Literature / More Than You'll Ever Know

More Than You'll Ever Know is a 2022 debut novel by Katie Gutierrez.

At its center is a Gender-Inverted Trope of Secret Other Family. Between 1983 and 1986, Dolores "Lore" had one family in Laredo, Texas, US — first husband Fabian Rivera and their twin sons Gabriel and Mateo — and another in Mexico City — second husband Andres Russo, sometimes accompanied by stepchildren Penelope and Carlitos. And then in early August 1986, Andres was shot and killed, and Fabian convicted of his murder.

In 2017, True Crime journalist Cassie Bowman becomes interested in the story, and begins interviewing as many involved parties as she can.

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Tropes

• The '80s: The way Lore's double life goes down is very shaped by the events of the time—the peso devaluation, and the Mexico City earthquake of 1985.
• Amateur Sleuth: Cassie is a journalist by trade, and is supposedly writing a story about the psychological aspects of Lore Living a Double Life. But — as both Cassie and the audience know from the very beginning — this affair ends with Andres being shot, placing a murder mystery at the heart of the story. Cassie wants to figure that out too.
• Arc Words: "The constantly sinking land." Mexico City is built on the lake bed of Lake Texcoco, and it's not very geologically stable. Lore and Andres's relationship is built both on Mexico City, and on a shaky foundation.
• Best Friends-in-Law: Fabian and Sergio are married to sisters Lore and Marta. Cassie is surprised to learn they're also childhood friends.
• Blame the Paramour: The case as initially presented — Fabian killing Andres — hinges on Fabian being angrier at Andres than Lore. From the beginning, Cassie thinks that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
  Cassie: Let's say I did [what Lore did], though. And you found out like Fabian did. Who would you be angrier at—me or the other guy, who clearly didn't know about you, either?
  Duke: […] You. But maybe it would be easier to take it out on him. Someone I didn't love. You know?
• Business Trip Adultery: Lore is in international banking. For her Texas bank, located right on the US-Mexico border, this means lots of trips back and forth. Lore's relationship with Andres begins as a flirtation one night far from home. The whole scenario is enabled because both men know her job requires so much travel between the two places, so they don't bat an eye at it.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Invoked when Lore lies to Andres and claims her parents are dead in order to avoid Meet the In-Laws.
• Corpse Temperature Tampering: Andres's time of death is determined by body temperature as between 9pm and midnight. That method was not designed for Texas weather in August, on a day with record-breaking 117 degree heat.
• Early Personality Signs: 12-year-old Mateo spontaneously becomes vegetarian after learning about the meat processing industry. The adults in his family think this is Vegetarian for a Day, a phase he will soon outgrow and forget. Mateo grows up to be Dr Rivera, Kindly Vet, and still a vegetarian.
  Maggie: He's so good with the animals. Even the real scaredy-cats that shiver and shed all over the place end up loving him.
• Emasculated Cuckold: Inverted Trope. Multiple male Bit Characters throughout the story express understanding and sympathy for Fabian, arrested for killing his wife's other man.
• Exact Words: Lore lies extensively, and to make this palatable to herself, she sticks to lies of omission and technically true lies when she can.
  Cassie's narration: Lore had a way of doing this, of making even the lies truthful. She had done it with Andres and Fabian, giving them something real even through her deceit. She'd done it with me, too.
• Happily Married: Played with in regards to Lore and Fabian's marriage. Lore is happy with her husband, and rather less happy with her experience of marriage. This is not a shortcoming on Fabian's part — it's just the banality of everyday life and parenting, somewhat exacerbated by the stresses of the economic downturn. Lore loves Fabian and doesn't want to leave him. She doesn't want to trade him for another man (although she occasionally wants to trade him for the newlywed version of himself). She just wants a temporary escape from this life from time to time.
  Cassie narrating: Lore was painting a vivid picture of her marriage to Fabian, one of love and also loneliness.
• History Repeats: Lore tells Cassie about the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. Then the 2017 Mexico City earthquake hits. In her initial shock, she says that it's her fault — by talking about it she has reanimated it, breathed new life into it.
• Lying by Omission: There is a false murder confession that uses Gory Discretion Shot to imply "I killed him" while not actually lying about that. Lore confesses to Cassie that she killed Andres, Taking the Heat for someone else. She was 11 or 12 weeks pregnant, cramping and bleeding, and terrified she was miscarrying. When her lover Andres confronted Lore about her Secret Other Family, he shoved her—not enough force to be dangerous most of the time, but enough to be dangerous to a pregnancy only holding on by a thread to begin with. A wave of Mama Bear terror for her baby seized Lore, and then... Gory Discretion Shot. Except Gory Discretion Shot is just a storytelling technique, not an actual event that can occur. The part of the story that Lore does not tell Cassie is that after Andres shoved her, he stepped back, afraid of his own potential for violence, and both lovers left the encounter alive.
• Mama Bear: Lore is 11 or 12 weeks pregnant, cramping and bleeding. She goes to the doctor, and they both think she's miscarrying. But then they find a faint heartbeat and it looks like the baby might pull through. Then later that day, a livid Andres—Gender-Inverted Trope of Woman Scorned—confronts Lore about her extensive duplicity. He shoves Lore—not enough force to be dangerous most of the time, but enough to be dangerous to a pregnancy that's only holding on by a thread to begin with. A wave of terror for her baby seizes Lore, then Gory Discretion Shot. Except Gory Discretion Shot is just a storytelling technique, not an actual event that can occur. After he shoves Lore, Andres steps back, afraid of his own potential for violence, and both lovers leave the encounter alive. And then in a second fit of maternal devotion, Lore — along with Fabian — did everything they could to protect Gabriel after he confesses to her that he killed Andres.
