More Than You'll Ever Know

The novel alternates between two timelines and two narrators: Cassie Bowman, a struggling true crime blogger in 2017 Austin, Texas, and Dolores "Lore" Rivera, a Laredo banker whose double life in the 1980s ended in murder. Their stories converge as Cassie investigates the crime and Lore agrees to tell her side, each woman forced to confront the secrets shaping her life.

In 2017, Cassie works part-time for a television network's true crime blog at thirteen dollars an hour. Her obsession with crime traces back to childhood: her father was an abusive alcoholic who beat her mother, and Friday nights watching Dateline together became both an escape and an education in violence. When Cassie discovers a newspaper article about Lore, a woman secretly married to two men simultaneously, she senses a career-making story. One husband, Fabian Rivera, was convicted of murdering the other, Andres Russo. The article features two family photos of Lore, one with Fabian and their twin sons, Gabriel and Mateo, and another with Andres and his children, Penelope and Carlos. It includes a quote from Penelope calling Lore a monster. Cassie's fiancé, Duke Murphy, a food truck owner from a wholesome dairy farm family, finds her fixation macabre, but she researches Lore in secret.

The 1983 timeline introduces Lore as a thirty-two-year-old international banking officer traveling alone to Mexico City for a client's wedding. Her husband, Fabian, is struggling with the peso devaluation threatening his ironwork business. At the reception, Lore meets Andres Russo, a charming Argentinean philosophy professor. When he assumes she is single, Lore does not correct him, and they spend the night dancing, riding his motorcycle to Chapultepec Park, and kissing beneath ancient trees. Though Lore stops things from going further, the encounter marks a turning point.

Back in 2017, Cassie obtains Fabian's homicide case file from retired Detective Ben Cortez and learns key details: Andres was found shot at the Hotel Botanica on August 2, 1986; a motel clerk identified Fabian leaving around 10 P.M.; and the bullet matched ammunition from the Rivera home. Cassie drives to Lore's house, which occupies the site of the former Hotel Botanica where the murder occurred, and impulsively pitches the idea of a book, revealing her own father's abuse to establish trust. Lore refuses but later agrees under one condition: she will not discuss the day Andres died.

During their interviews, Lore shares her mother's "eighty-twenty rule," the idea that no single person can fulfill every need and that the remaining twenty percent must be found elsewhere. This philosophy becomes a framework for understanding Lore's choices. In the 1980s timeline, Andres tracks down Lore's number at the bank, and their phone conversations deepen into emotional intimacy. When Fabian moves to Austin for work, Lore's relationship with Andres escalates. A business trip brings her back to Mexico City, where they sleep together for the first time. Lore meets Andres's children and falls in love with them too. On Día de los Muertos in 1984, Andres proposes; Lore declines but cannot imagine life without him. She begins to theorize that her relationships illuminate different parts of herself, making her a better wife and mother in each life.

On September 19, 1985, a massive earthquake devastates Mexico City. Lore and Andres barely escape his collapsing apartment. Five days later, shaken by the nearness of death, they marry in an improvised ceremony at a botanical garden and complete the legal process. Lore is now married to two men simultaneously.

In 2017, Cassie's investigation widens. She learns from Lore's colleague Oscar Martinez that Andres visited the bank looking for Lore and left an envelope. She identifies a gap in Lore's alibi on the murder day and learns from Lore's brother-in-law, Sergio Muñoz, that Fabian had bought Lore a gun. Cassie's personal life fractures in parallel: her brother Andrew reveals their father is drinking again, and during a Thanksgiving visit, Cassie confronts her father about his abuse for the first time. He reveals that on Cassie's ninth birthday, the blow was aimed at her and her mother stepped in to protect her. Andrew, devastated, refuses to leave with Cassie. Meanwhile, Carlos Russo calls to reveal Lore was pregnant and that he found the pregnancy test the day before Andres flew to Laredo, likely prompting the trip.

In 1986, Lore's double life reaches its breaking point. Experiencing cramping and bleeding, she visits her doctor, Dr. Sosa, who diagnoses a threatened miscarriage. She returns to the bank, where Oscar gives her Andres's envelope. At the Hotel Botanica, Andres confronts her: He had visited the bank and discovered her other life, and Carlos's discovery of the pregnancy test spurred his trip to Laredo. Andres shoves Lore and tells her to leave. She drives aimlessly in a rainstorm, then goes home, where she miscarries.

Cassie breaks off her engagement with Duke, realizing their relationship lacks the honesty she has come to value. She arrives in Laredo for dinner with the full Rivera family. Afterward, Cassie confronts Lore about the pregnancy, and Lore delivers a false confession, claiming she shot Andres in self-defense to protect her unborn child.

At the Hotel Botanica, Cassie realizes the confession cannot be true: If Lore's purse had spilled at the bank in front of Oscar, he would have seen the gun. Reexamining the evidence, she notices that someone moved Fabian's truck while Fabian was at a ranch with Sergio and Lore was at a Wendy's. The twins were fifteen and learning to drive; their friends had alibied them at a basketball park, but a storm made outdoor play unlikely. Cassie concludes that one of the twins killed Andres and that both parents have spent thirty years protecting their son.

Mateo arrives at Cassie's hotel room to return her forgotten phone and confesses. He had left the basketball park early after a fight with Gabriel, was home when Andres confronted Fabian, and overheard everything. He took Fabian's truck and the family's .22 caliber pistol to the hotel. Seeing Lore leave the room in distress, he believed Andres had hurt her. When Andres stepped toward him, Mateo shot him. Gabriel took the blame because he felt responsible for Mateo leaving the park. Fabian, learning the truth that night, cleaned the hotel room, retrieved a locket Lore had dropped, and accepted a plea deal to protect his fifteen-year-old son.

The next morning, Lore takes Cassie to her parents' empty house and reveals a cache hidden beneath a floorboard: Andres's letters, a wedding photo, and the bloodstained locket. She urges Cassie to use the false confession for the book. Cassie refuses. At the prison, Fabian tells Cassie that after cleaning the hotel room, standing at the Rio Grande, he felt proud for the first time in years because he had saved his family. Cassie urges him to apply for parole.

In the epilogue, Lore reflects on the book Cassie ultimately wrote: a narrative told from close to Lore's perspective that ends the night of the murder with Lore's hand on the doorknob, unaware of what has happened. The published book does not reveal Mateo's confession. Instead, it presents the official version of events. Lore acknowledges that even the story she told Cassie contained small alterations of memory and reflects that truth itself is malleable, shaped and reshaped by the act of remembering.