So, here we have a little insight into Antonio's backstory. And a little of that in-story explanation a mentioned in a previous chapter (I can't remember which one now) about Hector reincarnating in Miguel. Hope it was well-written enough.


Chapter 7. —… Finding truths

Every single member of the dead Rivera family was left speechless. Oscar and Felipe even had trouble keeping their jaws from falling completely to the ground.

Antonio couldn't find the most appropriate way of reacting to the situation. He had thought the boy, Miguel (Hector—he corrected himself in his mind) was Ernesto De la Cruz's great-great-grandson. Had assumed that the guitar he'd stolen was Ernesto, even though Miguel had never told, and Antonio had assumed that to mean Miguel was his son.

Turn out he was actually some a hundred-years-old dead guy that had reincarnated into the body of his great-great-grandson. He wasn't related to Ernesto at all—except for the small detail of De la Cruz murdering Hector for his songs if what Iyali had said was true.

Antonio's grandfather had been a child born out of wedlock. An unforeseen consequence from a one-night-stand. Antonio's great-grandmother had always maintained that Ernesto De la Cruz, greatest musician of all time, was the father of her child. She had been ridiculed, mocked—she had been accused as a money-grabbing wench. Someone who spurt out lies to get remuneration from celebrities.

No matter—Ernesto had still found his way onto their family's ofrenda every Día de Muertos. Antonio's grandfather had spoken candidly of the man supposed to be his father, though he had never shown up to either confirm or deny the speculations.

Antonio himself had died in his thirties—a tragic accident that had left him suffering pains in a hospital's bed for the better part of a year. With a pregnant spouse waiting for him at home and an unborn son he had been anxious to meet. He had never got the chance, though he still could see them every Día de Muertos… if the law enforcement didn't arrest him for brawling at the pub.

Now he could see how idiotic he had been for thinking Miguel—Hector!—was his son. Marco, his actual descendant, was a little taller and with longer hair. But the different had been so small, and so much could change in a year, that Antonio hadn't been sure. There had also been the possibility of him giving a false name… which had been more or less what happened.

Victoria massaged her temple. She had a pained face as if she was suffering from a migraine.

"Are you telling us that Miguel—mi sobrino-nieto, is actually that man… that músico that walked away on my mother and Mamá Imelda?" She grilled at this woman that had introduced herself as Iyali.

The gipsy nodded mutedly.

"I don't believe it," Victoria said expressionlessly.

"We-ell…" Oscar started, picking up his jaw. "You have to admit some of Miguel's attitudes and mannerisms are… familiar, to say the least."

His brother consented.

"I won't admit such a thing," said Victoria. "Because I never knew the man! Have you missed the part where he walked away on his family?" She drilled on her grand-uncle.

Tía Rosita was the only one that seemed to notice Imelda's vacant face.

"Mamá Imelda?" She asked tentatively.

The rest of the Riveras turned their attention to their Matriarch, noticing for the first time that Imelda had been left without any words. That was an interesting development, but not one that Oscar and Felipe had grown too unused to seeing to be surprised anymore. Julio, Rosita and Victoria, on the other hand, were mostly used to their strong-willed Matriarch that always had to have the last word.

"It is a little hard to swallow," breathed Julio, as if to reassure his terrifying mother-in-law. "I'm not sure I believe it myself."

"I know what you mean," said his sister in a soft voice. "This is our Miguelito we're talking about! We have known him since he was in diapers! And now—reincarnation? Are you sure?" She asked to Iyali, who only nodded.

Felipe was massaging his temple in a very Victoria fashion.

"You just gave me the most unpleasant images, Rosita," he shuddered.

Rosita blinked at him without understanding, but his brother seemed to and grimaced.

Victoria snapped her fingers together and the whole family, plus Antonio and Iyali, collectively jumped, startled.

