“I was eighteen.”
We were quiet, and I remembered how Lore and I had connected in this same way during our first interview. Penelope wouldn’t like that they had this in common.
“What was he like, your father?” I asked again. “Do any stories about him come to mind?”
“Memories change over the years, don’t they?” Penelope murmured. “Become less specific. Let’s see. After he and my mother divorced, he told me the most important thing in a relationship is mutual respect. He said once respect is lost it’s gone for good, and then—” Penelope laughed. “He panicked and said, ‘I’m not using respect as code for virginity!’”
I laughed along with Penelope.
“We were both so embarrassed. But then he turned serious again. He said I would always recognize the lack or loss of respect by the feeling in the pit of my stomach. He said if I ever got that feeling, I could call him, day or night.”
“Did you?” I asked.
“Luis was a hot-blooded sixteen-year-old Mexican boy,” Penelope said, with another easy laugh. “I got the feeling exactly two weeks later, when a friend told me she’d seen him making out with someone else at a party.”
I held the phone between my ear and shoulder as I took notes. “And did you call your dad?”
“I did. In the middle of the night, sobbing. After he figured out that I was safe, he just let me talk. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t give advice. He listened. He made me feel like it was important. Like I was important.”
An ache spread through me like a stain, brutal and unforgiving.
“He sounds like a great father,” I said.
“Not at the start, apparently,” Penelope said. “That’s how he lost my mother’s respect. But for all the years I can remember—yes, he was.”
I felt the small give of opportunity. “Did your parents argue?”
Penelope seemed to think about this. “I’m sure they did. But what we saw was worse, somehow. They were so civil to each other. Like strangers. Until the end, when— Well, anyway. I don’t want to air my mother’s dirty laundry, and she and Pedro have been married for more than thirty years now, so.”
Lore had told me about Rosana’s affair. A history of betrayal she knew would make it even more painful for Andres if he ever found out about Fabian.
“Can we talk about Lore?” I asked Penelope. “The Laredo Morning Times piece said you liked her immediately. Is that true?”
Penelope sighed. “Yes. Carlos and I both did. We wanted to like her. We worried about our dad being lonely when we stayed with Mom and Pedro. I remember he leaned in to kiss her that first day, and she turned her head so that it landed on her cheek, and she smiled at me as if . . . trying to include me in the moment. I felt her concern for my feelings.” Penelope sounded strained, stiff, the challenge of parsing out the good in someone she’d spent years despising.
“In the article, you said she used you and threw you away like trash.” The quote had been one of the reasons Lore agreed to talk to me. To make herself understood. “The piece spent a lot of time trying to diagnose her in some way—in your opinion as a psychologist, do you think she was a narcissist or a psychopath? They share characteristics, don’t they?”
“Yes,” Penelope said, her tone turning academic. “Grandiose sense of self, an entitlement that justifies, among other behaviors, pathological lying. Inability to feel remorse, shame, or guilt. You know,” she said, interrupting herself, “other than my father’s death, that’s what hurt more than anything. We just never heard from her again.” Even now, Penelope sounded puzzled, wounded. “She didn’t come to his funeral, of course. But she never called us, never wrote. Never apologized.”
That was why Penelope was talking to me. Thirty years later, she was still a hurt child who wanted an explanation.
“Actually,” I said, “she did.”
“Excuse me?”
“She wrote to you, supposedly. Multiple times. You never received those letters?”
“I . . .” Penelope trailed off. “No. We didn’t.”
“Could they have been intercepted? Maybe your mother saw them first if she checked the mail?”
The silence was fraught. “Yes, I . . . maybe.” She trailed off. “Listen. I assume you’ve tried to reach my brother?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised by the turn in conversation. “I’ve left him a few Facebook messages, but no response. Do you have a good phone number for him?”
Penelope gave it to me. “He had some tough years, just like I did after—you know, drugs and alcohol. Only he never quite pulled out of them.” She hesitated. “If you talk to him, tell him my offer still stands.”
“Of course,” I said, wondering what the offer was. Rehab?
The conversation was winding down. I could feel her emotional reserves faltering. I needed to bring us to Andres’s death. “Penelope, was there a specific reason your father went up to Laredo that weekend?”
She quieted. “The police asked that at the time. I wish I knew. We’d been staying with him that week. We were still supposed to be there over the weekend. But then suddenly he said he was going to see Lore, and we went back to my mom’s.”
A deep, discordant chime rang through me: something, a definitive something, had prompted the trip.
“So he and Lore were still together at the time?” I asked carefully. “You didn’t get the sense they’d broken up recently?”
“No,” Penelope said. “Why?”
“Just an angle I’m exploring.” I’d read through my notes from the call with Oscar so many times I’d memorized his words, including Lore’s alleged claim that Andres was “bothering” her. If that was true, the only way I could see it making sense was if she’d tried to end their relationship and he hadn’t taken it well. “There wasn’t the slightest hint of conflict between them?” I asked.
“No.” Her voice took on a hard, protective layer. “Why? What is she saying?”
“Like I said, it’s an angle I’m exploring.”
“Exploring for what?” Penelope’s fury was laced with tears. “Hasn’t she done enough? Now she’s trying to damage my father’s name?”
“I just needed to be sure,” I said.
But was I? If I’d been asked, I probably would have defended my father just like this. We talk about needing to believe women when they come forward about abuse—but what are we supposed to do when they deny it?
“Don’t forget,” Penelope said, “Lore is a very good liar.”
How could I forget? For months, Lore and I had been demanding honesty from each other, and here I was, investigating the day I’d promised her the book would not revolve around. It would be naive to assume Lore had never lied to me, no matter how intimate our conversations often felt. The question was—what had she lied about?
Lore, 1985