Title: Find and Seek
Rating: K+
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Disney. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended
Author Notes: This one is an idea that Teddi8347 gave me so this chapter is for you.
Reviews: KentuckyWallfower – Thank you! Agent Numbah 227 – I did make Serrano a bit of a jerk. I couldn't make it easy after all. Pamela1967 – Glad you like it! Ainmals1 – No worries. As nice as it is, I don't get disappointed when people don't reviews each chapter! Storyteller362 – Thanks! Chance-Will – Be careful pulling all-nighters, though I've done it too. Digifan313 – It may be easy for us to believe but this is a 13 year-old boy trying to explain to a university professor without having the adult think he's crazy. Vi-Violence – Aww, thank you! Jojospn – Glad I could suck you into the fandom Iheart2manyfandoms – Thanks!
The first time Victoria ever heard about him was when she was six years old. Before that she never thought about the fact she had two abuelas but only one abuelo. She didn't see much of Papá José and Mamá Gloria anymore since they had left for America during the war. Papá still got letters from them though. That was also when Tía Rosita came to live with them and work in the shoe shop with Abuelita and Papá.
It was after her first week of school. Victoria had been sorting through some laces and pairing them to be threaded into new shoes. And she had been doing something she learned from her teacher. It was a new thing to her. She was humming.
Of course her teacher should have known better than to teach a Rivera anything about music. But the woman was new to Santa Cecilia and hadn't yet had an encounter with the Rivera Music Ban. Unfortunately she was about to.
"Victoria. What are you doing?" Abuelita suddenly demanded, her voice sharp. It was a similar tone to what she used on Tíos Óscar and Felipe (when they were experimenting on new shoe designs), but much darker.
Victoria turned, seeing her grandmother looking at her with hands on hips and eyes narrowed. She gulped because Abuelita was scary when she looked like that. Still the little girl answered quietly, "It's something that Maestra Flores was teaching us."
Abuelita narrowed her eyes further. The workshop fell silent (even her two-year-old sister, Elena, stopped her babbling) and Victoria, not used to earning her grandmother's ire, ducked her head and clutched one wrist anxiously. Looking up through her lashed, Victoria saw her grandmother give an angry huff and mutter "I'm going to have a word with that woman." Then she said a little louder to Victoria, "Don't do that again. There is no music in this house, Victoria. Ever. Understood?"
"Sí, Abuelita." Victoria answered promptly. She watched as her grandmother gave a sharp nod and headed for the door, telling Papá and the Tíos that she would be right back. Victoria bowed her head again, not sure if she was still in trouble. A moment later she felt a gentle hand on her head. She looked up to see Mamá giving her a small smile.
"It's all right, mija." She said, adjusting her hold on Elena. "Music is just a bit of a sore spot for your abuelita."
Victoria couldn't help but ask a child's favourite question. "Why, Mamá?"
Mamá sighed, looking sad for a moment. "It happened a long time ago, long before you were born, back when I was a little girl. I had a papá like you do." Victoria glanced at her father for a moment and then looked back at Mamá. Her mother chuckled. "He wasn't exactly like your papá. He was a musician. He used to play such beautiful songs."
Victoria noticed how her mother's expression seemed wistful. Like she was remembering some happy memory. "What happened to him?"
"Well, he had a dream. To play for the world. And one day he left with his guitar. And never returned."
"He abandoned his family." Tío Felipe put in as he brushed a boot. Sitting next to him, hammering on a sole, Tío Óscar added, "Your Mamá Imelda had to raise Coco by herself."
"So she rolled up her sleeves and learned to make shoes."
"Then she taught us and your mamá to make shoes."
"And your papá and tía."
"So you see, mija," Papá said after the Tíos, "music tore the family apart. But shoes! They have held us together."
Victoria nodded in understanding, though she also could see Mamá's face had gone sad again. She wondered about that for a moment, but not for long. She was only six after all.
She was fourteen when she discovered the letters.
It was completely by accident. Victoria was just tidying up around the house one morning. Usually she stayed out of her parents' room, but she had a basket of laundry to put away. After putting the clothing away, she started to clear a few things off her mother's bedside table. As she opened the drawer to the table, she saw a small notebook with red binding that was stuffed with papers. Victoria didn't think much of it, just picked it up to fit some of the other things in the drawer. But when she did so, a small scrap of paper came loose and fell to the floor. Victoria picked it up.
It was part of a photograph.
