I followed her, resigned to an excruciating few minutes of conversation, during which she’d spar and parry, doling out information in bits and pieces if she cooperated at all.
But I’d misjudged the woman. As luck would have it, this wasn’t Poppy’s mother. This was her stepmother, steeped in opinions about the girl she couldn’t wait to share.
10
THE TAPE
May 1979
Lauren McCabe sat at her desk and wrote a check for twenty-six thousand dollars. It was Friday and the contractor wanted to pay his subs, not to mention himself. She noticed that the builder and his merry band of underlings came to work when it suited them. Some days they came late and some days they didn’t show up at all, but when they wanted a check she was expected to pony up right that minute. There was plenty of money in the checking account, but she flinched watching thousands going out the window, week after week. She tore the check from the register and crossed the hall to the front door, which was standing open. The contractor stood on the porch, hands in his pockets, probably hoping to make small talk as he accepted the check. Lauren was having none of it. Her relationship with the man was cordial, but she wasn’t in the mood to feign friendliness. “Have a good weekend,” she said briskly.
“You, too. And thanks,” he said, holding up the check.
She closed the front door without bothering to respond.
The McCabes had owned the house for a year and were in the thick of the remodeling process. She had anticipated the work being finished by now, but there seemed to be no end to it. The contractor was over budget. His bid was supposed to be firm, but he kept running into stumbling blocks. Take the matter of the master bedroom, which had looked fine at first sight. The Pruitts, from whom they bought the house, had added the new master suite, which included his-and-her bathrooms, two spacious walk-in closets, a steam room, and an exercise room. But when the contractor started work on the adjacent wing, where the kitchen walls were coming down, he discovered that the foundation was cracked; probably earthquake damage that had gone undetected until now. He said the Pruitts couldn’t have known about it because the cracks wouldn’t have come to light at all if the McCabes hadn’t tampered with the basic footprint. She and Hollis had discussed it at length and neither could see a way around repairs to the foundation.
The whole of it made her all the more anxious because she and Hollis weren’t yet comfortable with extravagance. Early in their married life, they’d been preoccupied with keeping track of pennies so the dollars wouldn’t catch them by surprise. It was only after Hollis had gone to work for Tigg Montgomery that the money started rolling in. After years in the banking industry, Hollis had been tapped to oversee the wealth management arm of Tigg’s investment firm, a dream job from his perspective. At first Lauren had reveled in the sense of safety after years of feeling financially insecure. In the past two years, his salary had soared and there were generous year-end bonuses as well. They had to do something with all the money and at least real estate was tangible. Tigg encouraged them to celebrate their good fortune. He said she and Hollis had limited their options; their horizons had shrunk in exact proportion to their scrimping mentality. He said it was time to “expand and embrace,” time to let abundance into their lives and enjoy the many perks of Hollis’s success.
To Lauren, having been poor all her life, this newfound wealth still felt impermanent. What came so easily could just as easily be taken away. Gradually, she’d come to believe in their good fortune. Hollis had hitched his wagon to a star. Tigg was a man who seemed to see into the future. He anticipated market trends. He foresaw shifts in the economy that he manipulated to his own gain. The better he did, the more appealing his company became. Friends and acquaintances were so eager to benefit from his financial savvy that Tigg had reached the point where he was turning people away, which only increased the clamor for his investment savvy.
Tigg himself lived modestly and she admired that about him. He was still in the same house in Colgate he’d bought the first year he and Joan were married. True, he had rented a large office complex downtown, but the space wasn’t pretentious. He and Joan had divorced. He’d married a second time and when that didn’t work out, he’d married again. Lauren had liked the first two wives, but she could barely tolerate the third, despite talk of the third time being the charm. His latest—Maisie—was a raven-haired, blue-eyed twenty-eight-year-old, who’d made a point of involving herself in numerous feel-good causes around town. She was stylish, loved travel, adorned herself in designer clothes and expensive jewelry. She had no children, so she had a gorgeous figure on top of everything else.
Of course, the McCabes and Montgomerys spent inordinate amounts of time in one another’s company, even going so far as to vacation together. Tigg was Hollis’s boss and it was important to him that the two couples remain close. On the many occasions when Lauren and Maisie entertained back and forth, Maisie always managed to do it better. Lauren had taken note of that. Maisie had a flair for simple but elegant dinner parties, and she harbored perhaps a wee, nearly spiteful sense of competition. Hollis made sure no whisper of distaste ever escaped Lauren’s lips. The subject of Maisie and Tigg was sacrosanct and Lauren had learned to keep any negative comments to herself.