...And Never Let HerGo

freak and she wasn’t a hopeless case. She believed she could find a way to be free and healthy and deserving of happiness.
    Bob Conner used role-playing and cognitive therapy with Anne Marie. They could not change the past; there was no gain in harping on old hurts, and she understood that. But she could learn to shut off the thoughts that led back inevitably to her childhood and her feelings of helplessness. Going into 1995, Anne Marie was fighting as hard as she could.
    U NFORTUNATELY Anne Marie and Bob Conner would have only two more sessions. On January 5, 1995, they talked about Christmas dinner and the rage (over her father’s alcoholism) and sadness (about Nan and her mother) that Anne Marie felt. Twelve days later, on January 17, 1995, Conner’s last scribbled entry in Anne Marie’s case file read: “‘Road Less Traveled’ issues with self love.” Only he knew exactly what that meant to him—and to her—and he would not be able to explain it.
    They planned to meet again at 5 P.M. on January 24, but Conner called Anne Marie earlier that afternoon and asked if he could reschedule for the next day. He had a patient who was in crisis and he wanted to give him Anne Marie’s time slot. Of course, she said yes. There had been times when
she
was panicked and needed to talk.
    At 6 A.M. on January 25, Brian Fahey’s phone rang and he fumbled sleepily to grab it. He recognized Anne Marie’s voice, but she was crying so hard that he could barely make out what she was saying. And then he understood. Bob Conner was dead. His office had called Anne Marie to cancel her appointment. He had been coming home from his appointment the night before when a drunk driver crossed the center line and hit his car head-on.
    A very real force for good in Anne Marie’s life—and many others’ lives—was gone. She had counted on Conner since 1992 to help her work her way out of her anxiety and depression. She loved him like a father or a big brother, and had trusted him completely. She was grieving for him, and because she was Anne Marie, she blamed herself for his death. “If I hadn’t said it was OK to postpone my session,” she sobbed, “he wouldn’t have been out on that road so late. He would have been in his office at five with me, as always, and he would have just gone home like always.”
    Of course, that was her own circuitous reasoning, her leap to feel guilt over someone else’s pain. And she knew it, too, but it was so hard to accept that Bob Conner was gone. So hard for
her
to accept that nothing she had done had killed him and nothing she might have done could have saved him.
    As she often did, Anne Marie postponed writing about Conner’s death until she was able to deal with it. She had noted her appointment with him, the session that was never to be, on her calendar for January 25—“5:00 Bob C.”—and then gone back and filled in the last space on January 24: “Bob killed 6:50 p.m.”
    It would be a full month before she could truly put her feelings down:
    I loved Bob, and he has helped me grow so much, but we had a lot more work to do until I got to where I need to be at this point in my life. He was the only person who knew everything (even a little bit about Tommy [not much]) about me, and it felt great to get all this shit inside of me OUT. Bob was funny, intelligent, had a great smile, voice and sense of humor. He believed in me, and actually liked me for me. Not many people know the real Annie.
    And that was true. Few people did.
    O NCE more, Anne Marie struggled to cope with the death of someone she had loved and depended upon. She was two days away from her twenty-ninth birthday, and it was supposed to have been such ahappy day. Jill Morrison, Ginny Columbus, and Jackie Binnersley were going to take her out to dinner at Toscana to celebrate. When Jill asked her if she still wanted to go, Annie said she did. She needed to be with her friends. She agreed to meet them all at Ginny’s house.
    Jackie, Ginny, and Jill waited for Anne Marie to get there for half an hour, worried. When she finally showed up, she explained that she was delayed because she’d had a surprise visitor. Tom Capano had dropped by her apartment to give her a birthday present—a twenty-seven-inch color television set. He had totally floored her with his gift.
    Tom liked television and had told her that he had a set in his home in almost every room. Anne Marie was a little shamefaced when she told her friends that Tom