It was very old and contained only the face of a man Victoria didn't recognize. He wasn't exactly handsome with that big nose, but she could see a certain charm in his easy smile and kindness in his eyes. Victoria looked at it for a moment, wondering who the man was and why Mamá had kept this piece.
Then she realized with a gasp. This scrap of photo was part of the family photo of Abuelita and Mamá from when her mother was a little girl. The one that showed the figure of a man, but no face as it had been torn away. That meant that this was the face of her mother's papá, Victoria's grandfather. The man that had torn their family apart because of music
Victoria found herself sitting on the edge of her parents' bed, holding the scrap of photo as far away as she could. She couldn't believe that her mother would hang onto this. For what reason would she do that? Quickly she opened the notebook, intending to stuff the scrap back inside and forget she had ever seen it, but the papers inside the notebook made her pause. There was about a dozen or so, folded neatly but with worn edges. Victoria looked at them for a moment before her curiosity got the better of her. She set down the scrap, took out the first paper and carefully opened it.
It was a letter.
My dearest Coco,
I know I wrote just a few days ago, but it had still been too long since I told you how much I love you. And yes, mija, I know it's Mamá telling you that, but it is still my words she's reading to you. It still counts.
I have missed you and Mamá so much. I can't wait to see you both again. Tío Nesto says we have a few more performances to do, so it shouldn't be too much longer, I promise.
In the meantime, I've written down our special song. The one I wrote just for you. I wish I was there to sing it with you in person, but know that no matter how far apart we are, we are still singing it together.
Remember me
Though I have to say goodbye
Remember me
Don't let it make you cry
For even if I'm far away
I hold you in my heart
I sing a secret song to you
Each night we are apart
Remember me
Though I 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
Te amo, mija. Te amo.
Love, Papá.
Reading the carefully written words, Victoria wasn't sure what to think. All her life she had only known about how her grandfather had abandoned his family without a backward glance. That was the story she had been told time and time again. But this letter and all the others stored so carefully in the notebook suggested something else. That he had loved Abuelita and Mamá. That even though he had left, he intended to come home.
Yet she also knew that he never did.
So why hadn't he?
Before she could think further, Tía Rosita called from the stairs. "Victoria, have you finished with the basket yet?"
Victoria jumped and quickly stuffed everything back into the notebook and shoved it back into the bedside table. "Sí. I'm coming, Tía." She grabbed the empty basket from the floor and hurried downstairs. Thankfully her aunt didn't say anything about how long Victoria had taken as Victoria handed over the basket.
She tried not to, but thoughts about those letters kept intruding throughout the rest of the day. She wanted to ask about them. Mamá would be the obvious choice except that Victoria wasn't sure how to broach the subject. Not in front of the rest of the family. Anything that had even the slightest relation to the subject of that musician just made Abuelita angry. And it wasn't just Abuelita either. While only ten, Elena was following right in Abuelita's footsteps. More than once her sister had charged out of the house, sandal in hand, to scare off anyone singing outside. Victoria, on the other hand, preferred to just ignore any singing or music.
At least the mistake that her teacher had made when Victoria was little hadn't happened a second time when Elena started school.
It was late before she felt she could attempt to talk to her mother about the letters without anyone else in the family hearing. Mamá had stepped out into the courtyard after sending Elena to bed. It was something Victoria had noticed she did every night it didn't rain. And she had always done it by herself.
Victoria followed her this time though. And to her surprise, she found her mother humming very softly to herself. Victoria kept to the shadows as she listened. Of course she didn't recognize the song. That was until Mamá started to sing just as quietly.
"…Know that I'm with you The only way that I can be Until you're in my arms again Remember me…" Mamá looked up at the moon rising above the roof of the workshop and gave a soft sigh. "Oh, Papá…"
Wondering if she should make her presence known or go back inside, Victoria hesitated. She felt like she was intruding on a very private moment for her mother. One that she went out of her way to have despite the music ban. And yet, this might be the only time Victoria could even ask about the letters. But just as she was about to step out of the shadows, someone else did.
"Novia, why do you keep doing this?" Papá asked as he stepped out of the house. He also kept his voice low as to not attract attention from the rest of the household. "You know how Mamá Imelda feels about this."
Mamá got a stubborn look on her face, something Victoria wasn't used to seeing. Her mother rarely ever showed that typical Rivera trait. "I don't care. This is my song. Mine and Papá's. And I won't give it up."
As Mamá pulled the shawl she wore against the night chill tighter, Papá came over and rubbed her arms, His expression was gently and sympathetic. "He's not coming back, Coco."