"¡Familia! Are we seriously considering this story as truthful?" The youngest Rivera looked over all of them with wide eyes, as if they had suddenly spurted out another head each. "It's fantasy. Ridiculous! I mean, this woman hadn't even talked with Miguel! How could you know such a thing?" She demanded to the woman herself.

Iyali met Victoria's challenging glare heads on.

"She is telling the truth." A quiet voice—a murmur almost, made Victoria's head spun around so fast it almost fell off her neck.

"What?!" Oscar and Felipe shouted in unison, one more baffled than the other.


The security guards had thrown him into the cenote despite his half-hearted struggles to free himself. He fallen into the pond below—struggled to swim to the surface while holding his breath. As a passing thought, he reminded himself to pay more attention to the swimming lessons his mamá had signed him up for.

Once out the water, he screamed for help—for someone to hear him and come to rescue him.

"Help! Can anyone hear me? I wanna go home!"

But no one came. The situation was dreadfully familiar. Hector was reminded of a solitary street in Mexico City, stabs of pain in his abdominal area, falling to his knees while a cold touch on his shoulder stopped him from breaking his nose against the concrete. Dying away from home with just his murderer as his only company; so close to his one-way ticket home.

No one to come to his rescue. He was going to die here… alone. And he never got around telling Imelda the truth.

Oh God! Mamá and papá… Hector knelt down at the shore, his head falling until his chin touched his sternum. They would never see him again, would never know what had become of him. He was going to die and his familia would never know! Again!

… And all because of music.

"Lo siento," he cried. "Abuelita… mamá, papá… I should have never run away."

He apologized to all of them. To Tío Berto and Tía Carmen, to Tía Gloria and primos Abel, Rosa and the little ones, Benny and Manny. He apologized to Papá Franco and Coco, the only ones in the familia who had never been too harsh whenever the rest of the familia looked down on him with disappointment.

"Coco…" he was leaving her again, and she would never understand why.

For the first time, he acknowledged the obscure voice in the back of his head that questioned his motives for not accepting Imelda's blessing and just go home. No, it hadn't been worth it all. Music had robbed him of his family once, and it robbed him off of it again. And this time it had been all his fault, not Ernesto's.

You just had to go see him, didn't you?

His knees gave away and his body slumped backwards, his legs doubling in a weird angle as his butt made contact with the ground. Something cringed in the back pocket of his jeans, startling him out of his trance. His hand sneaked into the pocket and extracted a folded up paper. It was the old flyer that advertised one of his early shows with Ernesto in Oaxaca City.

La Santísima Flor de Lúpulo PRESENTS:

HECTOR Y ERNESTO

Musical performance featuring

Santa Cecilia's two most renowned mariachis

Hector Rivera y Ernesto De la Cruz.

This Friday from 9 pm.

Hector remembered that day. It had been one of their first shows out of Santa Cecilia, just a few days into that ill-fated tour that would become Hector's last. Ernesto had been excited once it had become a reality they would be performing, and had kept a bunch of flyers to show off to their buddies back in Santa Cecilia how they were totally wrong—how they had totally become a huge success. Back then, Ernesto had still shown signs that he would be returning to their little hometown one day, if for no other reason than to rub their success in the noses of all those bastardos escépticos.

He brought his knees up to his chest, hugging his legs close to his body as he—for the first time in the night—allowed himself to sob uncontrollably. The cry at Ernesto's mansion had been one born of anger and grief; a desperate demand for answers.

This? This was just sorrow.

"I just wanted to go home…" he mumbled in between sniffles.


Dante had drawn away for a few minutes and now couldn't find his human anywhere! He tried snuffing around for his essence but wasn't having much luck. Dante whimpered, disappointed in allowing himself to ever lose sight of Hector, and approached the giant mansion that was the home of Ernesto De la Cruz.

He picked up a faint but familiar essence. He had been there! Animated, Dante trotted up to the staircase leading up inside the house but was stopped from entering by a smack on his snout.

"No dogs!" someone grunted and subsequently kicked him away.

