“Lore,” I said. “You told me Andres shoved you—that you were scared for the life of your baby. You used everything you knew about my family history to create a situation you knew I’d be sympathetic toward—didn’t you?”
For once, she had the decency to look guilty. “It’s your instinct to see women as victims,” she said. “I don’t blame you, with your mom, with the work you do. Besides, it could have happened that way if he were a different kind of man. And I can say that,” she added, fervently. “I can say, looking back, I don’t think he would have hurt me. I’ll say I panicked after he pushed me. That part did happen. Please, Cassie. Let me do this. Don’t you think I deserve to pay for everything?”
A few months ago, I might have said yes. But she’d lost two men she’d loved. Her sons had moved away from her. Her father had died. Her mother had disowned her, dying before they could reconcile. Lore had spent the last thirty years in the ashes of what she’d destroyed. More importantly—she hadn’t killed Andres. There was nothing to consider here.
“I have an obligation to the truth, Lore,” I said. “I can’t ignore Mateo’s confession. I can’t let Fabian stay in prison. How can you? How can all of you allow a man you claim to love rot behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit?”
“Rot?” Lore laughed. “Do you know how many men he’s helped get their GEDs? How many he’s taught English? He’ll be done soon. You would expose everything and make his sacrifice worthless? For what? Who wins, besides you?”
I flinched.
“Go talk to Fabian,” Lore said. “Then call me.”
I drove north into a cold front, the temperature plummeting from eighty to fifty in two hours. The sky was moon gray, scudded with altostratus clouds. My mother had described this kind of sky as layered like a cake, so that if you took an imaginary knife to it, it would spill either rain or snow, depending on the temperature.
I’d had so little time to idolize my mother, to see her as a keeper of knowledge and wonder, before I flattened her into one pathetic thing, no longer worthy of my love or curiosity. She was a mother, yes, and as a mother she had failed me in profound ways, but only now could I imagine starting to allow in other memories, other parts of her. I might never understand why she’d stayed with a man who hit her—except that last night, at 3 A.M., I’d called my father and he’d answered and he’d listened, the way Penelope said Andres had listened to her, and I could imagine maybe, if he kept going to meetings, if he stayed sober, maybe one day I could see him as more than his failures, too, the way my mother must have seen him, the way Lore and Fabian and Gabriel and Mateo were able to see each other.
Whoever writes the history has the power, my mother said.
What I wrote about these crimes—these people—would define two families. It would claim sovereignty over their memories. It was the only time in my life I’d felt powerful.
After a tedious sign-in process, I was led to the prison visitation area, a long, narrow room lined with plastic chairs facing a glass partition. The room smelled like body odor and burning, like the heater had kicked on too strong. As I sat down, I had to try not to overhear the one-sided updates about lawyers and Christmas plans.
Fabian was already waiting. At first glance, in his white prison uniform and wire-rimmed glasses, he looked like an old man in pajamas. The dark hair I’d seen in newspaper photos had faded to steel gray, shaved close to his head. His face was raked with deep lines, like freshly tilled soil. But his forearms twitched with a younger man’s ropy muscle, and his dark stare, the potency of his dislike, reminded me of Gabriel.
“Thanks for agreeing to see me,” I said into the phone.
He raised his eyebrows, a silent Get on with it.
“Okay then.” I took a breath. “Fabian, I know what happened that night. To Andres.”
“Congratulations.” His voice was uncannily similar to the twins’. “So does everyone else.”
“Have you spoken to Lore today?” I asked.
He hesitated. “No.”
Before I could change my mind, I lowered the zipper of my sweater. Fabian’s eyes widened.
“Is that . . . ?” he asked.
“Yes.”
There was a clatter beside me as an elderly woman struggled to set the phone back on its base. She pulled a crumpled tissue from her pocket, wiped her eyes. Blew a kiss at the window.
“Do you understand?” I asked.
Fabian’s eyes searched mine. “No.”
“You should probably call her.”
For a moment, he didn’t say anything. Then he shook his head. “Pinche Lore.”
“She is a force,” I said wryly, and he laughed, his shoulders finally relaxing a little.
“That night,” he said, quiet, like a gift, “I was standing at the river. It was dark. I could see every star. And you know how I felt?”
I leaned forward. I hadn’t expected anything new from him. “How?”
“Proud.” Fabian tapped his chest with a fist. “I’d done nothing but fail my family for years, but that night—that night I saved them. Do you understand?”
I heard Lore’s voice in my mind: You would expose everything and make his sacrifice worthless?
Lore had given me the number of Fabian’s former parole attorney. After twenty years of model behavior, Fabian had allegedly been in a fight the day before his second hearing. He’d apparently been surly and uncooperative during the hearing itself, and after parole was denied, he’d never requested it again. “You’d be surprised how often that happens,” the lawyer said. “They figure they’ll just be denied, don’t want to go through the heartache. Some people even think their outcome will be better in prison than out. Who knows? Maybe Mr. Rivera found some kind of purpose in there.”
I wondered how Fabian would feel when he found out it was Mateo, not Gabriel, whose mistake had placed him here; whether it would even matter. But it wouldn’t be me who told him.
Fabian pressed his hand to the glass, and I touched the swirl of his fingerprints, leaving my own behind.
“The print you left in the room,” I said. “Was it really an accident?”
It had been bothering me, how meticulous Fabian had been about cleaning everything else, everything but this. Almost as if he’d wanted to get caught, or at least give the police a solid reason to turn away from anyone else in his family.
Fabian’s dark eyes crinkled in the corners. “Of course it was.”
I shook my head. “You’re a good man, Fabian. A good father. But you should apply for parole again.” I thought about what to say next, what it would mean for all of us. “You’re not doing them any good in here anymore.”
Fabian’s throat moved as he swallowed, and he nodded, just once. “Thank you.”
“Take care,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”
My phone rang as I merged back onto I-35: Deborah. Her third call today. She’d emailed me with the subject line: Confession???
Your only job, she’d told me, is to find out the truth. Whatever it is, that’s what you’ll write.
But her subject line said it all. I knew the truth she was hoping for—the “highly marketable” version. I understood. A part of me, diminished if still alive, scrabbling, clung to the same idea. I could see that version of my future, the one I always wanted, so clearly.
I pressed my thumb into the tip of Lore’s locket.
Maybe there was an alternative.
The Austin skyline came into view as dusk was settling. My father had texted me earlier: If you don’t have other plans, you can always come home for Christmas. I think Andrew is ready.
I glanced at the clock. If I drove straight through, I’d be there by midnight.
Epilogue
Lore, Now