...And Never Let HerGo

Sometimes Mike sent her flowers for no reason at all, and he included Anne Marie in most of his plans.
    A ND then, through devices that no one would understand for a long time—perhaps never—Tom Capano reappeared in Anne Marie’s life. She had never told anyone what had happened to make her shut him out in February, nor did she immediately explain to her friends why she had let him back in. Indeed, many of them did not know he was back.
    The torrent of E-mail between Tom’s office and the governor’s office began again on April 24, heavily weighted on Tom’s end of the line. He initiated these new contacts by telling Anne Marie of a catastrophe in his life. Anne Marie knew that Tom’s daughters meant everything to him, and when he called her to say that Katie, his second daughter, was going to have brain surgery, her heart broke for him. She couldn’t hang up on him when he was dealing with such terrible news. Tom was very strong, but he could not live if he lost one of his girls to a brain tumor. He told Anne Marie that he needed her—just as a friend—to get through his agony over Katie’s illness. He asked her if she would go to the hospital with him to see Katie. And instantly, she was wary.
    Perhaps Tom knew what her reaction would be. Anne Marie told him she could not go to the hospital with him. It wasn’t her place to be there; it was Kay’s place. And she felt angry and manipulated that he would ask her. She reported to Dr. Sullivan that she had been able to say no to Tom about the hospital visit.
    “I registered some surprise that she even knew them [his daughters],” Dr. Sullivan recalled. “And she said she had communicated with them. It didn’t surprise me because she is extremely friendly with children . . . so her contact with that young person would have made it tougher for her to say no.”
    She had run into Tom’s girls now and again and Tom had always introduced her as an old friend, but she didn’t know any of them well enough to visit in the hospital. If Anne Marie had gone to see Katie, however, Tom’s lie would have been found out. Katie wasn’t having brain surgery. She had only fainted during a basketball game. Of course, Anne Marie didn’t know that, but she was suspicious. She wondered if Tom was using a story about his daughter to get to her. She now weighed everything he said to her for some underlying purpose.
    Tom had, in fact, experienced something like what he had described to Anne Marie—only not with Katie. Ten years earlier—in 1986—his daughter Alex, who was only fifteen months old at the time, had had a dermoid cyst (a fatty tumor) removed from her head at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. General anesthesia was required, and Tom and Kay had to wait a few days to find that the tumor was benign. Kay was not as worried as Tom; as a nurse, she was fairly certain it was only a cyst. It clearly had greater impact on Tom. Odd that he would bring up an actual event and transform it to suit his purpose such a long time later.
    However, it worked. He and Anne Marie were talking again. And that was what Anne Marie had always hoped for, that she and Tom could be friends. It had been months since they had had a physical relationship. She never intended to have sex with him again; it was hard to believe she ever had.
    They were soon exchanging dumb E-mail again with trivia questions. That was safe enough. Some sounded totally innocuous. In their trivia contest, he asked her who made Coach leather and she correctly answered, “Sara Lee.” But in reality, he was reminding Anne Marie that he had offered to buy her a Lexus, a very expensive car, outfitted in Coach leather. He cared little for cars, but she was a connoisseur of them. She would have reveled in a Lexus.
    It wasn’t long before Tom began to call more and more often and to ask questions again, about Anne Marie’s health, her financial situation, her friends, her
life.
He knew she was still seeing Mike, and she told him, very cautiously, about some of the places they went.
    When she mentioned that a rock had put a crack in her windshield, he was very concerned and warned her that it was dangerous. He insisted she get bids on replacing it. As he had with Jackie, he asked to see her finances, using that as an excuse to drop by her apartment. Jackie had avoided that, but Anne Marie let Tom see her bills. He shook his head and said, “You’re getting no place—allyou’re doing is paying the