Dante growled at the rude skeleton. Who did he think he was, interrupting his search for his human? But Dante didn't have time to waste on one rude skeleton kicking at his half-starved form—his ears had picked a distant cry for help. He would know that voice anywhere; his human! Hector!

Happy with a favourable change in luck, the Xolo dog raced madly in the direction his all senses guided him. He stayed out of sight, watching how two well-dressed skeletons dropped a glint of red into the cenote bellow. The red thing cried again, and Dante's ears stood straight.

Hector!

But how would Dante get his human out of there? He was just one dog, and he couldn't fly. He needed help and just then, like a ton of bricks falling onto his head, he knew the answer. The very same people his human had been running from all night…. He wouldn't mind if Dante looked for their help, now would he? Hector would probably be glad to be out of that cenote—and he did say he would accept his family blessing without arguments this time.

An objective set on his mind, Dante rushed out to find the Riveras.


This is insane. Victoria kept a hand over her wig to stop the wind from blowing it off. She was now sitting atop Mamá Imelda's huge alebrije, sandwiched in between her papá and her Tío Oscar, roaming through the skies following the lead of a hairless grey Xolo dog with a stupid face.

First, it was the fairy-tale—she refused to call it any other than a fairy-tale— that woman had told them about Miguelito being her reincarnated grandfather. A tale everyone in her family believed in, including Mamá Imelda—a woman Victoria remembered in life as being one of the most stubborn, no-nonsense and logical-driven persons in probably the entirety of Mexico.

Had her abuela lost all judgement? Imelda had one last encounter with Miguelito before the spurt of nonsense began, and she had told her familia all about it… her suspicions that Iyali's fairy-tale may not be that all fantastical after all. But Victoria still couldn't believe any of it; what proof did that woman have to make such claims?

Though if she was being completely honest with herself—something she wasn't that much used to— Victoria really didn't know how to react to this information. Miguel was supposed to be her grand-nephew, Elena's grandson, and now this woman came out of nowhere and told them a story about reincarnation, and the final death, and a fatal accident in the Land of the Living that had arranged the board to grant an almost-forgotten soul another chance at life.

It seemed something out of a novela.

For every single one of her forty-four years of life—and the thirty-one of her death—Victoria had been spoon-fed the tale of the run-a-away musician that had abandoned his family in exchange of fame, and money and music. She had been taught to hate this faceless—and nameless man and had never been allowed no make any questions about his whereabouts. No matter how curious she had been in her childhood about the nameless man that was meant to be her grandfather.

That childish curiosity vanished, however, as Victoria entered her late teen years and started to get more and more involved in the shoemaking business. But, Victoria bit her non-existent lip as she mulled over the issue, she would be lying to herself if she pretended she had never thought about him ever again. It was true that her years had taught her to appreciate the labour her Mamá Imelda did when she started an empire of shoes, but Victoria sometimes wondered… What if he had been part of that empire? What if he had been there to witness the woman he gave up for music raise from poverty and become the pillar in which the Rivera family's profession stood. Proudly.

Would he have supported the businesswoman her Mamá Imelda aimed to be? Or would he had become restless living in a household that didn't allow music—growing resentful at his wife's success while he couldn't shine with what he loved? Maybe he wouldn't, choosing instead to spoil his granddaughters rotten while his wife made shoes.

Sometimes, Victoria liked to indulge in such daydreams. Unpractical, for a woman of her age. She was forty-four for God's sake!

Pepita landed swiftly on the ground, startling Victoria out of her musings just in time to hear Mamá Imelda:

"You stay here. I will continue to the place where they're keeping Mig—Hector," Imelda corrected herself at the end, almost choking out his name.

Well, Victoria thought, at least she's not pretending she's suddenly okay with all of this.

"Imelda, are you sure?" Tío Felipe asked.

"We could go with you," offered Tío Oscar.

Imelda shook her head.

"Just Dante would be enough." She said. "Stay here. I won't be long."

