...And Never Let HerGo

there.”
    Anne Marie was leaning toward her visitor, apparently entranced, her cheeks flushed. Jackie knew who Tom Capano was, and she knew he was married and had children. It seemed totally out of character for Anne Marie to be sitting there with him, drinking red wine. “She wasn’t promiscuous at all,” Jackie would recall. “She was very reserved, conservative, never had guys over to the house . . . but that night she had her cleavage showing.”
    Anne Marie usually wore tailored shirts or blouses with high, rounded necks. But now the top three buttons of her blouse were definitely undone. It was an awkward moment and Jackie apologized for intruding. Anne Marie quickly recovered her composure and introduced Jackie to Tom.
    After he left, Jackie confronted Anne Marie. “What’s going on?” she asked bluntly. “Why is this guy here? He’s a married man. Why is he over here drinking a bottle of wine?”
    “Oh, Jackie,” Anne Marie said. “We’re just friends.”
    Jackie never totally bought that explanation, although Anne Marie tried to convince her that there was nothing the least romantic about her being with Tom Capano. They had a work relationship and she couldn’t
not
talk to him.
    Tom continued to drop over to their house, although neither Jackie nor Bronwyn wanted to encourage that. He made them uneasy. He was so smooth and relaxed. Too smooth. Something made them want to protect Annie. “I didn’t like him at first,” Jackie said. “I didn’t like him at
all.
I usually give people a chance, but I just got a bad impression. Why was he hanging out at the house? Why was he drinking wine with Annie?”
    Both Jackie and Bronwyn found Tom’s attempts to ingratiate himself to them unctuous. “He just went over a little bit too much,” Jackie said. “I thought it was false the way he kind of gave me compliments on the house. He would bend over backwards to be nice . . . and say, ‘This house looks great—you did this—you did that. Annie tells me you stained the floors?’ or whatever.”
    His lavish compliments sounded false. It was too much; Jackie’s house was only average, and she had heard that Tom was verywealthy and lived in a great big house. Why would he bother to gush about her house?
    Jackie’s suspicions went beyond her distrust of Tom’s compliments. She had known Annie since they were both twelve, and she wanted something better for her than a married man who came calling with presents but who never seemed to take her out.
    For a while, Tom was a regular visitor at their house, and he called Annie often, too. And when Jackie and Bronwyn went away for a weekend, they knew that Tom visited Annie in their absence. Once Jackie came home to see them leaving Anne Marie’s bedroom, but Tom just looked her in the eyes with a slight smile. She didn’t care what Anne Marie did in her private life, but she didn’t want her to get hurt.
    Abruptly, Tom’s visits stopped, and Jackie and Bronwyn were relieved when they didn’t see him for several weeks. But he was back again around Christmas 1993. Anne Marie still talked about him a lot and spoke of seeing him at work. It was obvious she was intrigued by him. Still, that didn’t seem to be enough for Tom; her roommates sensed that he wanted all of her friends to like him too. It was as if he wanted them to shout for joy when he showed up, and neither Jackie nor Bronwyn was inclined to do that.
    The main trouble with Tom Capano was that while he seemed to be what Annie wanted, in reality he wasn’t available. He had a whole family out there on Seventeenth and Greenhill, and that was where he was going to be on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. Anne Marie deserved better than that. Jackie knew that she had always been drawn to men with a little edge to them, and Tom had that. But her friends hoped devoutly that he was only a fleeting fancy.
    A NNE M ARIE was working extremely hard on her job. She charted every hour of Governor Carper’s official days and nights and gave him file folders well in advance of every event, telling him where he would be, what the dress was, and which security staff would accompany him. No matter what might be going on in her personal life, she never missed a beat on the job. Tom Carper liked Anne Marie, and appreciated her personality as well as her cheerful efficiency. She didn’t appear to have any special man in her life, and Carper kept his eye out for someone he felt was