Chapter 8: Last Chance
Tara handed me the phone and I read the message twice.
*Last chance.
Tonight.*
"Don't reply," I said.
"I wasn't going to."
I forwarded the message to the lawyer.
She responded within twenty minutes: *Perfect.
Keep everything.
Do not engage.
I'll reach out to him directly.*
"What does that mean?" Tara asked.
"It means she's going to contact him and explain what he's actually looking at if he keeps going." I set the phone on the counter.
"He came here expecting you to be alone and scared.
He doesn't know you told me.
He doesn't know there's a lawyer involved.
He's operating on old information."
"And if he doesn't stop?"
"Then he finds out the hard way that implied threats aren't leverage.
They're evidence."
Tara sat down at the kitchen table.
She looked tired in a way that went past the last two days — tired in a way that had been building for months.
"I kept telling myself it was almost over.
Every time I sent him money, I told myself this was the last time."
"Why did you keep believing him?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"Because I felt responsible.
He was in a bad place and I'd known him for a long time and I thought — I thought if I could just help him get stable, it would be done." She looked at her hands.
"I didn't think about what I was teaching him."
"You were teaching him that you'd pay."
"Yes."
Maya came downstairs around six for dinner.
The three of us ate together, which was not unusual, but the shape of the silence was different.
Not hostile.
More like a room after a window has been opened — the same furniture, different air.
Halfway through dinner, Maya said: "Is everything okay?"
Tara looked at her.
"It will be."
Maya looked at me.
I nodded.
She went back to eating.
She didn't ask anything else, which told me she understood more than she'd been told.
At 8:47 that evening, the lawyer called.
"I reached him," she said.
"I explained the situation clearly.
I told him that the text he sent this afternoon had been documented, that his visit yesterday had been documented, and that any further contact would be treated as harassment."
"How did he respond?"
"He hung up." A pause.
"Then he called back and asked if there was any way to work something out."
"What did you tell him?"
"That there was nothing to work out.
That the matter was closed and that the next contact from him would result in a formal complaint." Another pause.
"He didn't call back after that."
I thanked her and hung up.
I went to find Tara.
She was in the living room, a book open in her lap that she wasn't reading.
"It's done," I said.
She looked up.
"Done?"
"He's not going to contact you again."
She stared at me for a moment.
Then she set the book down on the cushion beside her, very carefully, and pressed both hands over her face.
I sat down next to her.
I didn't say anything.
I just sat there while her shoulders shook once, then steadied.
"I'm sorry," she said into her hands.
"I know."
"I should have told you months ago."
"Yes."
She lowered her hands.
Her eyes were wet.
"Are we okay?"
I thought about Maya's face in the living room two days ago.
The way she'd said *you believe me?* like she'd been waiting her whole life for someone to say yes.
"We're going to have to work for it," I said.
May you like
"But yes.
We can be."