A soft petting of Pepita's feathers prompted her again to the sky, with just Imelda and Dante riding on top. From the ground the Riveras watched them become smaller in the distance, each one a little more worried than the former.


Once Pepita had descended down enough, Dante jumped and ran to the edge of the cenote, where he started howling. He intended to get Hector's attention, but nothing happened at first. Dante howled again and this time he heard a distant, soft question echoing back at him through the silence of the area.

"Dante?" His keen ears perked up at the sound of his human. He was alive! Dante started skipping around the edge, howling and barking excitedly.

"It's really you! Boy, am I glad to see you, Dante!" Down in the cenote, Hector stood with the water reaching pass his ankles and laughed joyfully.

Pepita descended her flight behind Dante and lowered her giant head so that Imelda could have a look at the boy. She didn't think she had been this pleased to see her estranged husband in a while. But she let out a thankful laugh at seeing him safe and sound… and still alive.

Hector seemed to notice something in her posture (that man had always had an infuriating way of knowing her quirks, Imelda recalled) because he faltered, and smiled nervously when she, Pepita and Dante landed in the cenote in front of him.

"So you know." Was all he said, grasping anxiously his right arm as if he was afraid it might fall off.

"You owe me an explanation," Imelda said suddenly cold.

"It's a long story," Hector answered.

"It's a long ride back to the others," rebutted Imelda.

Pepita soared to the skies once more, this time with Hector kneeling backwards on her back too. The former-skeleton-now-a-living-boy was petting Dante with all the affection an owner felt for their pet… or how Imelda petted Pepita sometimes.

"Dante, you knew he was bad news and tried to stop me going to him the whole time!" Hector seemed to have had a realization during his time down in the cenote, Imelda reflected as she watched her husband out of the corner of her eye's socket. "You are a real spirit guide! Who's a good spirit guide? You are!"

He scratched Dante behind the ears, talking to him in that annoying baby-talk some people used when referring to their babies or pets. Imelda herself was guilty of using it sometimes, back when Pepita was still a regular kitty and not an enormous jaguar.

"Hector, please, you are embarrassing yourself," said Imelda, pretending to be mortified at all the ridiculousness her husband was displaying in a short amount of time. Though, and she would only confess this under torture, she found it kind of endearing… how close Hector was with the Xolo dog.

Hector smiled at her with all the innocence of a child. Well, he was a child now, wasn't he?

Suddenly, in front of their eyes, neon patters started to spread outwards from Dante's paws. The dog began to freak out, frantically biting at the patters that were rapidly covering his entire being. It finished at his nose, the colourful patterns resembling those on Pepita.

"Whoa…" gasped Hector.

The little wings sprout last on the dog's back and spreading them, Dante launched off Pepita's back… and plummeted beneath the clouds, that dumb dog!

"Dante!" scared for the dog, Hector spied over the wings of Imelda's alebrije, searching for the dog-newly-turned-alebrije.

Imelda was busy watching Hector—God knew that payaso would jump after the dog if she wasn't watching him—that she didn't notice the spot of bright colour flapping clumsily in front of her until it barked. Both Imelda and Hector looked, one baffled and the other one elated.

They still had a while before they reached the others, so Imelda decided that it was time to hear Hector's side of the story. With a sharp whistle, she got Hector's attention back to her.

"I'm still waiting for that explanation, you know?" She said, her voice cold again.

Hector sighed.

"It all started some three years ago…"

He told her about waking up at a hospital in Oaxaca City, in the body of their nine-years-old tataranieto. According to what he later learnt; Miguel had been in an accident that left him with no hopes to wake up. The doctors had been amazed when he did woke up—or rather, when Hector did. When he was released, the family returned to Santa Cecilia where Hector had to acclimate himself to a family he had never known (the way he told her this part made Imelda almost guilty—almost). He told her how all his memories had started coming back to him through his dreams, and how he wrote those down in his diary.

