"We're home!"
"And we've brought a surprise!"
"Welcome back!" Julio practically rushed into the workshop, tripping over his own feet in his hurry to reach the wayward Riveras before Imelda could. "Well?" he added, only to stop short when he caught sight of Lucía standing in the threshold.
"O-Oh! Pardon me," he apologized quickly, removing his hat with all the respect afforded by his small town upbringing. "I thought that perhaps the surprise was…"
"Héctor? No, no, it's only me." she guessed, smothering her laugh behind her hand. "Do you remember me?"
"Of course!" he replied, moving to usher her inside. "Please come in, Doña Lucía. You're very welcome here."
"Thank you. You know, you haven't changed one bit, Julito!" Lucía looked him over in quick appraisal. "Why, when I look at you, I see that eager apprentice who nearly got himself killed on his first day." Julio's skull sank into his collar with embarrassment, nearly slipping into his ribcage as the twins began to laugh.
"I was young and foolish," he admitted, fingering his mustache nervously. "I should have asked for help."
"And I'm sure you would have," Oscar quipped, "if you hadn't been trying to impress a certain young lady watching from the window." Julio didn't deny the fact, though his face surely would have been beet red if he'd possessed the ability to blush.
"It was my first day on the job! How was I supposed to know rolls of leather were that heavy? We mostly worked with fabrics in my family's shop."
"Even so…" Lucía tapped her chin thoughtfully as she looked around the empty workshop. "I wish Fernando had thought to bury me in those lovely Rivera boots, you know? All those years I wore them, and not a single blister."
"That's the Rivera guarantee!"
"Are they finally back from that so-called walk?" Before anyone could answer, Imelda swept into the room in a flurry of skirts. "Do you realize what time it is? If you want something to eat, you'd…best…" she faltered, noticing their guest for the first time. "Lucía? What on earth…?"
"Imelda!" she squealed, whipping the faded green shawl from her head and tossing it onto the workbench. Rosita immediately grabbed it, smoothing out the creases before running to hang it up beside the front door. Lucía practically shoved the twins out of the way, making a beeline for her best friend and sweeping her up in an embrace that would rival most constrictors.
"It's been so long since we last spoke, you know? How have you been? I've had to rely on these two blockheads," she jerked her skull at the twins, who were picking themselves up off the ground with identical winces, "to tell me how you were!"
"B-But… why are you here?" Imelda managed, wheezing despite her lack of lungs or an esophagus to be crushed. "Your apartment is so far away, you might as well live in another city entirely!"
"Fernando sent me out for cake," Lucía replied, with the ease and grace of someone used to bending the truth to the point of breaking. "Your brothers managed to find me, and in the process of catching up they let me in on a choice bit of information." She let Imelda slide to the ground, crossing her arms with a conspiratorial glare. "You, Imelda Rivera, sang onstage at the Sunrise Spectacular! And what's worse: you didn't tell me!"
"Don't even mention that night to me," Imelda groaned, rubbing her forehead with a grimace.
"I can mention it, and I will mention it! Right then and there, I decided that I wouldn't be satisfied until my Imelda had told me every last detail, exactly the way it happened. So? What happened?" She shifted her weight to one hip, looking down at Imelda with an expression that was as familiar as it was unwelcome.
When Lucía wanted something, Lucía got it… no matter the cost.
"All right, all right." Imelda's shoulders slumped, but she obediently waved towards the back door. "But not here. We might as well go into the garden," she sighed. Just the thought of that hectic night was enough to make her feel exhausted. "I'll fill you in on everything, I promise."
"Oh, please do! I love a good story, and so does Fernando… at least, when he's not preoccupied by that television." Still chattering away, she allowed Imelda to lead her into the back garden. The moment the door was firmly shut behind them, the rest of the family grouped into a huddle.
"Will she help?" Julio asked, keeping his voice low as he glanced towards the unassuming door.
"Well…" Oscar met his twin's eyes, rolling his shoulders in a half-hearted shrug.
"It's sort of hard to say," Felipe agreed, rubbing the back of his skull sheepishly. "You don't ask someone like Lucía to do something and expect it to be done the way you want it."
"She's always been something of a free spirit."
"She did say she'd help make Mamá Imelda thirsty," Rosita reminded them helpfully.
"What?"
"Metaphorically speaking," Victoria amended, rolling her eyes. Julio still looked confused, but nodded regardless.
