“But,” Melissa interjects, “what will you do for work?”
“Why?” Fabian tries to joke. “Are you hiring?”
“Don’t even ask,” Pablo says. “They don’t believe in handouts.”
The table erupts, and Pablo gives Lore a quick, conspiratorial glance that tells her he threw everyone into a tizzy on purpose to shift attention from Lore and Fabian. She smiles at him gratefully as Beto and Melissa raise indignant voices, Lisa issues mortified apologies, and Papi turns a solemn, suffering gaze to his plate. Marta gives Lore’s back a quick rub.
If she had known this would be their last Thanksgiving together, maybe Lore wouldn’t have excused herself from the table. Wouldn’t have gone into the empty living room and taken Andres’s last three letters from her purse, lifted the corner floorboard under the carpet, and settled them on top of the rest. Maybe, after lunch, she would have gone to the ranch with Papi, let him teach her something involving tools and oil in the muted winter sun. Maybe she would have talked with Mami until darkness fell, memorizing the cadence of her voice. Maybe she never would have let go of Fabian’s hand.
Because next year at this time, everything will be different. They will be splintered and separated. Papi dead. Mami and Lore’s siblings no longer speaking to her. The cuates living with Marta. Fabian in prison for murder.
But she doesn’t know that. She’s only thinking of how it’s all going to work with Fabian home. She wishes she could read Andres’s most recent letter one more time before sealing it away: Querida Lore, he had written, our new home is waiting for you.
Cassie, 2017
Ruthless. The word still rang through me, louder and more blaring each time it crossed my mind. Duke may have been talking about the book, but what he had seen was the part of me capable of leaving Andrew behind. The part of me that could focus with single-minded intensity on one outcome, ignoring its impact on everyone but me.
He was right about one thing, though—my father might not ever get sober. We might have to make good on my hasty threat to bring Andrew here, in which case my career mattered. It mattered anyway. If caring about that made me ruthless, then so be it.
I reread the acknowledgments on all my recent favorite crime books, checked out a two-year-old edition of Writer’s Market from the Austin Public Library, scoured Manuscript Wishlist and Twitter, and created a spreadsheet of twenty agents. In early November, I sent out my proposal to my top ten.
I knew I might be waiting months for even form rejections. Still, I pored over my mail tracker, refreshed, refreshed, refreshed. And only a few days later, Deborah Maddox—who had sold four of the six biggest true crime titles in the last five years—emailed me back. Disbelieving, I stared at the subject line: Offer of Representation. “Oh my God!” I laughed, alone in our living room, and opened the email with shaking hands.
For one disorienting sliver of a second, I wanted to call my mother. Her absence hit me like a fist, grief made new all over again. I thought about calling Duke or going to the food truck to tell him in person, but I didn’t want to see that spark of judgment in his eyes. I didn’t want anything to take away from the joy I felt in this moment. The feeling, for the first time in my life, that I was getting close to everything I ever wanted.
I emailed Deborah back, and we set up a call for that afternoon.
“The fact that she’s a woman!” Deborah said. Her voice was warm and broad, as if she’d moved to New York from the Midwest. “Now, there’s a story we haven’t heard before.”
“I know! Exactly!” Her validation was like mainlining a drug. “I couldn’t not pursue it!”
For the next half hour, we talked about the proposal, my interviews with Lore, how Deborah saw the book fitting into the market. “Any questions for me?” she asked.
I hesitated, thinking of Duke’s reaction when I’d told him I thought Lore was involved in the murder. I didn’t want Deborah to think I was a kook, a conspiracy theorist, or that I was suddenly pivoting from the kind of story I’d claimed to want to tell, about the secret lives inside women’s hearts, how those lives can spin out into violence. But I couldn’t ignore the questions I had—Andres’s sudden, inexplicable trip to Laredo, the gap in Lore’s alibi, my suspicion that Andres’s note came with contact information, the possibility that Andres was “bothering” Lore. I ended with Sergio’s revelation:
“Lore regularly carried a gun for self-defense. It may or may not have been the .22. That’s not mentioned anywhere in the reports.”
The line went quiet. I bit my lower lip hard.
“Well,” Deborah finally said. “That could take an interesting turn. But we have to be sure before including any of this in the proposal.”
I exhaled, dizzied by her use of the word we. I was part of a team now. “Absolutely. Yes.”
“Keep digging,” Deborah said. “And make sure you’re keeping records of your process. Take photos of inconsistencies in the reports, maybe start keeping a journal, that sort of thing. We could use those artifacts later.”
“Sure,” I said, still so high on we that I almost didn’t notice the shift in her tone: she was excited.
A tinny chime of misgiving rang through me. Maybe I should have waited before sharing my suspicions with her. Get a grip on the whole picture before showing part of it to someone else, let alone a high-powered agent with the experience to set something big in motion. I could lose control of it this way.
“Let me know right away if you have any new developments,” Deborah said.
Solemnly, I promised I would.
The next night, Andrew called. My father was in the hospital. He’d been in a car accident.
Part III
Lore, 1985?1986
With Fabian now back at home, Lore has to stay late at the bank or invent some desperate excuse to talk to Andres in the evenings. Once, with a whispered “Discúlpame,” she even pours half a gallon of milk down the sink so she can say they need more. Then she huddles at the pay phone outside the Maverick, counting the people putting gas in their cars, hoping not to see anyone she knows. When Andres is due to call her at “home,” she races to the pay phone outside the bank. His letters go to a PO box she opened early in that first year, saying identity theft was becoming a major concern in this country. The home address she gave him is for the bank condo where they spent that one weekend last year, cooped up during Lore’s sudden bout of “food poisoning.”
The first time she returns to DF after the temblor is in December. Fabian and the cuates drive her to San Antonio first thing in the morning. Her flight is that afternoon, and Fabian thought they could walk along the River Walk or La Villita together. It’s free and different, and maybe it’ll help get Gabriel out of his funk.
“What’s happening with him?” Fabian asked Lore recently, as she cleaned up after dinner. “How long has he been like this?”
Gabriel’s C grades, his short temper, the fact that he and Mateo didn’t seem as close lately—Lore felt defensive, as if she’d let something slip in Fabian’s absence. She stacked the dishes in the drying rack harder than necessary. “Just teenage stuff. I’m sure it’ll be better now that you’re home.”
Fabian nodded, and Lore felt guilty at how easily she turned the implication on him.
At the gate, she kisses Fabian and remembers how joyfully she fell into his arms when she last returned from DF. She’s been feeling claustrophobic lately, ready to shrug off this part of her life for a few days. Before leaving, she gives Fabian the number to a random hotel, knowing he won’t spare the expense to call her but having a lie ready just in case: they’d double-booked her room, so she checked in somewhere else. Mentiras, mentiras, mentiras. Exhausting but necessary. For how long can she keep this up?