Imelda worried her husband was slipping away long before she received his final letter. That bastard de la Cruz had been a horrible influence for as long as she could remember, even if she was just as wrapped around his finger as Héctor was at times. She had to shake herself off, remind herself that she couldn't afford to fall for the musician's tricks, the same tactics he'd used to take Héctor from her.
Of course, it wasn't all de la Cruz. Héctor was a kind father, and a loving husband, but ambitious. Eventually, that ambition came to matter more to him than his family. Their arguing became more and more frequent — Héctor felt as if he was being smothered, and Imelda implored him to take being the head of the Rivera household seriously. The arguments always ended the moment Héctor started hugging and kissing his wife an hour later, because she could never stay mad at her loving fool of a husband, not when they needed one another to take care of Coco.
As she found, though, the dissatisfaction continued to linger beneath the surface. They would argue, then stop, but no conclusion would truly be reached, no matter how many times Imelda yelled at him for his lack of focus. Héctor felt like he was being personally targeted, that Imelda hated what he was doing, but that wasn't true. She loved the music, and it was something they desperately needed, but she recognized the sacrifice that had to be made to keep them afloat.
Héctor didn't seem to.
Imelda knew she was being harsh, but she couldn't continue to live in cheerful denial like her husband. They just didn't have the time to act like young lovers anymore, as much as she missed it — the only place an orphan street musician earned enough to provide for his entire family was in fiction, no matter how soulful the songs or desperate the singer. Real life just didn't work that way, Imelda's parents had warned when she first fell for that penniless orphan. She didn't care then, but now, she was being forced to.
Above it all, though, she still loved Héctor, more than anything. So, avoiding conflict for once, she stamped down her sense and let her husband wander the country on tour. He and Ernesto were attached at the hip just as they were in childhood, and Imelda thought harshly that they barely matured since then. But she knew how easy it would be for her husband to leave her for another woman, a more supportive one, a less cruel one, one who shared his dreams, and so she smiled as she bid them goodbye.
She smiled as she wrote the musicians letters, and smiled at the stories her husband told, just as expressive in writing as he was in person. She smiled as she gave feedback on their songs, and even sang a few to Coco in hopes of sating the girl's fear that her Papá was gone forever. She smiled as she read every letter, even when they became shorter and shorter. She smiled through the struggles of raising her daughter alone, and smiled through the thundering anxiety of when Héctor would next send money home.
It was all she could do to not lose her mind.
Eventually, the money stopped coming in, as did the letters. She reread the last one over and over to the point where she could likely recite it from memory — written on July 26th, on the surface no different from his usual updates, if a bit shorter, but Imelda couldn't help but fill in the blanks with dark conclusions. My precious other half, the heading read, but her heart couldn't help but ache to imagine that was the farthest from what Héctor believed.
He left her behind, and with him went part of Imelda's soul. She never expressed this, forcing herself to stay happy for Coco, through struggling to keep food on the table. She'd sacrificed so much to be with Héctor, the goofy, big-hearted, and dim-witted musician her family despised so much, and yet he had the nerve to abandon her without another thought.
As much as it hurt to move every day, knowing she'd pushed the love of her life as far as he could go, that Héctor's fantasy of fame and fortune mattered more to him than she ever did, Imelda couldn't wallow. She had to care for Coco — it wasn't like anybody else was going to. She may have been suffering, but she wasn't going to be like Héctor and let that turmoil hurt their daughter.
She was painfully aware of how much this hurt the Rivera reputation, having gone from a rags-to-riches story of an educated young girl and her poor yet talented husband, to a single mother who could barely afford to go to the market and her tiny daughter with stitched-up clothing. People looked at her not with the respect they once did, but pity, all the while Héctor and Ernesto were off earning admiration of the world over.
When she received a letter from the latter, nearly a month after she wrote the one she promised would be her last, she began to regret ever asking. Ernesto explained that he and Héctor had a falling out over songwriting, his friend blinded by a lust for glory even he couldn't sate. How he stormed out of their hotel (likely to enter the arms of female fans, Ernesto added, which Imelda wasn't sure if she wanted more or less details on) and never returned.
Rereading it over and over, the shock never diminished. Héctor leaving even his best friend to pursue fame. Héctor in the arms of other women. Fans. By the time Imelda took in what she was reading, she could barely manage a response. She felt numb — even when the possibility that her husband would tire of her was always in the back of her mind, seeing it confirmed was worse. In denial, she eventually decided that neither musician was worth listening to. It was all she had left of her husband after his months of silence, even if it was a conclusion she dreaded to come to, but reading Ernesto's words felt like libel. If nothing else, they were decent kindle for the fireplace in this tumultuous time.
She knew, though, that Ernesto had no reason to spread rumors. They may have never gotten on the right foot, but this wasn't the kind of prank he would pull. Though that letter was now out of sight, Imelda couldn't hide from the painful words — the truth that her husband, the man who vowed to love her above all else, no longer belonged to her, and possibly never even did. His family was nothing more than a novelty that wore thin.