He told her about Miguel's love for music and Ernesto De la Cruz; how he had thrown away the secret ofrenda his grandson had dedicated to the man in the attic. Then he told her all that had happened to him this Día de Muertos—from getting himself cursed for touching his own guitar, performing in the gipsy camp for the first time in a long time, and all that happened in Ernesto's party.

That included telling her about the reason as to why he had never returned home, and Hector could only hope Imelda believed him.

"I really, really wanted to come home," Hector said quietly. "I had the train ticket in my pocket that night… I was walking to the train station when I—" he got a lump on his throat and couldn't finish.

Imelda was silent.

Hector started sweating.

Did she believe him? Why was she saying something?

"Imelda?" He asked timidly after a while. "You... you believe me right?"

Imelda bit the pliant bone that served as her lower lip, considering what she had just heard. Hector's story matched Iyali's. That wouldn't happen unless they had agreed to tell the whole story separately, but Antonio had said Iyali and Hector had never formally met; the man had expressed amazement over the fact that the woman could know so much about a boy she had never met before. That meant that Hector was telling the truth… and it was like a punch to her gut, if she was being honest.

Murdered. Hector had been murdered. Imelda had been mad at him over something that wasn't even his fault… she had erased him from the family—no, this wasn't her fault.

"And so what if it's true? You leave alone with a child to raise and I'm just supposed to forgive you?" She grabbed at the only safe emotion at the moment; anger.

"Imelda, I—"Hector tightened his grip on Pepita's feathers, causing her to roar a warning and he loosened his clutch. "This is my fault, not yours. I'm sorry, Imelda."

He looked at her from the corner of his eye. He was still facing the other way, so it was a little awkward to maintain a conversation this way.

"Like I told you before… the family shouldn't have had to pay for my mistakes," He continued, thinking back on Rosa sneaking away to her friends' houses to listen to music and Abel's secret hip-hop dancing. "I'll accept your blessing… and your conditions… just allow the family to enjoy music."

Imelda couldn't find the time or words to answer. Pepita was beginning her descent; the rest of the family was just below their feet. With one last pleading look to Imelda, Hector slid down Pepita's wing and onto the solid ground.

He was meet by five pairs of unease glances. No one moved, no one spoke. They stood like that for what it felt like an eternity; the five dead Riveras not quite knowing how to greet this stranger that for the longest time they had known as their grandson. Hector grasped his right arm and wished for the earth to swallow him whole.

That was how Imelda found them when she descended from Pepita's back. She was about to call for their attention—they didn't have time to play statues!—when that otro hombre, Antonio wasn't it, almost skipped to Hector's side.

"Ey! Glad you're alive, chamaco!" He ruffled his hair teasingly, affectingly like an older brother.

Imelda did a double take when she thought she heard Hector giggling.

"Ow!" the light teasing stopped with a not-so-light smack upside the head. "What was that for?"

"For running on me," Antonio answered, serious.

Hector huffed, still rubbing the mal-treated spot on the back of his head, and turned to the others. He made eye contact with Oscar and Felipe who, after maintaining a secret conversation with each other, were now hesitantly approaching their cuñado/great-nephew.

"Uh… Hector," Oscar started faltering. "Hi."

"Oscar, Felipe," Hector deadpanned.

"We heard about… your situation?" Felipe said uncertainly.

"Oh?" Hector arched his eyebrows. "You have." It was a statement.

Victoria huffed. "So everyone here believes this madness?"

Now they were all looking at her. Hector—Miguel! Victoria berated herself, his name is Miguel—cocked his head to the side, looking very much like a puppy.

"You don't?" He questioned innocently.

"It's ridiculous! It makes no sense!" Victoria exclaimed, gesturing wildly with her bone arms in a way that reminded Hector of—well, himself. "You are Miguel. Elena's grandson, my grand-nephew. You're not some—"

"Walkaway musician?" Hector supplied with a small smile. "I am Miguel. I am Elena's grandson… but I'm also Hector. I'm this lousy, good-for-nothing musician who should never have left his family." He was looking at Imelda as he said this. "But I've been trying to come back. After I died, I mean—I have been trying to cross the bridge for ninety years before I woke up as Miguel."

