...And Never Let HerGo

noted them on her calendar. On many dates, she jotted down two fiestas on the same night.
    As always, her calendar noted birthdays, showers, weddings, and of course, baby-sitting for her siblings’ youngsters. She and Mike had a dinner together at the Columbus Inn, a wonderful restaurant in a structure in Wilmington that seemed little changed over centuries. Mike had no idea what she was going through. She didn’t want to tell him about Tom and she made excuses about why she had fainted in Puerto Rico, fearful that Mike would find her anorexia disgusting. Finally, because he was so worried about her fainting, she fudged and told him that the doctors couldn’t figure out why she was losing weight—that they thought it might be stress or fatigue.
    On Sunday, December 18, Anne Marie and Mike went on a Christmas tour to see the lights and decorations in Wilmington. Afterward she helped him decorate his home for Christmas and they trimmed the tree with his brother, Vin. Because Mike was going to Rhode Island for Christmas, they had an early celebration. A photograph from that night shows them together on a love seat next to a miniature Christmas village arranged on drifts of cotton snow.
    They
looked
like a couple, with Anne Marie holding their presents in her lap and Mike laughing, his eyes shut against the flash of someone’s camera. It was easy to picture them together in Mike’s house for many Christmases to come.
    Mike left for Rhode Island on the twenty-second and told Anne Marie he’d be back on the thirtieth, in plenty of time to take her to the celebration at Winterthur, Henry Francis du Pont’s majestic museum of American arts. Not only did she have a date for New Year’s Eve, but it was with the man she truly wanted to be with.
    Tom had been working on her, of course, warning her away from Mike. He told her that Mike was a nerd and he was amazed that she would even be interested in him. He hinted that he might have to tell Mike that she wasn’t available—that she belonged to him. And if he did so, it would be for her own good, since she apparently didn’t have enough sense to know what was best for her.
    That sent a chill through Anne Marie. Even imagining a confrontation between Mike and Tom made her sick to her stomach. Tom would make their relationship sound dirty and he would paint her as such a sinner and loose woman—face it, he would make her out to be a slut and a whore (his favorite words for her when he was angry)—that Mike would run for the nearest exit.
    It should have been a wonderful time, but Anne Marie was always looking over her shoulder and waiting for the phone to ring. Tom, who had always been so in control, was losing it—or seemedto be. He threatened suicide if Anne Marie didn’t come back to him. One night he came up the back stairs to her apartment and burst in when she opened the door. Breathing heavily, he stomped around and collected everything he had ever given her: the television, clothes, records—even a jar of mayonnaise. “I don’t want another man watching the TV I gave you,” he said, “or seeing you in clothes that I gave you—so I’m taking it all back.”
    In the end, he relented and returned his gifts, but it was an awful fight. It was only one of many scenes. One night Tom drove her home and refused to let Anne Marie get out of his car until she agreed to talk to him. When she tried to reach for the door, he grabbed her around the neck. He didn’t hurt her, and she wasn’t afraid of him physically—but it showed that he was out of control. Her life had become a back-and-forth secret tug-of-war.
    Another night, Tom drove Anne Marie into the garage at his house on North Grant Avenue and shut the doors behind them. He would not let her go until she agreed to discuss their relationship.
Why?
she wondered desperately. There was nothing to discuss. She had always been claustrophobic, and she felt suffocated in closed-in places. Locked in Tom’s garage, she began to panic—but he was obdurate. When he finally opened the doors, she was sick to her stomach.
    There would be more scenes like that, and then Tom would send Anne Marie long, almost childlike E-mail, as if everything between them was still all right. The reversal itself was chilling.
    Tom used Anne Marie’s friends, calling in old favors. Jackie Steinhoff saw him almost every day until mid-October. But when he came into her coffee shop in December, she noticed that he looked terrible. “He