...And Never Let HerGo

trip, and Anne Marie said she had just wanted to have it over with and get home.
    It wasn’t too long after that trip when Tom told Anne Marie that he was thinking seriously about leaving Kay. She was horrified. She knew she could not live with the responsibility of taking a man away from his wife. She was having enough trouble with her Catholic guilt about being involved with a married man. But mostly,she didn’t want to be with him any longer. He would put so many walls around her that she could never get out.
    In one of her moments of strength, Anne Marie told Tom that he had to make up his mind whether or not to divorce his wife based purely on what
he
wanted. He was not to consider her as part of the equation. If he left Kay, she warned, it couldn’t be because of her. He always nodded, but she wondered if he really heard what she was saying.
    Tom was now living in Louie’s mansion in Greenville—he
had
left Kay. He asked Anne Marie to stay with him for a few days while Louie was away. Why she agreed, only she knew. She may have viewed it as a way to talk with him and to somehow extricate herself gently from their relationship. Anne Marie was enchanted with Louie’s house, the grounds and pool, but she was sorry she had come. Tom didn’t want to talk about detaching. And he most definitely did not want to change their relationship.
    She was trying to separate herself from him, but she didn’t know how to do it. Anne Marie felt sorry for Tom because he seemed so unhappy, and she’d been there to listen to him complain about his life—but she realized now that she had been led into something she could never have imagined. Everything had happened much too fast and it seemed to Anne Marie that in whatever direction she turned, Tom was there blocking her path, hemming her in. She began to be a little frightened of him, although she might have been hard put to give a name to her fear.
    Anne Marie had had relationships with men before, and many men had left her bereft because they weren’t ready to make a commitment. But now she was caught in something that she couldn’t understand. Being with Tom was like being in a carnival house of mirrors. Things kept changing. Just when she thought she was perceiving something one way, the light shifted and it became something else. And what seemed to be an exit or an open space was really only a cramped hallway with no way out.
    O NE of the friends Anne Marie had made in Governor Carper’s office was Siobhan Sullivan, the young state trooper who helped to provide security for the governor. Attractive, tall, and slender, with sun-streaked hair, Siobhan had been a basketball star before she joined the Delaware State Police. Anne Marie had introduced her to Tom at a function at Woodburn, the governor’s mansion, and Siobhan noticed then that the two of them seemed to be very good friends. Anne Marie often had tickets to concerts or sports eventsand Siobhan would tease her, saying, “Tell me where you got those,” and it was usually Tom who had bought the tickets.
    Tom was such a familiar figure in Delaware political circles that no one noticed how often he called or dropped by the governor’s suite on the twelfth floor of the Carvel building. Siobhan’s position made her a little more curious than most people and she asked Anne Marie about him more than once. “She always said he was one of her best friends—and that they talked occasionally.”
    By September of 1995, Siobhan became aware that Anne Marie’s friendship with Tom had frayed somewhat. He had begun to leave calls on Siobhan’s pager, which surprised her a little since she didn’t know him very well. “He would ask me if I wanted to go out for a beer, always when I got done work that night with the governor. He knew I coached basketball and wanted me to help his kids, coach them.
    “One night, he was quite insistent. He wanted to know if I wanted to go get a beer and talk about basketball. I said I’d had a long day and needed to get home.”
    Tom asked Siobhan if she had spoken to Anne Marie during the day, and then said, “She’s really mad at me.”
    “You have to just let her be, Tom,” Siobhan answered.
    “You know I left my wife and I’m just really lonely right now.”
    Siobhan tried to avoid a discussion about Anne Marie’s personal business by pointing out that working in the governor’s office sometimes left people stressed out. He would not be sidetracked. “Siobhan, that