"You don't know that." Mamá replied. "We don't know anything because Mamá never went to find out. Something happened to him. Something that's keeping him from coming home. I just know it. Papá loves us and he wouldn't just abandon us for no reason."
"But still," her father countered, "If something did happened, why were you and Mamá Imelda never told? Surely the policía would have contacted your mamá if something had happened to him."
Mamá gave a heavy sigh. "I suppose so, unless… they didn't know who he was." She sounded a little desperate. Clinging to hope. "He could have been hurt and lost his memory or… or something."
Hearing that desperation in her mother's voice awoke something in Victoria. Her mother still held out hope beyond hope that her father would return, even after all these years. It was crazy and Victoria didn't like to think of Mamá as crazy. But what could she do about it?
I could try to find out what happened.
The thought was startling. As startling as finding the letters and piece of photo in the first place. Victoria wasn't sure how to react to it. Her first thought was to dismiss it. Finding out information on the whereabouts of her grandfather wasn't her concern. He wasn't part of her life, not really. Ad if he hadn't come back in all these years, surely that meant Abuelita was right and he had abandoned the family. Yet she could also see how Mamá was right as well. Something could have happened. And accident or illness…
Or death.
She tried to shy away from that thought, but really, it made some sense. Even though she had grown up disliking the man for leaving, Victoria wasn't comfortable with the idea that a member of her family had died unknown far from home. And yet it loomed as a possible answer. In fact, in many of the mystery novels she had read over the years, someone dying was the usual explanation for an unexpected disappearance. Well, in those books, the usual cause of death was murder, of course. Still…
Whatever the reason, surely if Victoria found out what made her grandfather keep from coming home; it would give some closure to Mamá and put an end on that chapter in the family history.
Victoria quickly learned that deciding to find out what happened to her grandfather was one thing. It was a whole other matter to actually find anything.
For starters, she had to find out what her grandfather's name was. Obviously she couldn't ask her family without explaining why she wanted to know. And asking anyone outside the family would just end with similar results as it would get back to the family eventually. And all the letters she had found in Mamá's notebook were all signed "Love, Papá", so they were of no help either.
Luckily, after that ill-intended music lesson back when Victoria started school, her teachers found it much easier to just send Victoria off to the library whenever music was going to be a part of the lesson. As a consequence she was very well-known to not only the school librarian, but to the two women who ran the Santa Cecilia Public Library and Archives. So well-know that they didn't question her looking at the old records.
It didn't take long to find Mamá's baptism record as well as her grandparents' marriage record. So she learned her grandfather was named Héctor. And she thought she might have figured out who "Tío Nesto" was as well. She had thought he was a relative of her grandfather's, another musician like him. She was partly right. He was a musician, in fact, the most famous musician of all of México, Ernesto de la Cruz. Even not knowing anything about music, Victoria knew of him. She wouldn't have guessed he had anything to do with her family except that he was listed as a witness on both the marriage and baptism records.
At first that seemed like a lead on finding out what happened to her grandfather. But then she remembered that he had died a few years after she had been born. His statue lorded over the plaza and his crypt the center of the cemetery.
Victoria's next task was to figure out when Héctor left Santa Cecilia and where he went. That took much longer. Almost two years of combing through old records from the train station. Victoria couldn't devote a lot of time to her search, no more than a few hours one day a week, without arousing the suspicion of Abuelita. The rest of the time she had not only school, but working in the shop and crafting shoes alongside her family. Finally though, she found a record of a Rivera, H. purchasing a ticket from Santa Cecilia to Cuidad Valles in the summer of 1921.
She didn't know if she should be surprised or not to learn that Ernesto de la Cruz also bought the same ticket.
What happened after that was much harder to learn. With the librarians' help (using a school paper as an excuse), Victoria got in touch with an archivist in Cuidad Valles. When she explained on the phone to the man that she was looking for information about someone from Santa Cecilia being there, he assumed that she was interested in Ernesto de la Cruz. This assumption would keep cropping up throughout later inquires. Victoria explained that, no, she was looking for someone named Héctor Rivera instead. She did include that he had travelled there at the same time as the famous músico. Eventually, after a few weeks, the archivist found that (again) a Rivera, H. and a de la Cruz, E. both bought tickets a week or so after arriving heading to Tamazunchale. And he put her in contact with someone there who could help. And so it went for the next several towns.