"Don't worry." Felipe adjusted his glasses with a heartening—albeit anxious—smile. "If nothing else, Lucía won't make things any worse than they already are. We have to have patience."
"That's right," Oscar agreed. "If she is able to help, she'll help. And if not… we can't say we didn't try our best."
"If nothing else, we can always try Plan B," Victoria pointed out. "We find Héctor in Shantytown, hear his side of the story, and see if there's anything that can be salvaged from this mess."
"Shan—" Julio clapped a hand over his mouth to silence himself, speaking only when he was sure his voice wouldn't break on a shrill note. "Shantytown!?" he whispered, practically trembling in fear. "Where the ghosts are?!"
"Papá, you are a ghost! Besides, they're perfectly harmless down there," she huffed, shaking her head at his theatrics. "But we can cross that bridge when we get to it… if we get to it. We shouldn't put the cart before the horse, after all. Perhaps Doña Lucía has something up her sleeve."
"We looked for Miguel all night, Lucía! I couldn't even make it to the family's ofrenda because he had my photo!"
The garden was quiet, for a change. The only creatures stirring inside of the high stucco walls were the two women, seated on a stone bench beneath the motionless yellow pine. Even the sounds from the street, normally full of energy, didn't seem to pierce the bubble made by Imelda's harrowing narrative.
"So that boy not only stole a guitar, but also your photo? Off an ofrenda? On the Day of the Dead?" Lucía shook her head in dismay. "Uff! What a little delinquent! He reminds me of your brothers at that age."
"As if that wasn't bad enough, he was already starting to become a skeleton himself! You could see the bones right through his skin!"
"¡Dios mío!" she looked nauseous. "What a sight that must have been… all that flesh, wasting away right in front of your eyes…."
"He kept slipping away from me, running off without a care for what was happening to him. And when I do finally manage to find him, where do you think he was?"
"Where?"
"A cenote! That boy was at the bottom of a cenote! And just who was right there beside him?"
"I couldn't begin to guess!"
"Héctor." Imelda hissed the name through gritted teeth, though it held only a fraction of the fury she'd once used. Lucía gasped, her hands over her mouth.
"No!" she whispered through her fingers, eyes wide. "What did you do next?"
"Well… I got them both out of the cenote, of course! But who do you think put them there in the first place?"
"I have no idea. Who?"
"Ernesto de la Cruz—"
"Ernesto de la Cruz!" Imelda jumped as Lucía slapped her knees, the bones clattering together beneath the fabric of her dress. "¡Que cabrón! I told you he was no good, you know! From the very start, I knew…. How I'd love to get my hands on that rat!" she snarled. "I might have died an old granny, but I'm still young enough to give him what-for! But Imelda, what happened next?"
"The next thing I know, I'm dressed like Frida Kahlo!"
"…Frida?"
"When I turn the corner, there stands Ernesto! Well, what am I supposed to do? He's a murderer and a thief! So, I hit him with my boot."
"Good for you!"
"There was a bit of a scuffle, because he didn't want to give us Héctor's photo. Luckily we had the whole family there, or we might have been outnumbered."
"I'd have liked to see that!"
"And then, before I know what's happening, I'm standing onstage! In front of everyone! And Miguel tells me to sing, and there's bodyguards chasing me all over the stage, trying to grab me out of the spotlight—"
"What?!"
"And then Ernesto does grab me—"
"Ay! The perverted—"
"In any case, I managed to get the photo back, at least for a moment." Imeda cleared her throat, conveniently skipping over the part where she lost her senses and threw herself into her husband's waiting arms. "But Ernesto takes Miguel instead, and throws him over the ledge!"
"No!" Lucía was on her feet, fists balled and eyes blazing with indignation. "He did not! A fall from that height would hurt anyone much less a… a living boy!"
"He did it," Imelda repeated softly. "Everyone saw him. It was filmed on live television."
"But… a living boy…." Lucía's face fell. She slowly sat back down, a fluttering hand over her heart. "Ernesto was a jerk, yes, but he never seemed to be capable of something like that. What happened to him, to make him so heartless? Is that truly what fame does to a man?"
"I think he always had it in him, maybe." Imelda looked down at her lap, hands wringing together as she spoke. "You see, as it turns out, Ernesto—that is, he—" She stopped, her voice catching in her throat.
"Go on."
"He murdered Héctor." She swallowed thickly, the words bitter on her tongue. Lucía nodded slowly.
