By Seamus McGraw

(Continued)

advertisement

Tara apparently maintained her regular regimen that Saturday night. A creature of habit, she turned on the nightstand lamp, her signal to Joe and Myrtle Portier, even though she knew they were already asleep. She plugged her cell phone into its charger and changed out of the clothes she had worn that evening to the Sweet Potato Festival in the nearby town of Fitzgerald. She dropped them on the divan beside her bed. Later, they would be found there, partially hidden under a pile of other garments, many of them still on hangers.

Perhaps she was preparing for bed. She had every reason to be tired. In fact, earlier that night she had said as much when she left the dinner party at Troy and Missy Davis'. "I'm going to watch the video of the pageant," before she turned in for the night, she told them when she'd left their house. They understood, of course. They knew just how hard she'd worked with the girls in the Miss Sweet Potato pageant, helping them dress, doing their makeup and hair for the pageant. 

And like most of her friends, they knew just how tough things had been for the high school teacher and former beauty queen recently. She had been maintaining a grueling schedule, working full time as an 11^th grade teacher, a job she was uniquely dedicated to, plus carrying a hefty class load while studying for her six-year education specialist degree, the last stop before beginning work on her doctorate. What's more, she had also thrown herself completely into the task of getting her students ready for the pageant.

A Secret Distress

All of that would have been more than enough to weary most people. But there was something else Tara had been grappling with, her close friends knew. For months, she had been bouncing between emotional extremes while trying to come to terms with the end of her six-year relationship with Marcus Harper.

She had hoped they might marry. But Marcus had other plans. His stint in the Army Rangers had opened a whole new world for the former Ocilla cop, and now, serving as an independent consultant traveling often to war-torn Iraq, he and Tara had become very different people. Though Tara ended the relationship, she remained deeply disturbed by its failure. As one of the people closest to her would later say, despite it all, she remained deeply in love with him. And she struggled in the close-knit community of rural Irwin County, Georgia, to find a way to deal with her feelings of rejection and humiliation without vilifying her former boyfriend

Next Page

Previous Page

See Full Coverage of Tara Grinstead Case

Contact Seamus McGraw at seamusm@ptd.net

For more daily crime news