Chapter Text
Felipe left Santa Cecilia dreaming of adventure.
He returns to Santa Cecilia haunted by a ghost, his dreams long dead.
Tonight, tonight -
Tonight, he has to tell his sister that her husband is dead.
Fuck.
The sun is setting when the train draws into Santa Cecilia. Felipe wants to break down, but he has to hold his head high, if only for a few more hours.
Óscar is waiting for Felipe at the train station, awash in orange.
The clock has started ticking down.
There is no unwinding the clock, no turning back time. Felipe cannot return to ignorant bliss: he knows Héctor is dead. He knows why Héctor never came home.
He knows too much and not enough. Héctor never abandoned Imelda and Coco, but the truth -
The truth will haunt them all beyond the grave.
He does not know if he can face Imelda right now, but he must. Felipe owes Héctor that much: the truth, even if it hurts.
Felipe blinks away tears as he steps off the train
“How was Mexico City?” Óscar asks, taking the sack of shoelaces off Felipe.
“Life-changing,” Felipe says, with a smile so thin and fake that it would shatter with one gust of wind. “How was Santa Cecilia?”
Óscar shrugs, shifting the sack on his back. “Much the same. Imelda made some black sauce especially for you for tonight’s dinner.”
“Oh, that’s delightful,” Felipe says, his words hollow.
Life goes on.
Even if everything else has stopped.
.
The seconds it takes for the door to open are dreadful.
Imelda is smiling. A slight smile, but a smile nonetheless.
She sent him to get shoelaces. He has returned with news that will obliterate her heart into a million pieces.
Felipe cannot smile back, despite his relief at seeing her alive and whole.
“Hola,” she says, still smiling.
Felipe cannot look away.
Imelda has been harsher since Héctor left out of sheer necessity: she had always been a woman of sharp angles and wit, but Héctor’s loss had whittled away at her softness, leaving kindness behind only for Coco.
Still, the ache of Héctor leaving has only just started to lessen… tonight, Felipe will rip out the stitches of a barely healing wound, rendering it afresh.
“Felipe, we are just about to have dinner. How was the train ride?”
He blinks. “Nothing to complain about on the train,” he says, forcing a chuckle. “Dusty, but that’s to be expected. The shoelaces are good quality, I checked, and he stuck with the quoted price.” If he keeps on talking about the mundane, maybe he will never have to talk about the unspeakable. “Óscar said you made black beans and tortillas for dinner, and that he finished it off. Is that true? Gracías , Imelda, truly…”
He runs out of steam and pushes his glasses back.
Felipe knows that it is better for Imelda to find out about Héctor’s premature death and maybe murder from him than a stranger, but it is not a task he particularly wants.
Heavy is the head that bears the crown.
Imelda frowns. She knows him too well. “What happened in Mexico City?”
He looks at Coco, holding a blue flower gently in one hand. Such a sweet child. A child who has always loved her father ever so much, even in the past year and a half when he became a forbidden topic.
Five is too young for your father to be dead.
“Later,” he whispers, his voice nothing more than a ghost, “after dinner.”
When Coco is asleep. When you can cry. When I can tell you what really happened to your husband.
Imelda nods, but the tension remains.
It will always remain. Ghosts never rest. Never go away.
“I should finish making dinner,” Óscar says, breaking the silence.
Felipe looks away from Imelda. “I’ll go unpack.”
He slips away without another word, his shoes clicking against the wooden floor.
The clock is ticking forward, a storm swelling on the horizon.
Everything tilts on the precipice.
And it is Felipe’s role to knock it all down.
.
His room provides a temporary respite from the ghosts.
Felipe has little to unpack, but it is preferable to carry on like he does not know that Imelda’s husband is dead .
Señor Rodríguez was kind enough to show him Héctor’s skeleton, just to make sure that he really was dead.
The skeleton was Héctor: his brother-in-law, larger than life, reduced to nothing but dust and bones, his golden tooth, fractured right thigh and ratty mariachi suit familiar in a way that made Felipe’s stomach twist.
Felipe pulls out his spare shirt, shakes it out, folds it. Stares at it for a few seconds.
The shirt used to be Héctor’s. Imelda got rid of a lot of Héctor’s stuff, but she kept his clothes. It was only practical.
He shoves the shirt into the drawer, far away.
Too many memories.
Héctor had been Imelda’s husband and Coco’s papa, but he had been Felipe and Óscar’s big brother, too. They had loved him, too. They missed him, too.
And he was gone. Stolen, his life snuffed out at twenty-one.
Felipe runs his hands through his hair.
It is almost time for dinner.
He can do this.
For Héctor.
Can’t he?
It is not about whether or not he wants to tell Imelda: he must.
He will.
.
The air remains tense throughout dinner.
Coco is a delight, as always. She updates him on all the latest events in Santa Cecilia.
Felipe smiles, encouraging her, but on the inside, he is hollow, lifeless. Someone murdered this sweet little girl’s father and he has to break the news to her mother.
Coco is too young to lose her father. Imelda is too young to be a widow. But Héctor has been lost to them for months, nothing more than a ghost.
“Oh, they had Granny Smith apples at the market yesterday?” he asks Coco, voice artificially bright. “Did they sell for a lot of money, Coco?”
Coco nods vigorously. “A very large amount of money, Tío Felipe! Julio’s abuelo bought one for three pesos as a treat and Julio promised me a slice.”
“That’s excellent,” Felipe says, still brightly, but his heart is not really in it.
Dinner continues in a similar fashion: Coco, excited that her tío has come home, Felipe, burdened by Héctor’s death, Imelda and Óscar terse, tasting the tension lingering in the air.
Felipe is trying to act normal for Coco’s sake. But there is nothing normal about learning that your brother-in-law was murdered.
