...And Never Let HerGo

one daughter had some kind of brain surgery, and it was a very difficult time for him, but she was doing better. We talked about how his father had been an immigrant and how he made his children all millionaires.”
    Kim got the impression that Tom was once again presenting himself as a much better suitor for Anne Marie than Mike Scanlan could ever be. He argued that Anne Marie didn’t know her own mind. She was jealous of his dating someone else—so that must mean she loved him. “He mentioned he had a date with another woman who worked in Delaware, and Annie said the thought of him being with her made her sick to her stomach.”
    That didn’t sound like the straight story to Kim. Anne Marie had
never
mentioned being jealous of Tom. All she talked about was Mike.
    Their meal came to $130, and Tom added a $26 tip. Kim didn’t realize that, for him, this was a relatively cheap night out. If it had been $300, it would have been cheap for Tom. He routinely submitted all his bills for dinner with Anne Marie and her friends to Saul, Ewing for reimbursement, marking them as charges connected with the firm’s client, the state of Delaware. Anne Marie was employed by the governor of the state of Delaware, but she never knew Tom got his money back for their meals.
    Kim called Anne Marie the morning after her dinner with Tom,just as she had the week before. Anne Marie commented that if they decided to go to dinner again, she would like to go with them. Kim knew that Anne Marie wasn’t jealous; she felt it was more that she wanted to confront Tom on some of the things he was saying about her—and about the two of them together.
    But then Anne Marie E-mailed Tom and vetoed his suggestion that she and “Kimmie” have dinner with him, saying, “I don’t feel like sharing.” Whenever her friends came along, she knew that Tom tried to enlist them in one of his plans to make her do something. She hated being a specimen to be dissected and discussed.
Poor Annie. Whatever will we do about poor, pathetic Annie?
It was one of Tom’s devices.

Chapter Nineteen
    T OM WAS HAVING a busy spring. Only a man as organized as he was could have arranged so deftly the many pieces in the mosaic of his life. He told Kim that he considered himself Anne Marie’s very best friend, the one human being in the world she could trust. He never let a day go by without some contact with her. Nor did he miss speaking to Debby every day; her problems were a little different from Anne Marie’s but she, too, needed him to see what was best for her. He felt that the Tatnall School continued to ask too much of Debby. She was often on the job from very early in the morning until far into the evening.
    Tom fully expected Linda Marandola to become his secretary at the end of May 1996. That would, of course, make her privy to knowledge about his phone calls, but he wasn’t concerned. However, the week before Linda was scheduled to start, he called her at home and was annoyed to hear that she had left a cutesy message on her answering machine. That was not acceptable.
    When Tom got Linda on the phone, he told her to change the message; it was unprofessional and childlike. Linda demurred and Tom said flatly that she could not work for him if she didn’t change the message. Again she refused, telling him that what she had on her home machine had nothing whatever to do with her job at Saul, Ewing.
    Tom called Linda’s machine several times after that and left her messages, repeating that she was immature and childish. As she listenedto Tom’s angry voice, calling her over and over, Linda realized that she couldn’t work for him. What had ever made her think that she could? Nothing had really changed; he was the same man he had always been. She called Saul, Ewing and said that she would not be reporting to work after all. She didn’t give a reason.
    When Tom’s secretary told him that Linda was not going to be taking her place, he nodded grimly and said he would call her and see what her problem was. He explained later that he had had a disagreement with Linda over the weekend and she would not return his phone calls.
    Linda still owed Tom $3,000 and that rankled him. He told his secretary that she had shared her financial problems with him and that he had lent her money. “She hasn’t paid me back,” he said, “and I’m going to fix her ass.”
    He asked for Linda’s personnel file and then had his secretary type up a civil complaint against