The family were as relieved and delighted and heartbroken as Elena predicted. Enrique hugged her and said she'd done a good thing. Miguel played his sad guitar sadly for the rest of the day. Rosa wanted to know exactly what happened, for her graphs. Gloria claimed her psychic had predicted this and she had known all along this would happen, so she'd never been worried.

Fool Psychic!

Elena made this happen, not some hippy with a crystal.

Pah!

-0-

Detective Peralta called the morning after Héctor returned. The Mexico City Police Department were finally releasing his body.

Elena had to laugh at the timing.

If they'd released it any earlier, Héctor could have been a guest at his own funeral. Perhaps it was for the best that it happened now. Being a guest at your own funeral would be morbid and weird.

Elena was going to throw Héctor a tasteful and serious funeral this time, since he missed out on being buried properly the first time around. The mayor extended his condolences and wished to provide support in the planning of the event. They had different interpretations of classy, elegant and small.

The mayor wanted to make the day of the funeral a district wide festival; less of a funeral and more a celebration of Héctor's life and his contributions to the town. A crazy carnival filled with music and confetti and festivities. He proposed that the town could even make it an annual thing.

It would keep the tourists coming in.

He and Elena had several dramatic disagreements, but in the end Elena got most of the things she wanted.

They buried Héctor on November 30th, 2019. It would have been his 119th Birthday.

The church was crowded, the plaza even more so. The whole town and scores of tourists had turned out to see Héctor off in style. Enrique gave a good speech. Gloria too, managed to be somewhat poetic in her tribute. She kept her musings about horoscopes and the mysterious forces of the universe to a minimum at least.

Miguel sang Jug Ears and Remember me until there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Then he sang Proud Corazón, and Chamaco because those songs got everyone dancing. Miguel said Héctor only ever wanted to make people happy with his music.

Héctor was placed next to Mama Imelda and Coco with a simple headstone, like he would have wanted. Héctor had never been pretentious or ostentatious. He was always so sarcastic about Ernesto's huge mausoleum. He'd made jokes with Enrique about over-compensation when the children were asleep.

His grave was the only thing simple and discreet about the funeral. Everything else was a ridiculous extravaganza. The festivities spilled into the plaza and lasted late into the night. However, Héctor had always been fond of the ridiculous and Elena couldn't help thinking that he would have approved. He certainly would have found the jumping castle amusing. Elena got her deposit back, after all!

It was a fitting send off. The music was loud, the fireworks were bright and the smiles were brighter. Héctor had always liked to make people happy with his music, after all.

-0-

The house seemed quieter and emptier after the funeral.

It felt strange to be packing up Héctor's things. Elena put all the clothes she knew he liked, and his spare glasses, and his second pair of boots, as well as that book he'd been in the middle of reading on the offrenda. His smartphone, songbook, keys, and a pile of drawings the twins and Coco had drawn for him were also added to his pile.

-0-

Héctor's music people had kept all his recordings. They wanted to release another album from rough recordings.

Some were 'mash-ups', all sorts of different songs blended together. Héctor used to mess around with Enrique in the studio during their down-time. There were many recordings of Héctor teaching Enrique to play the guitar and playing covers of Enrique's favourite songs. Héctor had brought up the fact that many of Enrique's favourite songs had the same chord structure and had mixed up a couple of songs to demonstrate.

The music people had loved them. They had brought up recording them officially with Héctor several times. Héctor said they were just for fun. He'd never seriously thought about releasing them, because they were other people's songs. He didn't think it was right to make money off other people's song-writing.

The music people had hoped Elena, as Héctor's nearest living relative, would be more amenable to the idea.

Elena was not more amenable to the idea.

"Just listen to the songs." The music person had said, holding a CD out. "Héctor was so good. Just listen to his voice – the way he sings is incredible. We owe it to him to share these songs with the world. It's what he would have wanted."

Who was this impudent music person, to claim to know what her Héctor would have wanted?

He felt Elena's wrath.

It had been so long since she had hit someone with her shoe.

It felt good to do it again.

-0-

Later, Elena listened to the demo CD the music person had left. She heard her son playing the guitar. She heard Héctor's voice for the first time in months. The songs were uncut copies, and sometimes there was a little bit of Héctor and Enrique joking at the start or end of the tracks.

She discovered that there were several truly terrible jokes that those two fools had loved to tell each other. These jokes were incredibly rude and risqué in nature. Thankfully, these jokes had never made it home, because there would be children present.

Track 8 was roughly titled Songs Berto Hates. It was a mashup of well-meaning songs about healing the world and feeding the hungry. At the end of the song there had been some talking.

"There's some nice melodies in these. Why does Berto hate them so much?" Héctor had asked mildly.

"He thinks songs about feeding hungry orphans are a bit of a drag."

"Well, being a hungry orphan wasn't that fun either, to be honest." Héctor had fired back. "Tell you what, if I'm still around next year and I get to make another CD, I'm going to sing about feeding orphans and then give all the money to the orphans and dedicate that song to Berto."