"The twins told me as much earlier. As hard as it is to believe…"
"That sorry excuse for a musician murdered my husband." Imelda was too angry to cry, her expression contorted in anguish as her hands clenched into shaking fists. "He poisoned him and dumped his body in some ditch—left him like a dog—"
"Shh, Imelda. Shh…" Lucía drew her closer, rubbing the spot between her shoulder blades with a comforting hand. "It's all right."
"It's not all right! He left him to die!" As soon as she said them aloud, for the first time Imelda felt the true implication of those words. Ernesto had abandoned his friend, knowing full well that he would die where he lay. "My Héctor," she whispered, shaking her head in grief. "He left him to die…. What if he was in pain? What if he was hurting, and he still—" The thought was agony, pulsing a tight rhythm in her chest where her heart should have been.
"Shh." Lucía continued to rub her back soothingly, fishing out a handkerchief from her dress and pressing it to her friend's hand. Imelda took it unthinkingly, twisting it between her fingers as she swayed. "We both know how it feels to die, dear. It doesn't hurt forever." She leaned down, pressing their temples together in a quiet embrace. "Don't waste any tears on that no-good Ernesto. He's not worth anyone's notice, you know. The sooner he's forgotten, the better."
They sat together in silence, listening to the bubbling fountain at their feet. From afar, they seemed the echo of two young ladies who once spent long, lazy afternoons at the riverside a lifetime ago.
"I'm a little upset I didn't get to see you onstage, you know." Imelda didn't reply. "We used to talk about it when we were younger; do you remember? Dancing together with Oscar and Felipe in the bar, before the customers started pouring in for the night… we were going to be famous, you and me. Or so we imagined."
"Silly dreams for silly girls." Imelda chuckled sadly. "I would not have gone onstage when I was alive. It was hard enough being dead. I've never been so terrified as I was at that moment!"
"You didn't like it?"
"Not one bit! All those eyes, staring at me? And the bright lights, and the loud music and… no, I did not like it at all." She paused. "If it hadn't been for Héct—for my family—I would not have been able to go through with it, even if I'd been paid afterwards."
"But the singing?" Lucía nudged her with a knowing smile. "How was that?"
"I… I did enjoy the singing," Imelda couldn't help but confess. "I had not dared to sing in so long that I forgot what it felt like. How much I loved it. For a moment, I was young again." She sighed. "But it's better to leave all that in the past, I think. Old women don't sing."
"What do you mean, old women don't sing? I'm only three years older than you, and I sing all the time! Who do you think you're calling old?!" She swiped playfully at Imelda's shoulder. "Sing, amiga. Sing with all your heart. It does the heart good to feel young."
"I suppose, but—" Imelda gestured vaguely. "I do have a business to run. Music is… not a part of that. It can't be part of that."
"And why not?" Lucía sniffed, not bothering to wait for an answer. She peered around the garden, toes tapping their own rhythm on the dusty earth. "Where is Héctor, anyway? It's not like him to ignore an old friend. Maybe he's afraid I'll smack him around the way I used to, when we were kids."
"Héctor isn't here." Imelda turned away, averting her gaze; her hands continued to twist the handkerchief, fingertips plucking at the neatly embroidered hem.
"He's not here?" Lucía scoffed. "So you risk your life for his photo, but he's still not allowed to come home? Is that it?"
"I only did that because I didn't want him to be Forgotten!" Imelda protested. "No other reason. Don't read into it."
"I see."
"Don't take that tone with me!" Imelda snapped, crossing her arms. "Héctor and I have a mutual agreement. It's better off this way for the both of us."
"I can't say that I blame you, you know." Lucía's face turned thoughtful as she looked at the house, the afternoon sun glinting off the upper story windows. "Or rather, I understand why you don't love him anymore."
"Yes—well—"
"Hmm?" She leaned over, bending at the waist to meet her friend's eyes. "Surely you don't love him anymore. Otherwise you'd have never let him go, right?" No answer. Imelda twisted a little further on the bench, tugging absently at her skirts. "Am I wrong?"
"It's complicated!"
"Ay, for the love of… look me in the eyes, Imelda!" From one mother to another, the command was maternal enough that Imelda obeyed without thought. "Tell me right now that you do not love him. Say it: I don't love Héctor anymore. I don't want him anymore."
"I… I don't…" Imela groaned, dropping her head into her hands. "I don't know, Lucía."
"Whyever not?"
"I just don't know!"
"Hmm." Lucía leaned back, lifting her eyes to the drooping pine boughs overhead. "Do you remember my wedding day, Imelda?"
