...And Never Let HerGo

love with Tom? Virtually the only dates she had with other men were those that he urged her to go on, and she hadn’t enjoyed herself. It wouldn’t be too long before both of her children were out of the house. She had devoted her life to Tom, her children, and Tatnall School. And now it was going to be all right, after all. “When he left Kay,” Debby said, “he told me that he needed eighteen months to be a bachelor, so he wouldn’t embarrass Kay by marrying again right away. But then we would get married. That was one of the happiest times of my life.”
    As well it should have been. While they still didn’t date much in Wilmington—in deference to Kay—Tom was much more available to Debby. She could call him at any time, and he called her more often. They saw each other several times a week. After being alone for a dozen years, waiting in the shadows of Tom’s life, Debby felt secure now in the knowledge that they were going to be together forever. She had waited for him this long; another year and a half would be a cakewalk.
    S EPTEMBER 1995 was a watershed point for a number of people in Wilmington. Governor Tom Carper, who had no idea that AnneMarie was involved with one of the lights of the Democratic Party, was about to play Cupid. Carper, who was a contemporary of Tom Capano, had met a young man in the spring who seemed the perfect match for Anne Marie. The governor went up to Mike Scanlan and asked him if he was single. When he said yes, Carper asked him if he was “interested in meeting a nice young lady.”
    They both forgot about the discussion for a few months, until Carper had occasion to send a business letter to Scanlan. On the bottom of the letter, he jotted down Anne Marie’s name and phone number. Tom Carper cared a great deal for Anne Marie, and he approved of Mike Scanlan as a person. He had checked Mike out before he broached the subject with Anne Marie. Mike, thirty, was a senior executive vice president of the MBNA America Bank, the massive Delaware-based credit card company. He was in charge of community relations and responsible for MBNA’s grants to charitable organizations. In fact, his life since graduation from Georgetown University had been devoted to philanthropy of one sort or another. He had worked with troubled kids in Maryland and Florida, combining training and discipline in programs that used the sea as a teacher: aquatics, marine biology, oceanography. He was like a fish himself, a champion swimmer in the backstroke on the Georgetown swim team.
    Mike was Irish and Catholic, one of seven children, and grew up in Bristol, Rhode Island. His father worked for General Mills and his mother was a librarian. But Carper knew that all those attributes weren’t what really mattered on a blind date. Mike was six feet, two inches tall, and handsome, with a wide smile. He was a nice guy who owned his own home in Sharpley off the Concord Pike, he made more than $100,000 a year, and he was still single.
    After Governor Carper told Mike about Anne Marie, and even though he wasn’t any more enthusiastic about blind dates than she was, he considered calling her. “I kept it [her phone number] and thought about it for a while, and finally got up the guts and called her.” It was arranged that they would meet on Friday, September 15. The likely spot was O’Friel’s Irish Pub.
    Mike asked around a little bit about Anne Marie, but he really knew only about her family and where she’d grown up. He got to O’Friel’s first, and he was teased unmercifully by the regulars. Former mayor Bill McLaughlin chuckled as he sipped beer at the bar, enjoying the suspense. Mike was asking, “Is she a dog? Tell me, you guys,” and Kevin Freel was making faces. Someone fed Mike the dread line “She has a
really
nice personality,” and he looked a little pale.
    And then Anne Marie walked in, dragging Jill Morrison along for moral support, just as Mike had brought along his friend Dan Simons. And of course, she was beautiful. And funny, and obviously a good person. They were perfect for each other; anyone could see it.
    Anyone but them. They sat together and talked, but it was like being under a magnifying glass with everybody in O’Friel’s watching. Their conversation felt stilted and awkward, and Anne Marie had that old sinking feeling that the man she was with wasn’t interested in her. She called her brother Brian later and told him that she had really liked Mike Scanlan and found him