Chapter 8: Tara Tells the Truth
Tara Simmons worked in hospital administration on the north side of the city, and she had agreed to meet me at a coffee shop on a Tuesday morning in late January because she had sent me a text two weeks after Christmas Eve that said simply: *I think you deserve to hear the full version from me, if you want it.
No pressure either way.*
I had thought about it for four days before I replied.
She was already there when I arrived, hands around a mug, no coat on the back of her chair — she had been there long enough to have gotten warm.
She stood when she saw me, which I hadn't expected.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
"Thank you for the screenshot," I said.
We sat down.
She was, up close, someone I might have liked in a different life.
Steady eyes.
No performance in her face.
She looked like someone who had been through something and was still deciding what it had cost her.
"I want to tell you what he told me," she said.
"From the beginning.
Because I think you've been filling in gaps and I'd rather you have the actual version."
"Okay," I said.
"We met at a work event.
He was there for O'Hare operations, I was there for the hospital's transport contract.
He was charming and funny and he asked for my number and I gave it to him." She wrapped both hands around her mug.
"He told me on the third date that he was married but that it had been over for a long time.
He said you were living essentially as roommates.
He said you had both agreed it was done but that the timing of the legal side was complicated because of finances."
"We were not living as roommates," I said.
"I know that now." She met my eyes.
"I believed him because he was specific.
He didn't say vague things — he said you slept in separate rooms, that you hadn't been intimate in over a year, that you were both just waiting for the right moment to make it official." She paused.
"Specific lies are harder to question than vague ones."
"He's good at specific," I said.
"He is." She looked at her mug.
"I asked him once, about four months in, why he was still in the apartment if it was really over.
He said it was financial — that you had a joint lease and breaking it would cost more than just waiting out the term." She shook her head slowly.
"I accepted that.
I shouldn't have, but I did."
"When did you start to doubt him?"
"October.
He cancelled three plans in a row and each time the reason was slightly different.
Work, then a family thing, then something vague about needing to sort out some paperwork." She looked up.
"I asked him directly — I said, is she actually aware that this is ending?
And he said yes.
He said you both knew." A pause.
"He looked me in the eye and said it."
"He's good at that too," I said.
"The night of the dinner — Christmas Eve — I almost didn't go.
Something felt off.
He'd been distracted all week.
But he texted me that afternoon and said he had a surprise, that the table was booked, that he couldn't wait to see me." She set down her mug.
"When I walked in and saw all those people — his mother, his sister, all of them — and then I saw you sitting there so calm, I understood everything in about ten seconds."
"What did you feel?"
She thought about it.
"Stupid," she said.
"And then furious.
And then — this is the part that surprised me — I felt sorry for you.
Because I thought, she's been sitting across from this man for three years and she had no idea.
And I had been so sure I was the one who knew the truth."
I wrapped my hands around my own mug.
"You weren't stupid," I said.
"He built it carefully.
He had a story for everything."
"I know." She looked at me.
"I want you to know I ended it that night.
In the parking lot.
He followed me out and tried to explain — he said it wasn't what it looked like, that you had set the whole thing up to humiliate him, that you had known about us for months and were just waiting to expose him publicly." She paused.
"He made you the villain."
"Of course he did."
"I told him I didn't believe him.
I told him I was done." She picked up her mug again.
"He called twice after that.
I didn't answer.
The third time, I sent him the screenshot and told him he had twenty-four hours to tell you himself, or I would."
I looked at her across the small table.
"He didn't tell me," I said.
"No," she said.
"He didn't."
We sat quietly for a moment.
Outside, January moved past the window — gray and purposeful, the way Chicago January always is.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
She seemed surprised by the question.
"I think so.
Mostly angry at myself for not pushing harder sooner." She looked at me.
"Are you?"
I thought about the honest answer.
"I'm getting there," I said.
She nodded.
She understood what that meant.
We finished our coffee.
She paid for hers, I paid for mine.
At the door she stopped and turned back.
"For what it's worth," she said, "he talked about you sometimes.
Not the way he was supposed to — not like someone he was leaving.
He talked about you like someone he was afraid of losing." She paused.
"I just didn't understand what that meant at the time."
I pushed the door open into the cold.
I understood what it meant.
May you like
It meant he had known, the whole time, exactly what he had.
He had just decided it wasn't enough.
