses and addictions, was in her sixties and still dependent upon her husband. With his children grown, Bill MacIntyre was able to focus most of his attention on Sheila, and she needed a great deal of care.
    But as so often happens, it was the strong spouse who died first. Bill MacIntyre succumbed to a heart attack on September 7, 1987. He was only sixty-four. He had been a wonderful grandfather to Victoria and Steve, and he and Debby had long ago come to an understanding about his sense of duty toward the wife he loved but could not live with. Now, with their brothers living several states away, it was up to Debby and her sister to care for their mother.
    They moved her into an apartment in Wilmington and arranged to have nurses stay with her most of the time. It was difficult sometimes for them to care for a mother who had never cared for them. But Debby, at least, made her peace with her mother, accepting finally that Sheila had never been capable of loving her children or even of living in the same house with them. Ironically, Sheila seemed to enjoy her grandchildren, and Victoria and Steve looked forward to visits at her apartment.
    On the Saturday night before Mother’s Day 1988, Debby called her mother several times; she knew that the nurse-companion who usually stayed evenings with Sheila had taken the night off so she could visit
her
mother. When she didn’t get an answer, she assumed her mother had gone to bed early and couldn’t hear the phone.
    The next day, she bought a bouquet of flowers and headed to Sheila’s apartment with Victoria and Steve. It was Debby’s sister’s birthday and she wouldn’t be going over to Sheila’s. “The kids were so excited,” Debby said. “They ran in ahead of me and pounded up the stairs. They were too young to know why she wouldn’t talk to them.”
    Debby found her mother, fully clothed, lying across her bed. Her eyes were open, but there was something so ineffably still about her body that she knew her mother was dead. And she had never felt so alone.
    Debby called Tom at home, grateful that he answered the phone. She had no idea what excuse he gave for leaving in the midst of Mother’s Day celebrations, but he did. “He came over as soon as he could,” she said. “He went upstairs and checked my mother and he came back down and told me she was gone. And he closed my mother’s eyes.”
    Tom made arrangements for someone from the police to come and verify that Sheila MacIntyre was dead, and then he called for afuneral director to take her body away. It took hours but he stayed with Debby. And for her it was a tremendously bonding experience, sitting there together in the silent house while her poor, lost mother lay upstairs. She had no idea what she would have done without Tom.
    Sometimes, after that day, he would remind her, “Remember, I closed your mother’s eyes.”
    It was hard to grieve for a mother who had never been there, but Debby did—more for what might have been than for what was.

Chapter Eight
    T OM WAS THERE for so many people when they were in crisis. His quiet voice, his calm manner, and his ability to make people understand what they needed to understand made him a natural mediator. Everybody who met him just seemed to like him.
    But while Marguerite’s favorite son rose in stature in Wilmington, her younger three were having their problems—and not just Gerry, who seemed to care for nothing but guns, shark fishing, big game hunting, and girls with big hair and clothes that fit like a second skin.
    Louie had built his father’s business into a major construction company, with both commercial and private projects worth many millions. When Louis Sr. died in 1980, his estate had been worth $1.2 million, and it included the Cavalier Apartments, part of a Holiday Inn in New Jersey, several housing developments, investment funds, and even a portion of a Pennsylvania coal mine. Tom, Louie, and Joey were designated as the trustees of the estate, and as such they were given the power to invest the money, open new businesses, and continue whatever current businesses they deemed