When Coco goes to bed, the tension starts to crack.
The ghosts have returned.
Óscar has gone off to the workshop, muttering about finishing a pair of brown boots that Felipe knows is far from urgent.
Imelda closes Coco’s door quietly. She sits down quietly across from Felipe, lacing then unlacing her hands.
“What happened?” Imelda says, breaking the silence. “Is it about the shoelaces?”
Imelda knows it is not about the shoelaces. She is far from unobservant.
She does not know it is about Héctor.
He shakes his head. “No, it is not about the shoelaces.”
Felipe takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes.
One, two, three.
The dizziness abates, if only for a second.
The clock stops ticking.
He opens his eyes.
Imelda reaches across the table, squeezing his hand. Her hand is warm. “Whatever it is, I am here for you.”
Oh fuck, Felipe thinks, dropping Imelda’s hand instantly. He is not the one who will need comforting.
He cannot look at Imelda anymore.
“I have some news for you.” The words come out quickly - too fast, not fast enough. “It’s about Héctor.”
“¿Qué?” Imelda’s eyes fill with fire. “If you have found out where that cabron is living -”
Felipe swallows, forcing himself to look at Imelda. He owes her that much.
“Héctor is dead, Imelda. Someone murdered him back in 1921.”
Imelda falls silent.
Abandoning his family had never been in character for Héctor Rivera.
But this, this -
It is horrific.
When she speaks, her words are quiet, her eyes wet. “Héctor did not come home from his tour because.” She covers her mouth. “Someone murdered him. Someone.” She swallows. “Murdered my husband . I cannot.”
She stops, turning her head away, her breathing becoming heavy, hitched.
“I am sorry I have to tell you,” Felipe says, voice trembling, “but you needed to know.”
Imelda turns back around. “Do not apologise.” She closes her eyes. Inhales. Exhales. “It is not your fault.” Her words are steady for someone whose world has just been uprooted. “How did you discover that -” She chokes on the words.
Anyone would choke on the words. Yet her gaze remains steady, keeping herself together for Coco.
Coco, asleep peacefully in her bedroom. Coco, now fatherless.
Felipe sighs. He wants to rip out his hair. “I found out by accident. When I was in Mexico City, I went to the police station near the train station to turn in a lost wallet. The police there had been attempting to identify a dead body for the past year and a half. They showed me his picture. It was Héctor.”
The words are perfunctory, hollow. That was what happened.
Your husband is dead . Nothing he does can soften the blow.
“It was Héctor,” Imelda repeats, quietly, looking back up. Her gaze promises vengeance. “Someone killed my husband and widowed me. Someone killed Coco’s papa and she could have spent the rest of the life thinking he abandoned her. We could have never known.”
It is pure mishap - or perhaps luck - that Felipe stumbled upon Héctor’s murder.
Was it good luck? Bad luck? Knowing feels like a curse, but not knowing and mistakenly besmirching his name -
That was worse.
“Yeah,” Felipe says, numb. They could have lived the rest of their lives damning Héctor for the crime of being murdered and abandoned in the streets of Mexico City, a man who could not come home, not would not.
The difference is worlds apart.
“How?” Imelda asks, a tear finally slipping down her face, although it is silent. “How did he -”
She stops, unable to continue.
“Poison,” Felipe says, softly. “Arsenic, I think. He was found in January 1922 in a shallow grave near the train station, already a skeleton.” He swallows. It is gruesome, but Imelda has the right to know how her husband died. “He was still wearing his mariachi suit and wedding ring. They found a picture of him in his pocket, but no identifying information.”
Imelda leans forward, cradling her head with her hands.
“It was Ernesto,” she says, finally. “Ernesto killed my husband.”
“Why do you…”
Felipe cannot finish his sentence.
The idea is too terrible, too…
Plausible.
“Who else could it have been?”
Felipe nods, slowly.
Poison is mainly used by personal contacts.
And Ernesto had always been a little too ambitious.
“Héctor is dead,” Imelda replies, slowly, head sinking into her hands. Her next words are muffled. “Thank you for informing me, Felipe.”
Felipe’s mouth is dry. “Of course.”
It is time for him to leave.
Felipe gets up, quietly walking out of the living room.
He leaves behind his sister to grieve alone for her husband.
He wants to stay with her, but he cannot. If Felipe stays, Imelda will try to stay strong.
By leaving, Felipe gives her the dignity of collapsing in private.
The sun set during dinner. The world outside is pitch black, the hum of flies is faint, the wind’s whistle is muted.
Or maybe that is merely Felipe’s imagination: everything has felt overwhelmingly bleak, since the revelation.
Felipe walks over to the workshop. Imelda must tell Coco that her papa is dead. But Felipe can tell Óscar.
The orange-yellow light of their workshop is on, leaking through the crack underneath the door.
Their workshop is squashed into a small, detached shed that has seen far better days. But it is what they have.
Felipe opens the door. It creaks.
Óscar stops stitching. The pair of non-urgent brown boots is almost complete.
“What happened?” Óscar says, wearily. “Did you learn something about Héctor?”
Óscar has read him, through and through.
“Yeah,” Felipe says, biting his lip. “Um, he’s dead. He’s been dead for the past year and a half but he was never identified until I went into a police station in Mexico City, it was -”
He stops, stops quickly and urgently before he can break into tears and crumble under the weight of Héctor’s ghost.
“Héctor’s dead? ”
Felipe looks down at the floor. “Yes.”
“Are you sure about this? Did you tell Imelda?”
“Yes,” Felipe says, “I saw his body - his skeleton.”
Óscar’s needle clatters to the floor. “ Mierda .”
Felipe wishes Héctor was not dead.
Instead, he is stuck with his ghost, haunting his every step.