Clearing her head was difficult when she read her husband's betrayal every time she closed her eyes, but there were more important things to tend to: providing for the daughter that was just as abandoned as her.
She was restless, having spent nearly a week perfecting a single pair of shoes for Coco, just to give her hands something to do that wasn't scratching her arms raw with anxiety. They came out well, which had to be some kind of silver lining, but upon looking at her reflection in the leather, she only saw the pathetic and lowly laborer she told herself she would never become.
Oscar and Felipe began to visit, no doubt having caught word of the wreck their older sister had become. She expected them to point and laugh, as they always had, but they only hugged her and offered to support her, with an air of maturity she never would have expected from the troublemakers. They helped out in the home-turned-shoe-shop, and Imelda had to repress the nagging voice that they only did so out of pity.
They were her little brothers, the boys who thought she was the coolest person alive, and yet Héctor and Ernesto had warped her into thinking the worst. But could she be blamed? If her closest childhood friends could betray her the moment they decided she didn't deserve to be part of their dream, was there anyone left she could truly trust?
The months crawled by, as no further letter came home, and Coco continued to ask about her Papá. Imelda was losing her patience, and never again wanted to inspire the fear in her daughter that she did upon snapping that Papá was never coming home.
He left them. Performing was nothing more than a means for him to get away from the family life he would never grow into. In the beginning, she could hardly stand to equate the kind man she knew and loved with a selfish, ambitious, womanizing street musician, but the more she thought back, the more signs she saw. Signs she never noticed before, blinded by his so-called love as she was, but now that he had betrayed her, those discarded memories bubbled back to the surface.
Memories of every time he was a little too close with a fellow female performer, all of the times he used Imelda's affection to avoid her criticism, all of the times he snuck out behind her back, all of the times he extended the tour that was supposed to last two months but was now going on ten. The family picture on their mantle, the one they spent forever trying to get to look right, was no longer a loving momento but a painful reminder of how blind she had been.
Pulling the photo from its frame with the precision of the cobbler she became in her grief, Imelda's hands shook to be holding the paper again. So much had changed since the last time she held it that she barely recognized herself. There was still a light in her eyes, stern as she looked, and her hair had no strand out of place. The woman in the photo was a mother who had everything she wanted out of life and more, and woman holding the photo was someone she would've scoffed at ten months ago.
Her eyes drifted to Coco, sat on the better her's lap. The happy little girl whose joy she tried harder to protect than anything else, even if she didn't have the bond with her that Héctor did. There was something special between them, and she thought back to the song they would play every night. Most of the words failed her, but she knew the tune clear as day. Her thumb stroked her daughter's face and hair, the worn photo barely capturing the happiness she knew the girl possessed, the happiness she didn't think she'd seen since before her husband left.
Imelda pursed her lips, feeling a headache coming on as she finally looked to the white-dressed man at her shoulder.
That shy smile had her fooled. She felt like it was mocking her suffering, and she could hear his laughter so clearly. Laughter she once thought to be playful, or like a comforting ray of light in the dark, was now cruel and condescending. It had been soured like everything else that belonged to Héctor — Imelda included.
He always thought she was so stupid, so irrational, hadn't he? She could feel her eyes well with tears to think of how many times he must've complained about her, how miserable she made him. Shallow, disloyal, overambitious fool he may have been, the idea that she hurt him was almost more painful than any of the things he did to her.
Unconsciously, a small rip was forming at the photo's corner. Her finger and thumb were pressed tight into it, and she wasn't sure what possessed her when her hand continued to pull, irreparably tearing the family portrait that was one of the last pieces of the Héctor she fell in love with. Her heart twisted, the heat on her back making her feel as if she was a mischievous child breaking a valuable.
A loud, ugly noise followed the tear as it continued across the photograph, and for a moment Imelda stopped as it reached Héctor's shoulder. This wasn't right, she told herself, pulling a sweaty hand away to observe the damage. Enough of the photo had been torn that the corner hung limply, Héctor's head lolling back.
There was no repairing it — nothing she could afford that wouldn't look cheap, anyway. Steeling herself, she pulled again, trying to balance the righteous anger this made her feel with not wanting to damage the photo any more than she truly had to. Soon, Héctor's head was pulled off of his shoulders. If he was going to leave the family, then he should've expected to be treated like it.
Imelda grasped the corner of the photo, and as the fury faded, she felt... hollow. She remembered having it taken, and with it now damaged in her hands, there was no returning to the happiness of that day. It was mundane and tedious, but the kind that was enjoyable. Héctor could've made anything enjoyable.
Crumpling that corner and throwing it into the trash should've been easy, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Pushing it out of sight, she simply shoved into a bedside drawer instead. Even when she knew it was jeering at her, Imelda could never hurt that smile.