• "Near and Dear" Baby Naming: Though it's too early to confirm it via ultrasound, Lore has a strong sense that her third baby is a girl, and names her Marta after her sister.
• Parental Substitute: Marta and Sergio wanted children, but were infertile. They ended up being the Cool Aunt and Uncle with a ranch to their nephews Gabriel and Mateo. They are happy to watch them when their parents are out of town. After Fabian is in prison and the teenage twins are furious at Lore for her double life, they move in with Marta and Sergio.
• Plot Parallel: Lore carries on a relationship with Andres, not telling him about her husband and kids. Cassie carries on a relationship with Duke, not telling him about her father and brother.
• Polar Opposite Twins: The twins' Establishing Character Moment is that at age 12, Mateo does his homework on Fridays right after school, while Gabriel waits until the end of the weekend and does it at the last minute. Lore later comments that Gabriel picks on nerdy kids at school and Mateo would probably be on the receiving end of that if they were not brothers. The family refers to them as cuates—a word which in Mexican Spanish means "fraternal twins", even though they're identical twins—and this may be a joke about how different they are.
• "Rashomon"-Style: Lore creates a justification that her affair helps her be a better mother when she's at home — less uptight, more playful and present with her kids. Mateo tells it differently.
  Mateo: Everything already felt so… Precarious.
  Lore: It did?
  Mateo: Of course it did. You were never home. Dad was in his own world. Everyone was broke. We had friends who'd lost their houses, who were selling drugs. It felt like we were next.
  Lore: That's not— That’s not how I remember it.
  Mateo: I'm not surprised.
• Relationship-Salvaging Disaster: How do you forgive your wife for having a secret second husband? Lore and and Fabian bond again by working together on the shared project of keeping their teenage son out of jail after he committed a murder.
• Secret Other Family: The basic premise of the novel is a Gender-Inverted Trope take on this. Interestingly, the way the story plays out ends up being a sort of Deconstruction of the gender inversion, demonstrating why women generally don't do this. Family life is great, but it's also demanding and taxing — particularly for women, mothers. There are virtually no women who would want to take a break from the duties of family life to go do more family life somewhere else. Women (and most men, for that matter) want their affairs to be affairs — a respite, a part of their life that's very different than the drudgery of home life. Lore ends up in a second marriage by playing her Business Trip Adultery as an Exaggerated Trope, but the emotional quality of it is still more like an affair.
• Seduction-Proof Marriage: Deconstructed Trope. Their brother-in-law Sergio describes Lore and Fabian's marriage as, "pretty good, better than most couples we knew." It's not flawless, but — within the realm of what can reasonably be expected amid the banality of daily life — they're pretty good. When Lore falls for Andres, the point isn't the difference between the men, it's the difference in the structure of the relationships. Sneaking away to meet your lover on a trip is inherently sexier and more exciting than the drudgery of home life. Andres shows Lore more attention than Fabian does; this is not a feature of the men's personalities, it's a feature of the roles of new boyfriend vs longstanding husband. Andres is new, and he brings out new sides of Lore; Fabian can be many things, but he's known Lore for over a decade so he cannot be new to her.
  Lore narrating: Perhaps not every affair is about lack in the primary relationship; perhaps some are about a complement. Perhaps multiple relationships can illuminate different parts of the self, like a prism turned first this way, then that, toward the light. Perhaps to love and allow love from only one person at a time is to trap the self into a single, frozen version, and it's this that makes us look elsewhere.
• Sex Is Liberation: Lore sees her affair as liberating and bringing out the best in her, and this benefits her family back home. Deconstructed as everyone else sees it as enormously selfish and with huge collateral damage for everyone else.
• Taking the Heat: Exaggerated Trope. When Cassie gets too close to the truth, Mama Bear Lore tells her that she killed Andres to throw her off the trail. Then Cassie deduces Papa Bear Fabian took the fall for killing Andres to protect his son Gabriel, who actually did it. Then Mateo confesses to Cassie it was him. By this point there's been a Lore POV chapter identifying Gabriel as the culprit, so it initially looks like Mateo is also covering for Gabriel — but then Mateo says that Gabriel covered for Mateo, beginning with them telling their parents Gabriel had done it.
• Unreliable Expositor:
  • On the softer, merely biased side, Cassie comments that Lore romanticizes the story of her affair, adds in tangents about how monogamy is unnatural and not a cultural universal, and doesn't seem to feel that guilty about it. On the outright lying side, Penelope warns Cassie to consider Lore's staggering track record of lying.
    Penelope: Don't forget, Lore is a very good liar.
  • In the epilogue, Lore admits that her and Andres's first and second dates were basically swapped in her retelling. It's more romantic, less sordid, if they don't have sex on the ever first date.
• Watching Troy Burn: At 7 in the morning on September 19, 1985, Lore is in Mexico City, staying with her lover in his apartment in Tlatelolco, when the 1985 Mexico City earthquake hits. The disaster is so heart-rendering, the scale so cataclysmic, that it pushes her to make what she on paper knows is a terrible decision: Marrying Andres.
• Wedding Ring Removal: Inverted Trope. Lore removes her wedding ring for a bath, and forgets to put it back on. Then she meets Andres that night, and it turns dramatic.

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