Last Dance, Last Chance

discovered. He won his two months’ good time, and he was released on Friday, December 7, 1998, in time to spend Christmas with his family. Debbie was waiting, and his children were thrilled.
    That first day, Anthony spent the whole afternoon watching videos of the junior high school football games Ralph had starred in while he was gone. Ralph was thrilled to see his father so interested. His team had an undefeated record, and Ralph was the quarterback. Although he was still thin and lanky, Ralph had broad shoulders, and he was an excellent athlete as well as a top student.
    Lauren, a petite girl, was a budding gymnast, and her dad was enthusiastic about that, too. Debbie watched them all with tears in her eyes.
    They went out to have a steak dinner with Lena, Antoinette, Ralph, and Lauren at Anthony’s favorite restaurant, E.B. Green’s. Debbie and Anthony decided to spend the weekend just getting to know each other again. Their new life would be different, Debbie agreed, but it didn’t have to be worse.
    When they talked of bad times in the past, Anthony and Debbie decided they would have a truly fresh start to their marriage. They would renew their wedding vows at St. Bonaventure, the same church where they had been married. They wanted to prove to each other that they really were starting over with a fresh slate.
    Anthony wasn’t drinking, and his time with his family was different now. He was really with them. He had 250 hours of community service to perform as part of his sentence, and he chose to volunteer at a therapeutic riding center for underprivileged and handicapped young people. He did such a good job that the director of the center wrote a glowing letter to the probation department, extolling his “responsibility, kindness, and tremendous work ethic.”
    Debbie paid off Anthony’s $2,500 fine.
    “Mom,” Ralph said to Debbie during that first week of Anthony’s freedom, “do you think we have a real dad now? He’s not anything like he was before.”
    She wanted to believe that, too, probably more than her children did. But Anthony had been home only a week when Debbie got a letter that was so shocking she almost felt it burn in her hands. She read it over twice, disbelieving, and yet finding it all too familiar. All those years ago, when Ralph was only a baby, she had received the phone call from the girl who told her to look in the back seat of their car. And she had found the cards and the audiotapes that proved absolutely that her husband was having an affair. And there had been the “Moira incident” in Puerto Rico.
    Debbie had forgiven Anthony twice. She had walked through fire for Anthony, and she believed now that they had come to a new place in their marriage.
    But Debbie didn’t know that Anthony had been having an affair with Tami Maxell even before he went to jail, and that he still was. Once more, she never knew exactly where he was, and it had always been easy for him to deceive her. Tami was older than Debbie and in good shape because she worked out regularly at Gold’s Gym, Anthony’s sports club.
    This time, the letter in Debbie’s hands wasn’t from Anthony’s mistress. It was from Tami’s ex-boyfriend, who was obsessed with her and violently jealous of her affair with Anthony. She recognized the signature on the letter. Several strange phone calls had come to their house, but someone just hung up. Debbie had punched *69 after a few of them, and the name Sam Picone * and his phone number had come up. The name meant nothing to her. She had just assumed he was some kind of nut.
    Picone was an attorney, and he evidently believed that misery loved company—or perhaps he wanted to make Anthony suffer the way he was suffering without Tami. He decided that the best way to get back at both of them was to tell Pignataro’s wife.
    It was a mean and sneaky thing to do, and it almost broke Debbie Pignataro’s heart. Picone enclosed a letter that Anthony had written to Tami from prison.
    Far more than most women, Debbie had clung to her marriage. But the letter in her hands proved that Anthony hadn’t changed. She knew he never would change. All of her children’s hopes that they finally had a “real dad” were going to be shattered. She had stood beside Anthony while he was accused and convicted, and she had visited him every chance she could. She had suffered such terrible humiliation and stress, answered all the hard questions in grand jury, and seen herself on the