...And Never Let HerGo

her. He continued to find ways to draw her back into his life. She had set a date to have dinner with Tom and Jackie as far off in January as she could. Mike was in Bolivia on a business trip toward the end of the month, and if she had to go, that seemed the best time. Anne Marie picked Jackie up and they drove to Tom’s house on North Grant. Jackie brought along a pasta maker for Tom—a housewarming gift and a thank-you for all his legal help. Anne Marie asked her not to mention Mike Scanlan during the evening. “They don’t get along,” she said. “They don’t work together well.”
    Jackie had already mentioned Mike to Tom during a talk at Java Jack’s, but she didn’t tell Anne Marie; she vowed not to say anything further about Mike during dinner, however.
    Tom seemed excited about living on his own and insisted on showing them around the whole house. They dutifully followed him up and down the stairways, admiring the many rooms. He had clearly gone to great pains to have pretty bedrooms for his fourdaughters. Each of the girls had her own boom box and her own phone. “I want them to feel comfortable here,” he explained. “It’s their home, too.”
    The tour ended in the great room at the head of the steps to the garage. Jackie would recall that it was a warm room with a wine-colored couch that faced a television set in the left corner of the room. There was a big stack of oversized pillows that Tom said his daughters liked to hug when they lay on the wall-to-wall carpet to watch television.
    They went to La Famiglia for dinner that night and Jackie noted that Anne Marie “wasn’t in a great mood,” which was strange because she could almost always be counted on to be “real up and real peppy.” It had been almost four years since Jackie was so distrustful of Tom when he came to their old rental house to visit Annie. And she had long been convinced that he was, indeed, only a good friend. For some reason, Anne Marie had never confided in Jackie about their affair, or even that she was now desperately trying to avoid Tom.
    At some point during the evening, Anne Marie excused herself to go to the ladies’ room. As soon as she was gone, Tom—who had had several glasses of wine—turned to Jackie and asked desperately, “Why does she hate me, Jackie?”
    “What do you mean?” she asked, surprised. “Why would Annie hate you? She doesn’t hate you, Tom.”
    “Oh yes, she hates me, hates me, hates me.”
    Jackie tried to reason with him, but he had that familiar pitiful look. And Jackie knew that Anne Marie’s dates with Mike were behind Tom’s sad face. Jackie wondered if Tom had loving feelings for Annie after all. If he did, it would be too bad; she knew Annie was really enthusiastic about Mike and Tom didn’t stand a chance.
    And then Jackie put her foot in it when she tried to change the subject by talking about Anne Marie’s surprise thirtieth birthday party that Kathleen Fahey-Hosey was throwing. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she could tell by the expression on his face that Tom hadn’t been invited. “He just seemed shocked,” she said. “He said, ‘Oh no, I’m not invited,’ and I kind of backpedaled and said it was probably just friends, just going to be small.”
    It was too late; Tom looked stricken.
    Later, Jackie would recall that the winter of 1995–96 had seemed such a great time for Anne Marie, now that she had met Mike. “You always kid around,” she explained. “Like, ‘Annie, is this the guy?’ She would be like, ‘Yeah, I think so, but I don’t wantto get too excited because you don’t want to jump too far into a relationship.’ But she was really happy. She finally met somebody she really cared for and who definitely cared for her.”
    The awkward dinner at La Famiglia finally wound to a close and Tom drove them home to his house, where Anne Marie had parked her car. He tried to get them to come in and watch a movie with him, but it was after midnight and Anne Marie said they had to get home. Jackie sensed that Anne Marie could hardly wait for the evening to end.
    It was evidence of how ashamed Anne Marie was about her affair with Tom that so few of her longtime friends knew about it: only Kim Horstman, Jennifer Haughton—her old friend, who lived near Cape Cod—and possibly Jill Morrison. Others might have suspected, but she never confirmed their suspicions.
    I T was such a cold winter that year, with one snowstorm after another