"Of course. I still have the photo." It had been taken by Lucía's request, a way to immortalize their friendship. Two sepia-toned women standing in front of a church, side-by-side with matching solemn expressions. One tall and slender, her black hair and blacker eyes shining like splotches of ink against the brilliant white patterns of her beaded wedding dress. The other shorter and several months with child, her round face both stern and lively. "I couldn't help but take a copy from your ofrenda."
"It is a nice photo," Lucía agreed. "But as nice as it is, it doesn't show my true feelings, you know."
"It was such a pain that we couldn't smile easily back then. I was glad when they fixed that sort of thing. It's much better to look like your normal self in a photo." Imelda's mind went back to the young dancer who'd snapped a photo of her before she could even finish preparing. In modern times such a thing was instant, whereas before they'd had to stand for ages beneath the hot sun, sweat dripping down their backs. She remembered Coco kicking against her ribs almost as if in protest… or perhaps the babe had been dancing in the womb.
"That's not what I mean." Lucía drew her braid over one shoulder, fingers running loops over the soft, thick rope of hair. "Even if I had showed my true feelings, I would not have been smiling that day."
"Why not?"
"Oh, Imelda. I was terrified. I don't know how I kept from shaking like a leaf during the ceremony."
"You?" Imelda gaped, forgetting herself in her shock. "You?! But you've never been afraid of anything!"
"I was afraid to be married."
"I don't understand." Lucía lifted her shoulders in a careless shrug.
"For as long as I could remember, it had always been just us women in the family. No men allowed, my mother used to say. Sometimes they died, but usually they just left," she explained bluntly. "You know, my own father took off for Mexico City the day I was born. All he would say is that he wanted a son, not a useless mouth to feed."
"You've said as much before, but that still doesn't explain—"
"If my marriage was anything like Mamá's, Fernando would only stay a few years. If that."
"I… I see. Your children would also be fatherless."
"Oh, I wasn't worried about that. The children would have been fine. That's not what I was afraid of."
"Then what?" She lowered her voice. "Your wedding night?"
"Honestly, Imelda!" Lucía rolled her eyes. "Be realistic."
"What, then!?"
"I loved him," she answered simply. "I still love him, the old goat."
"…What?"
"I was afraid for myself, Imelda. I knew that if he left me…" she hesitated, an age-old sadness in her eyes. "I didn't even want to think about that. I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it, not the way Mamá had. She hadn't loved my father, not really. But I loved Fernando, you know? I loved him so much that I was afraid to marry him."
"But you never even told me!" Imelda cried. "Why did you not say something?"
"Oh, you know me. Too proud, too vain. Strong Lucía, independent Lucía. Silly Lucía, more like. Idiot Lucía. In any case, I couldn't stop thinking about what would happen. When it would happen. Eventually I became pregnant with Verónica, and I managed to convince myself that boy or girl, he'd leave as soon as the baby was born."
"Oh, Lucía!"
"Foolish, wasn't it?" she laughed sadly. "In any case, I tried to prepare for it as best I could. I thought that if I didn't speak to him, it would hurt less when he left. So, I pushed him away. And when he tried to reach out to me, I pushed him harder. A stupid idea, but who isn't full of stupid ideas when they're young?"
"I never knew."
"No one outside of the house knew. I made sure of it. And to be honest, Fernando had every right to leave, with the way he was being treated. It hurts to think of how cruel I was, back then. The night Verónica was born, he came to the door of the bedroom and just stared at me. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and I thought to myself, "Well, this is it!". I was certain that he'd come to tell me goodbye and good riddance."
"And?"
"And when I looked at him, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, it would tear me apart to hear him say that I wasn't enough. That we weren't enough."
"Fernando would never."
"Of course he would never! Like I said, I was an idiot!" Lucía busied herself with her hair once more. "He looked me dead in the eyes and said, "I can't tell if you want me gone or not, but I'm staying! I aim to stick around, so get used to it!" And for once in my life, I was too shocked to speak."
"That does sound like something Fernando would say," Imelda mused, thinking of the blunt young man her friend had married.
"He came into the bedroom and held me while I cried, the big softie. He even let me get a punch in… not that I was in any shape to be punching." Lucía looked mildly embarrassed at the memory. "We never spoke about it again. I knew he'd stay no matter what. I learned to trust him, the way I should have trusted him from the start." She shifted her weight, propping her chin in her hand. "I suppose it's a good thing I died first, you know? I probably wouldn't have been as strong as he was."
