“What is it?” Lore asks.
“Austin.” He risks a glance at her, and she understands why he was hiding his eyes: for the first time in months, they’re lit with possibility. “Things are still moving up there. Homes are being built. I could go, meet with builders, form some relationships. Maybe even open a new location.”
Heat smolders in Lore’s chest. “Let me get this straight. Hiring an ad person is ridiculous, but you want to open a second location? Four hours away?”
Fabian turns back to the paper in his hands, as if he’s suddenly too busy for her. “I don’t know yet. But if there’s business up there, then that’s where I should be.”
“And me?” Lore gestures to the open office door. “And the cuates?”
“Like I said,” Fabian says, “I didn’t think you’d like it.”
“Well, of course I don’t like it!” Lore hisses. She closes the door, much more gently than she wants. Olga doesn’t need to hear their business. “I work full-time. And I’m supposed to take care of the cuates on my own for—how long, exactly?”
Fabian doesn’t flinch. “Months, at least. I’d come down whenever I could. You have our parents, not to mention your sister. You know she and Sergio love spending time with the cuates.”
“That’s not fair.”
“What?”
Lore shakes her head, stung that after all this time, he still doesn’t realize. “You think after trying for so long, Marta wants to help raise someone else’s kids?”
“Ay!” Fabian shoves a pencil into a sharpener, the whine filling the room. “‘Help raise,’ that’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”
“If you’re gone for months? Not really! And where will you even stay?” She hates how already, she’s using will and not would, taking his proposition from the conditional to the inevitable.
“You remember Joseph Guerra?” he asks. “From Martin? He has a guest room I can use.”
“You’ve already talked to him,” Lore says.
Fabian nods.
“Fabian,” Lore starts, but she doesn’t know how to finish. “What about the store?”
“Well . . .” Fabian meets her eyes, and she understands. In the early days, she came to the store every day after working the teller line. While the boys careened around playing hide-and-seek behind doors and gates, Fabian taught Lore how to take inventory, run payroll, process payments, and balance the general ledger. If anything happens to me, he said seriously, I don’t want anyone taking advantage of you. He was always thinking ahead.
“I’m not asking for much,” Fabian says. “Come in on Fridays, run payroll. Saturday mornings, go over the general ledger. Stop in every once in a while, so Olga and the guys know there’s still someone in charge. That’s it.”
Heat spreads in Lore’s chest like blood from a wound. “Oh, that’s it! Sure, just take over everything involved in caring for this family!”
His eyes flash, but his voice is calm. “We’re supposed to be partners. Remember?”
Lore glares at him. She used to take such pride in that word, in the image of them linked arm in arm, stronger together than apart. But Fabian gone for months—that doesn’t feel like partnership. It feels like abandonment.
“Fabian, what about—” She’s scrambling and she knows it. “Diversifying? What else could we sell here that people already need?”
“All anyone here needs is work,” Fabian snaps. “We’re a bunch of starving dogs circling each other, wondering who will take the first bite.”
Lore wants to say now he’s the one being dramatic. Then she thinks of the warehouses the bank has leased, one after the other filling up with vehicles and mobile homes, whole cities on wheels locked away. She knows he’s right and that this whole “discussion” has been a farce. His mind was made up before she even walked into his office.
She picks up her purse from the chair. “When do you leave?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Tomorrow.”
Cassie, 2017
For every story told out loud, there is the story we only tell ourselves. And behind that—somewhere, often out of reach—is the truth. The trick is telling them apart. And with Lore, that was going to take time.
I had planned to drive home to Austin on Saturday, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to spend at least half of Sunday with her, too. After leaving her house on Saturday night, I used my emergency credit card to check back in to the Hotel Botanica.
I stayed up until nearly 3 A.M. transcribing as much of our interview as possible. Afterward, when I still couldn’t sleep, I pulled out Fabian’s case file. I’d promised Lore I wouldn’t ask about the murder. But after meeting her, it seemed even more tragic—and intriguing—that Andres had been killed as a result of her minute decisions, all her seemingly harmless justifications. Because people aren’t just murdered in moments; they’re murdered in all the moments leading up to that final act. That’s what makes true crime so addictive. Godlike, you’re allowed to see the intricate chain of events leading to the end of someone’s life. You realize that everything you do, every decision you make, might bring you, too, closer to the abyss. Briefly, your own life feels precious.
As I paged through the file, three things still bothered me: the unknown reason for Andres’s visit, the unrecovered note he left—supposedly without contact information—and Lore alibiing Fabian. I wondered again if she could have initially thought he was innocent. In their life together, had he ever given her reason to suspect he could be violent? So far, it didn’t seem that way.
There was something else, too. Laredo was small. If Lore had left the bank downtown around 5:15, as she’d stated and security footage had confirmed, she would have been home no more than fifteen minutes later. Her next public sighting was at 6:30, buying Mateo and Gabriel Frosties at Wendy’s. That, in itself, seemed strange to me—taking her kids out on a carefree outing after learning Andres was in town, knowing her double life could be on the verge of collapsing. Or maybe that’s why she’d done it—to get them out of the house, in case Andres rang the bell. (She wouldn’t know he’d already confronted Fabian.) The twins had been playing basketball at a nearby park with their friends Rudolfo Hinojosa and Eduardo Canales until six; it would have taken them maybe ten minutes to walk home afterward. That meant, technically, there was a gap in Lore’s alibi between, say, 5:15 and 6:15.
If Andres had told Lore where he was staying, it would have taken her ten minutes to reach the motel, then another fifteen to get home, leaving her with a maximum of thirty-five minutes with Andres. Significant time, but time that didn’t matter when applied to his murder, since she was on the phone with her sister during his time of death and Fabian had left damning evidence behind. But, assuming I wasn’t way off base, why would she have lied about seeing him?
How had everything come to that terrible end?
Morning light was sneaking between the venetian blinds when Duke called on Sunday.
“Hmm?” I answered, face half buried in the pillow.
Duke laughed. “Good morning to you, too. Sorry, I know it’s early. Just wanted to wish you luck today.”
I smiled, turned onto my back. There was a water stain on the ceiling, a murky outline of a hole that had since been patched. “It’s okay. My alarm would’ve gone off soon. I want to review my notes from yesterday.”
There was a pause. I realized Duke had been hoping for something else.
“And it’s good to hear your voice,” I added. He’d been at the food truck when I called last night, and our conversation lasted less than a minute.
He laughed. “Yours too. So—what’s she like?”