...And Never Let HerGo

the Carvel state building occasionally, and after that night he often paused at Anne Marie’s desk to exchange a few words. Jill Morrison was aware that Anne Marie had lunch with him once in a while over the late spring and summer of 1993. Since Jill and Anne Marie usually had lunch together, when Ann Marie begged off and said she had other plans, Jill would ask, “Who with?” and sometimes it was Tom Capano. Jill didn’t think anything of it.
    “Anne Marie was just a very friendly person, and she explained that she was friends with him,” Jill recalled, “and [said] they would have good conversations, and he relied on her advice. That’s the way she was, so I found nothing odd at that point.”
    Sometime in the autumn of that year, Anne Marie told Jill that she was going out to dinner with Tom. She mentioned it offhandedly, as if it was a last-minute invitation. She asked to borrow a raincoat since the night had turned chilly, the wind was whipping fallen leaves around, and she hadn’t worn a coat to work that day.
    Somehow, going out to dinner with a man seemed more like a date than just having lunch during a workday. The next day, Jill’s curiosity got the better of her and she asked Anne Marie how her dinner date had gone. “She told me about the restaurant, and that it was a nice evening—that Mr. Capano had ordered the food for her. I asked her, ‘Did he kiss you?’ and she said, ‘Yes.’ ”
    Women who are close friends ask each other things like that, althoughJill was a little surprised at Anne Marie’s answer. She didn’t question her, but she wondered what kind of a relationship Anne Marie had, or contemplated having, with a married man so much older. Anne Marie had confided that Tom was about to have his forty-fourth birthday. She and Jill were only twenty-seven. Even so, she referred to him as Tommy, a name he apparently preferred. She always called him that.
    Jill knew her friend well enough to know that she wouldn’t find out any more than Annie wanted to tell. “She was always saying about herself,” Jill quoted, “‘The more you push me in one direction, the more I go in the other direction.’ And I did not want to push her. I figured if people want to tell me something, or confide in me, they will do it in their own time.”
    And apparently, Anne Marie had nothing she wanted to talk about with Jill, at least nothing about Tom Capano. She certainly had no exclusive arrangement with him; she had other dates, with men closer to her own age. She could be dramatic sometimes, and impossibly romantic, but it was clear to anyone who knew Annie well that she yearned to be in love, to be married, to have children of her own.
    Men so often disappointed Anne Marie—or maybe it was that she shot herself in the foot because of the way she seemed to fear rejection. As beautiful as she was, she didn’t see herself that way. If a man promised to call and didn’t, she was convinced he would never call again—certain that
she
had said or done something to scare him off. And all the time she was absolutely lovely, with a figure both lush and angular with her full breasts and long arms and legs. Her eyes were wide and blue under heavy brows, and she had such thick, curly hair that it tumbled heavily down around her face unless she swept it up on her head and let tendrils escape. Her complexion was pure Irish, freckled skin that was suffused with pink washes when she felt emotion or embarrassment.
    And Anne Marie was often caught unaware by both, although her defense system was locked in place so firmly that someone had to know her really well to see it. She seemed so happy and so confident, but she was as vulnerable as a wildflower growing on a freeway.
    O NE night in the fall of 1993, Jackie Binnersley came home about eight after working out at the gym. She was startled to see Anne Marie sitting on the couch in their living room with a man. Jackie recognized him but would never have expected to find him in her own living room. He was well known around Wilmington. Whatsurprised Jackie the most was the intimate way Annie was sitting with him on the couch. They were drinking wine, and a bottle of Rosemont merlot—Anne Marie’s favorite—sat on the coffee table.
    “They were facing each other,” Jackie said. “As soon as I walked in, I detected
something.
I just felt uneasy. Body language tells a lot—you could just tell by the way they were sitting that there was some contact