"I never knew any of that, Lucía. You surprise me." Imelda stared at her a long moment, wondering how she could have gone her entire life without knowing the truth. "It's a bittersweet story, but… why did you bring it up?"
"Because I was afraid once, you know? And if Lucía can be afraid, it's all right for Imelda to be afraid, too." She smiled. "It's not easy, is it? Giving your heart to someone else."
"That—what—I am not afraid of Héctor!"
"Maybe you're not afraid of him, but you're afraid to trust him. You can't deny that much."
"And just why should I bother to trust him? He left!" She stood up, pacing angrily in front of the bench. "You don't understand what it's like, so don't pretend—Fernando stayed with you in the end, didn't he? He never meant to break your heart, the way Héctor broke mine!"
"Meant to break?" she repeated, brows arched in surprise. "Why, Imelda! I never knew that Héctor meant to be murdered!"
"That's not what I meant, and you know it."
"I didn't say that you're wrong for being angry." Lucía followed her with her eyes, one finger tracing the green swirls on her cheekbone. "I said that you've been hurt, and you're afraid of being hurt again."
"I'm not afraid."
"Aren't you?"
"No." She took a deep breath, smoothing the imaginary wrinkles from her dress. "We simply agreed that this is the best choice for both of us. Héctor is—that is to say, I am—we are old," she sighed. "What we had was beautiful, but it's in the past. I'm far too old to even think about starting over; that sort of thing is best left to the children. And…."
"And?"
"I couldn't bear to hold him back." Imelda reached over, picking a leaf from one of the flowering herbs growing near the base of the fountain. She shredded it in her hands, green confetti fluttering to the ground around her heels. "In the living world, I mean. And even if things would be different, now that we're both dead… it doesn't seem worth the effort to try."
"Hold him back? Do you honestly mean to say that after all these years, you still think you let him go without a fight? I'm surprised at you!" she scolded. "What else could you have done?"
"I'm not sure." Imelda's face fell. "I do wonder, sometimes."
"Even if you had somehow convinced him to stay, what makes you think life would have been any better for you? Listen to me," she insisted, lifting her voice when Imelda tried to interrupt, "if Héctor had stayed in Santa Cecilia, he would have spent the rest of his life wondering about what might have been. And you would have felt guilty for, as you say, holding him back."
"But—"
"Sometimes, things have to be for no other reason than they have to be. There's no sense in dwelling on it."
"I dwell on it because I have a family to protect!"
"Don't say that." Lucía frowned. "The family has nothing to do with this, not anymore. The only person you're trying to protect is yourself!"
"I am not only trying to protect myself! Do you really think I'm that selfish!?"
"Then who—"
"¡Por Dios! I'm trying to protect him, Lucía!" Her clenched jaw trembled, a tear pooling in the mostly-empty socket. She quickly wiped it away with the twisted handkerchief, releasing the rest of her breath in a shuddering exhale. "I'm trying to protect him from… from me."
"Don't," she added, cutting off Lucía before she could speak. "I know myself, and I know now what I'm capable of when it comes to others… even those I care about." She tried to compose herself, taking one deep breath after another, but the words she'd kept locked up inside since the Sunrise Spectacular were pouring out unchecked.
"When I died, I didn't want to see him ever again. He found me anyway, and he tried to explain, but I wouldn't let him. Even when he begged me to listen, I turned him away without a second thought. So many times he could have explained it to me, if I'd only let him get a word in edgewise! But I was so stubborn, and I never—he must have thought I was—how was he supposed to know that Ernesto never told me what happened?"
"Don't start crying! Here, use the handkerchief—"
"I wrote to him once. Ernesto, I mean. I just thought that if I knew he had truly chosen music and fame over his family, I'd finally be able to move on and forget him completely. But no one answered my letter. I decided that maybe Ernesto hadn't seen it, that he'd mistaken it for fan mail and put it aside, or—oh, Lucía!" Imelda wiped fruitlessly at her eye sockets, tears spilling from her cheekbones and falling onto her ribcage one by one. "What if he did read it, but didn't bother to answer? What if he ignored me on purpose?"
"I wouldn't put it past him," Lucía sniffed haughtily. "But why bother beating yourself up about it? Héctor couldn't have known, it's true, but there were things that you didn't know either. What were you supposed to have done? Hindsight is twenty-twenty, you know."