Victoria huffed, still refusing to believe it. She crossed her arms and turned her head away in a way that was still reminding Hector of himself. Trying to lighten up the mood, Hector chuckled at Imelda.

"She gets that stubbornness from you, ya' know," he said.

Imelda was visibly taken aback. Before she could answer, however, she was interrupted by Hector's frantically palping his pockets and panicked under his breath.

"No, no, no, no…" he was muttering while he searched every pocket on him.

"What are you panicking about now?" Felipe asked jokingly, fondly reminiscing about other times.

"The photo! I don't have the photo!" He explained wildly.

"What?!" Imelda turned violently to face her reincarnated husband.

Hector looked up at her with a desperate look on his eyes.

"It must have fallen from my pocket while those guards were dragging me off Ernesto's mansion," he elaborated. "We have to find it."

"Sunrise it's only a couple of hours away," said Papá Julio.

"We have to send you home," added Rosita.

"That's right," Oscar hit his twin's forehead. "Enrique and Luisa must be really worried—"

"I can't leave without the photo!" cried Hector and turned to Imelda, waiting for what she had to say.

Imelda felt the expectant glances of her family. It was all up to her it seemed. She hadn't had time to figure out what Hector had told her on their ride from the cenote—about not punishing the family for sins that weren't theirs, and now she was being bombarded with another matter altogether.

She could either send Hector to the Land of the Living now—and she was sending him home, if for no other reason than Luisa's sake. Imelda hadn't spent the whole night chasing after him just to backtrack now— or take a detour to Ernesto De la Cruz's ridiculous big tower to recover her photo.

And if she was being honest with herself, Imelda was itching to pegarle un chanclazo a ese bastardo for even daring to keep her photo. And for murdering Hector too, if she chose to believe her husband's story as truthful. She hadn't yet decided she believed him yet.

Imelda sighed.

"I am not ready to believe you yet," she frowned when she saw him perk up at the word 'yet'. "But I'm still sending you home. Not for your sake but for Luisa." She hurried to clarify her decision. "I'm a mother too, and I know how painful a rebellious child can be." With that one sentence, she made it clear to him that she thought Coco shared many similarities with her papá.

The decision was made. There was only one problem.

"So how do we get to De la Cruz?" Antonio asked. At the odd glances he was receiving, he added. "What? You thought I wouldn't go? I have to make sure chamaco keeps his part of the deal, after all." He was back on ruffling the living boy's hair.

Hector furrowed his eyebrows, thinking. They all could appreciate the exact moment he was illuminated with an idea by the mischievous smile drawing on his lips.

"I might know a way…"


I had this headcanon that of the twins, Felipe is the one that likes to joke the most and Oscar is usually there to ground him.

I also headcanon that Victoria is very much a no-nonsense, sceptical kind of person—very much like Imelda. But her mannerisms and the habit of gesturing with her hands while speaking... that comes from Hector. I thought that putting a little bit of backstory on her childhood would be good to explain why she's so reticent to the idea of Miguel actually being Hector... I hope it's understandable.

Now to the translations!

Lo siento: I'm sorry.

Abuela: Grandmother—but then, I think that one was kind of obvious.

Bastardos escépticos: Sceptic bastards.

Otro hombre: Another man.

Payaso: Clown.

Novela: Novel.

La Santísima Flor de Lúpulo: A bar in Mexico. I was looking for Mexican bares in the 1920s and this is the best I could do. I don't know any dates.

Pegarle un chanclazo a ese bastardo: "Hit that bastard with her shoe"—not a literal translation, mind you, but that what I meant in the story. I was laughing while I wrote that xD

And I think that's all. If you spot another word I haven't translated, let me know!