A/N: Trigger Warning for death, murder, poison, and grief.
April 1922
It's been four months since Hector left Santa Cecilia. A grey, furless stray dog in a town a dozen miles away is making an important discovery. By barking, he leads the townspeople to a spot on the outskirts where he then proceeds to dig up a shallow grave, revealing what was once a human man.
His body has decomposed behind recognition, and whatever identification he had on him has been removed. But he is wearing a vest and a pair of pants. And in the pocket of that vest is a headshot. Carollina, the town harlot, recognizes the man in that headshot as "that musician who passed through a few months ago along with his idiot friend who slept with me and then vanished without a trace."
Everyone gossips with each other and wonders how Hector was killed, and more importantly, if the killer is still among them. Was it one of the other musicians playing at that same concert? Was it the inkeeper who complained for weeks that they'd skipped out on their bill? Or worst of all, was it someone with no motive at all-someone with bloodlust?
As the spectulation gets intense and rumors spread, Carollina takes the photograph home and keeps it safe in a drawer. She knows nothing about this man, but her ill will is toward his friend, not him. Maybe he has a family. Maybe he doesn't. But even if he does, how will they know he has dead? In any case, he definitely doesn't deserve to be forgotten forever. She resolves to place his photo on her ofrenda on dia de los muertos.
May 1922
A friendly travelling shoe salesman comes to the town. He chats with the townspeople and measures growing childrens' feet and tells stories of places he's gone. He admits that his most beautiful, most expensive shoes were actually made by an incredibly skilled zapatera from Santa Cecilia. He tells of her musician husband who went out on tour with his friend and never came back, and how hard she's had to work to provide for herself and her little girl. Carollina runs home to get the photograph and shows it to the shoe salesman, who asks her what she's doing with a picture of Imelda's husband. They put two and two together, and they arrange for Hector's remains to be brought back to Santa Ceclilia, along with the photograph.
June 1922
It's been a tedious, ordinary day of making and mending shoes when Coco comes running to tell her Mama that there's a bunch of people gathered outside the shop to stare at a funny man with a wagon. Imelda comes to the door smelling like leather and sweat to find her husband's coffin waiting for her. She screams. She cries. She throws things and beats things with her shoes. She spends the rest of the day on her floor sobbing while her brothers lock the door and bring her water and answer all of Coco's questions.
After the shock has worn off, it's time to arrange and host a funeral, and to find a frame in which to place Hector's photo on the ofrenda. These are all things that Imelda had hoped Coco would be doing some eighty years in the future, long after she was dead. Not things that she would be doing with a little girl on her heels trying to understand why someone would want to hurt her Papa.
July 1922
Once the commotion in Santa Cecilia starts to die down, just a little, Imelda realizes that nothing about her circumstances has truly changed. There's the added comfort of knowing why her husband disappeared, and the added anguish of knowing she will never see him again, but she's still a single woman in Santa Cecilia. So, though she now does it with a heavier heart than ever, she goes back to making and mending shoes. She doesn't sing or otherwise bring music into her home, but she doesn't actively shield her family from it, either. After all, music didn't tear apart her family. Some human did.
August 1922
Imelda is stopped cold in her tracks, in the dead center of the plaza, by the sound of a familiar tune being played on a mariachi's guitar. Memories come rushing back, of his arms around her, hands holding hers, as he sings the words in her ear. Of his bright, wonderful smile, on a stage, singing it to a crowd only after taking care to point her out in the audience. "This song is for the most incredible woman I have ever known. I love you to the moon and back, Loquita!"
Tú me traes un poco loco, un poquititito loco
Estoy adivinando qué quieres y pa' cuándo
Y así estoy celebrando
Que me he vuelto un poco loco
Imelda screams as she pulls off her slipper and aims it at the head of the mariachi, who promptly drops his guitar and shrieks, apologizing.
"Lo siento, Señora Rivera! Lo se, no muzica!"
"I don't care if you play music, just not…where did you even hear that song?"
The mariachi looks at her incredulously. "Why, everyone in Mexico knows that song, Señora! It was written by the great Ernesto de la Cruz!"
Imelda's shoe drops from her hand and into the dirt. The noise from the plaza fades into the background as the sound of ringing fills her ears.
Her husband's death is not a mystery. It never has been. She knows exactly who killed him. And why.
September 1922
"Coco's bedtime is eight o'clock. She eats two eggs with her breakfast. Señor Martinez is coming over to pick up his shoes sometime tomorrow morning, other than that, you should have no repairs. If anyone comes looking to buy a pair of shoes, I've written the prices on the tags. No negotiations."
"Imelda, I'm not an idiot, I'm not going to give your shoes away," said Oscar. Filipe nodded in agreement.
"Shut up," Imelda muttered as she strapped on her newest pair of wooden heels.
"How long do you expect to be gone?" asked Filipe.
"Three days." One day there, one day to do the deed, and one day back.
"Are you sure you don't want one of us to go with you?" asked Oscar.
"I'm sure." Imelda picked up her carpetbag. "This is between me, and the man who ruined my life." She squared her shoulders and marched out without giving the twins a chance to respond.
The concert that was to take place the following night had been highly publicized in all the major papers that she had started ordering for the express purpose of stalking Ernesto. She wore a plain, colorless dress along with an obscene amount of makeup and did her hair in a long braid down her back, completely different than how she usually wore it. She didn't want to be recognizable from afar, or by anyone from her own town who she might encounter.
The concert happens. It's a roaring success, complete with an after party with lots of music and laughter and liquor. When Ernesto takes his fourth drink, he takes it from a bar maid who seems oddly familiar. He doesn't remember if he's seen her somewhere. He doesn't remember how to express this. But a few minutes later, his stomach is starting to cramp a little. His friends tell him he needs to sleep off the liquor again and carry him up to his hotel room to lie down for the night. By the time a maid barges in to do her morning cleaning and finds the great Ernesto de la Cruz unresponsive in his bed, Imelda is on a train back to Santa Cecilia.
Some men just can't hold their arsenic.
October 1922
On dia de los muertos, Imelda leaves a small plate of offerings for her mother on the ofrenda along with every single one of Hector's favorite foods. Oscar and Filipe take turns dancing with Coco and playing Hector's songs on their trumpets, along with other songs that they feel properly honor the man they'd come to think of as a big brother. For the first time in eleven months, Imelda sings. Her vocal cords are a touch rusty, but no one cares, least of all Hector, who unbeknownst to the living Riveras sits beside her the entire night. He hopes she knows he came. He hopes she knows that he will be back every year, and that if he could he would never leave this house, little as it has to offer him now. He hopes she knows how proud and in awe he is of every single thing that she's accomplished in the past year and everything that she's ever been.
He hopes she knows that he hates himself for having left on that stupid tour, even after she takes care to whisper the words "Ernesto murdered Hector and tried to steal his songs" to no one in particular several times until he finally believes it.
Later that night, Coco sneaks out of bed and kneels down at the ofrenda. She looks up at the picture of her Papa, who she now knows lives in the land of the dead and is visiting her tonight but she won't be able to see him with her eyes again for a long time. She closes her eyes and tries to see him with her heart. His smile, his laugh, his arms around her whole body, his fingers on the chords of the guitar. His voice.
And she sings.
"Remember me
Though you have to say goodbye
Remember me
Don't let it make you cry
For even if you're far away I hold you in my heart
I sing a secret song to you each night we are apart
Remember me
Though you'll have to travel far
Remember me
Each time you hear a sad guitar
Know that I'm with you the only way that I can be
Until you're in my arms again
Remember me"
And he hopes she knows that he's singing along.