...And Never Let HerGo

his rules—a rule that had never been explained to her. Anne Marie was experiencing what Debby MacIntyre had lived with for years. Tom was in charge of his affairs, and he would not abide women who interfered with his carefully orchestrated schedule.
    Now that he had Anne Marie emotionally tethered to him, Tom had the power to hurt her. And he did. After her faux pas at Buddy’s Bar, he didn’t call her on either Sunday or Monday. When she called him late Monday afternoon, he was cold, and eager to get off the phone. “I have a very busy week,” he said abruptly, “and everything in my life is wrong and my life sucks.”
    Anne Marie had told Tom
everything
about her life, and he had instantly perceived her insecurities, her fear of rejection, her sure knowledge that she would be abandoned. Her openness had been akin to giving an enemy a map of your gun deployment. He was clearly demonstrating to her what would happen if she ever again encroached on his real life. He may even have enjoyed the panic he created in Anne Marie when he suddenly stopped calling her and as he spoke to her in a cold, annoyed voice when she called him.
    And of course, she did. She kept calling. She left a message for him on Tuesday and he didn’t return the call. He had told Anne Marie over and over again how much he loved her and needed her to fill all the dark places in his wretched life. She had come to love him and, more important, to depend upon his approval and kindness—and now he was suddenly gone.
    Tom allowed Anne Marie to twist in the wind for a week, ignoring her calls. She berated herself for all manner of inconsiderate things she must have done. “Why did I allow myself to fall in love with a married man?” she asked her diary.
    I know exactly why: Tomas is kind, caring, responsive, loving, has a beautiful heart, is extremely handsome and was kind and gentle with me. If he loves me like he used to say (which I still believe he does) then why is he treating me like this?
    The most difficult part of this relationship is the fact that I cannot talk to anyone about us . . . the only person that knows is T. And he is not talking to me. . . . Hopefully, soon the phone will ring.
    When Tom finally did call Anne Marie, he spoke to her in a voice so heavy with depression that she was stricken. He hinted that something was wrong, and she was terrified that he might be sick with some terminal disease. He would neither confirm nor deny that. She was so convinced that he was either suicidal or fatally ill that she went to St. Anthony’s to pray “to help and provide T. with the strength that he needs.”
    The game went on. Tom was unreachable, inscrutable, and spoke in such a bleak way that Anne Marie was sure she was going to lose him, just as she had lost Bob Conner only a month before. After ten days that were agonizing for Anne Marie, Tom finally called her and told her that he needed to speak with her. His message gave her hope.
    Tom grudgingly agreed to meet with Anne Marie to talk about why he felt they had no future. It was a scene that would have qualified him to write soap opera scripts, but he knew that Anne Marie was easy prey. He told her that the problem was that his feelings for her were so strong that he was jealous whenever other men said anything about her. He kissed her, held her, and shed a tear or two before he said that he needed to let her go for her own sake, for her future.
    When he made a show of forcing himself to walk away, he must have known that his scenario had worked. It always had.
    “My life doesn’t exist without Tomas,” Anne Marie wrote in her diary. “He deserves happiness—he does not deserve to be miserable! I’ll wait forever. He’s a wonderful, kind, caring, generous, sensitive man who deserves to be showered with the same kind of generosity he gives. I want to be that person!”
    She had no glimmer of what that would mean.
    A NNE M ARIE ’ S friends saw a change in their get-togethers that spring of 1995. It was subtle at first, but they could not help but notice how nearly impossible it was to make plans with Annie.
    Jill Morrison and Anne Marie had decided to spend the evening of St. Patrick’s Day together. It was one of
the
major holidays in Wilmington and they were both looking forward to it. Jill was supposed to pick Annie up and then they were going to O’Friel’s.
    “I was inside the apartment, and she was finishing getting ready when the phone rang,” Jill recalled.