"I hurt him, Lucía, and I did it on purpose. I wanted… I wanted him to feel a fraction of the pain he put me through for so many years. But I ended up doing so much worse. He was nearly Forgotten, all because of me!"
"But that's changed, hasn't it? Thanks to your Miguel, he is remembered!"
"You didn't see him, the way he was too weak to stand, barely able to hold up his—"
"Tch! Would you stop with that already?" Lucía finally snapped. "The Imelda I know and love wouldn't wallow in her own self-pity like this. You made a mistake. So what? Everyone makes them every now and then, you know? And even if it hadn't been reversible—which it was, mind you!—it sounds to me like Héctor was too nice to blame you for it. So, why are you still making such a fuss?"
"Because… I suppose it's because I blame myself."
"Well? Get over it!" She threw her hands up, as though it were possible to toss the whole ordeal over her shoulder and call it a day. "If you're lucky, you'll have several lifetimes to make up for it."
"It's not that simple!"
"Only because you insist on making it complicated, you know." She smoothed over the embroidered flowers on her skirt, shaking her braid over her shoulder. "I bet you all the money in my pocketbook that if Héctor was standing in front of us right now, he'd be agreeing with me." Imelda looked down, wringing out the sodden handkerchief one last time before offering it back.
"So what you're saying is… I should give us another chance?" she whispered, not looking up.
"I think the only one that really knows the answer to that question is you, dear."
"But I don't know! I don't know at all!"
"Then I don't know, either!" Lucía shook out the handkerchief before stowing it back in her pocket, patting her friend roughly between the shoulder blades. "When the time is right, you'll figure it out. After all: between the two of us, you always were the more intelligent one."
"I insist you stay for supper, Lucía. I won't take no for an answer."
"Oh, no, Imelda. I know how this goes." Lucía laughed in her usual blunt manner, shaking her head. "After supper, you'll insist I stay the night because it's too late to go home. Isn't that right? But I really must be off."
"Are you sure?"
"Blame Fernando, if you won't blame me. It's all right, he won't mind." She waved off repeated invitations, grabbing Imelda by the shoulders and kissing both cheekbones before wrapping her in another tight embrace. "He has to have cake in that house at all times, you know. The corner store closes in two hours, so I really have no choice but to run."
"I'm sure he'll understand—"
"Then you don't remember my Fernando," she quipped, drawing the twins in for a kiss. "I'm sure he's already tapping his foot, waiting for me to walk through the door and complaining about how I can take up an entire afternoon running my mouth. Now, mis gemelitos: promise you won't wait another twenty or thirty years to come by for a visit? I'll be angry if I don't see you."
"Sure," they agreed in unison. "If you want us to."
"I do, I do. Rosita, Victoria? That invitation is for the both of you, too. In fact, I'll hold you all to it! The Villa has a banquet hall that they rent out, you know. For my birthday next year, I think both our families should meet up for one big party! Lots of fun! Even Fernando won't be able to say no to that one."
"We wouldn't miss it for the world," Imelda assured her. "Name the date, and we'll be there."
"I will go ahead and plan on all the Riveras attending. Not just the ones in this room." She raised her brows pointedly. Imelda averted her eyes, feigning interest in a scuff on the workshop floor. "Well, I'm off! Until next time, Riveras!" She offered a little wave, long fingerbones wiggling, and sailed out the door in a flurry of green wool. "¡Adios!"
"Take care!" They waved to her from the door, watching her lanky form glide down the front walk.
"It's always nice to have a visit from an old friend," Oscar said conversationally, running a finger along the side of his mustache.
"Yes…." Imelda replied absently, plucking at her sleeves. "It's certainly nice to… indulge."
"Indulge?"
"In gossip, I mean. Sitting around in idleness, talking about the past… careless indulgences. It's never put a roof over anyone's head."
"It's funny you should say that," Victoria pointed out, adjusting her glasses with a wry smile. "People on television do it every day."
"Gossiping about the past?" Felipe glanced quickly at his brother. "Is that what the two of you were doing out there?"
"We were remembering old times," Imelda explained slowly. "We spoke of her wedding, and my… well, of other things." She clapped her hands, suddenly all business as she marched towards the kitchen. "But that was then, and this is now, and it's nearly time to eat. An early supper won't harm anyone, seeing as we missed lunch." The Riveras looked at one another with varying levels of confusion, though the twins were smiling.
"Do you think she helped?" Felipe shrugged. "What now?"
"What now?" Oscar parroted. "Why, we play it by ear."