Victoria started keeping a journal. To keep track of everything she had discovered. She asked for and got photocopies of anything that was found, having them mailed to the library for her to pick up there. And she also got a map of México to trace her grandfather's route. She noticed a pattern very quickly. The two men (she had come to the conclusion that they had to be travelling together) were headed towards México City, stopping at several towns but only staying about a week or two at a time before moving on.
There wasn't much for Victoria to do while she waited for her various inquiries, so she took to reading any old newspapers from the time that were available on microfilm. She didn't know what she might find or even if she would find anything. But that didn't deter her either.
Life went on in the Rivera household. Victoria finished school and worked more and more in the shop, becoming an expert at crafting huaraches. The business picked up. A few young men came by, trying to court her, but were either sent packing by Mamá Imelda or by Victoria's own disinterest. Quite frankly, between working in the shop and her secret search, Victoria didn't have time to spend on men.
Just after Victoria turned 20, and she had tracked her grandfather to Texcoco de Mora, disaster struck the family. Her twin tíos were killed in a terrible crash on the way back from delivering shoes to customers in a neighbouring town. Their deaths hit all the family hard, but especially Victoria's mother and grandmother. It didn't help that three years later, Tía Rosita would die suddenly of a heart attack. Victoria put aside her search for a time after each death, both too grief-stricken and then too busy with taking up the extra work in the zapatería. It took a while for her to take it up again. The final blow though happened another two years after that.
Imelda Rivera, matriarch of the family, fell victim to a stroke.
The day it happened, Victoria had come across an odd article in the old newspapers. It was almost buried in the issue she was reading. It was about the discovery of the body of an unknown man in Texcoco de Mora that the police of the time were trying to identify. The article included an artist drawing of the man that looked remarkably similar to the photo scrap Victoria had found in her mother's notebook. She already knew that her grandfather had been in that town and had even bought a train ticket for Santa Cecilia from there. That had confused Victoria because she knew he had never returned home. She also knew that Ernesto de la Cruz had travelled on to México City shorty after Héctor had bought his ticket home. The date of the paper from the day after de la Cruz had left and four days after her grandfather was supposed to have returned to Santa Cecilia.
The article had also gone on to say that the police suspected the man's death was not natural and the early autopsy results, while not fully analyzed, were already indicating poison.
Victoria was stunned to say the least. Yes, she had come to suspect that her grandfather was dead, but she never expected that he had died only a few months after leaving Santa Cecilia, nor that his death wasn't natural. And it seemed Mamá was right about the police not knowing who he was and not being able to tell the family about Héctor's death.
She made her photocopies of the article (and the included sketch) and left the library. She would now have to think of what her next step would be. Should she keep looking for more information or reveal her findings to the family?
A frantic voice broke into her thoughts. Victoria looked up to see Elena's husband, Franco, running up the street towards her. "Victoria! Come quick. We have to get to the hospital."
"Hospital?" she replied, baffled.
Her brother-in-law nodded. "It's Mamá Imelda."
As they rushed to the hospital, Franco told her what happened. The family had all been working in the shop. Her grandmother had gone to the kitchen to prepare lunch. When over an hour went by without her return, Elena had followed only to find her collapsed on the floor. Mamá Imelda had been conscious but unable to move and could only mumble any words. Elena had sent Franco to find Victoria while she, Papá, and Mamá had taken Imelda to the hospital.
They arrived in time to find the doctor speaking with the rest of the family. "…resting comfortably now, but I'm afraid that Imelda Rivera has suffered from a massive stroke. And her prognosis isn't good." He went on to explain how severe the resulting effects of the stroke were and that it was very unlikely that there would be any recovery. All one side of Imelda's body was paralyzed. Her vision and speech also appeared to be impaired. None of which was going to be regained. There was very little the doctor could do.
There wasn't anything the family could do either, except stay by her side. Which they did, taking it each in turns.
When Victoria came to relieve her mother, she could see how just how stricken Mamá was. And Victoria couldn't help but feel the metaphorical weight of the papers she had hastily stuffed into her apron pocket when Franco ran up to her earlier. She knew (they all knew) it was likely that Mamá Imelda wasn't going to live very long. If she did, she would be bed-bound and need around the clock care for everything. And for a woman like Victoria's grandmother, so stubborn and independent, that would be almost like torture. As much as they didn't want to lose her, death would be kinder. Mamá was going to be devastated, worse than when they lost the Tíos and Tía Rosita.
And Victoria realized that she couldn't tell her that her papá was already dead too. That he had died long ago and they never knew about it.
So she didn't say anything.
And she never again saw her mother take that late night moment outside to sing her song to the moon again.