"You'd do all that, just to annoy Berto?"

"No! Not just to annoy Berto… but it sucked, you know, having nothing as a kid. We relied on charity a lot. Now I can give back. Orphans need all the help they can get."

There was a pause.

"But annoying Berto is an added side-bonus, I'm not going to lie about that. I still haven't gotten over the technology museum!"

The track cut out.

-0-

Some time later Elena contacted the music people and agreed to release the recordings on two conditions.

All the proceeds from the entire album went to a charity assisting orphans around the world.

The track about orphans be dedicated to her son Berto.

-0-

Héctor 'cleaned up' during award season, much to Gloria's delight. She was the family member who was the keenest to get all dressed up, go to the ceremonies (and the after-parties) and accept the posthumous awards. Miguel was invited to sing at a few ceremonies. On those nights Enrique went as a supervising adult.

A supervising adult proved useful for the combination of Gloria + Miguel + free champagne + celebrities.

-0-

A new statue was erected to replace the Ernesto one. There had been a town meeting to vote on potential options. Some people felt a replica of the Ernesto Statue was appropriate because of tradition. It had always been there. That man was still a part of the town's history, despite what he did.

There had many arguments and threats at shoe point.

Some people wanted to put a statue of Héctor there instead. Elena knew Héctor would have been horrified at the idea.

There were more arguments and threats at shoe point.

In the end, a compromise was reached.

A large brass replica of the white skull guitar Mama Imelda had given Héctor and Ernesto De La Cruz had stolen was placed in the plaza. When Miguel was in the mood to play music in the Plaza, he would be found under the guitar statue. It wasn't long before the strings became shiny. Tourists seemed to think it would bring them luck to pretend to strum it.

Elena felt like pointing out that the guitar had never brought Héctor any luck at all. Miguel disagreed. If Miguel had never stolen the guitar, he never would have been cursed and they never would have known Héctor.

Miguel thought it was a very lucky guitar.

-0-

Elena frowned in consternation at the offrenda. She had never intended to do it, but a large pile had collected in front of Héctor's side of the family photo.

It wasn't a Mount Héctor. She wasn't nearly as ridiculous as that fool musician. It wasn't even close to a mountain in size.

It was more like a small hill.

A hill of Héctor.

Hills were perfectly understandable and not ridiculous.

To be fair, it wasn't all her letters. The posthumous Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award took up a lot of space, after all.

Elena found she had missed Héctor a lot more than she had expected. She missed his big brown eyes and his ridiculousness. She had missed starting every day sassing him over morning coffee. She liked his good humour, and the way he could make her laugh. She had liked the way he had always listened to her.

The only way she could talk to him now was through writing. She'd started writing to him periodically.

There had always been a reason.

- To tell him about the huge extravaganza the mayor had made of his birthday/burial.

- To tell him about Miguel's new songs.

- To complain about Pepita's rudeness and how he really should have trained her better.

- To tell him about the Latin Grammy, Gloria's ridiculousness and her current irritating habit celebrity name-dropping in conversation.

- To tell him about the statue and the fool tourists.

- To tell him that now they had to deal with fool movie people on top of fool music people – all because of him. The movie people wanted to make a film about Héctor and Ernesto and the year of re-animation. The family was now squabbling over which actors should play them in the movie. Enrique was very insistent that Diego Luna should play his role because he was muy guapo. Berto favoured Gael Garcia Bernal for the role of Berto – the more dashing and handsome great grandson. Elena thought they were both idiots.

- There were four different letters containing her different thoughts and musings about the music people and their request to release the songs.

- There was one very long letter explaining her final decision, because she really wanted Héctor to understand how much she was trying to respect his wishes.

It wasn't quite enough, writing letters, but it had seemed better than nothing. It made missing him a little easier. His songs still played on the radio. Morning coffee would always have a special place in her heart. Every time she heard it, she thought of him.

Still, she saw Héctor in her grandchildren. She saw him in Abel's irreverence and good humour, the twins' endless mischief, and Rosa's sarcasm and eye-rolls. Miguel had so many of his mannerisms she couldn't count them. His "crappy genes" really had been strong.

Héctor was still with them… the only way that he could be.

-0-

Héctor and Imelda held hands going through the departures gate. It took longer with two, but Héctor didn't care. He'd hold Imelda's hand forever if he could. He wasn't planning on letting go any time soon.

Victoria had rolled her eyes in response when he'd said this. She had teased him a great deal about being "glued" to his wife since he got back. "You keep holding hands, eventually your bones are going to fuse together." She'd said as she stepped through the gates.

This was only his second time through the departure gates officially. He still had to fight the impulse to slink in sneakily. Your family loves you, he told himself, giving his body a little shake. If Elena was here, she'd grumble at him for being ridiculous.

The first time Héctor had gone through the departure gates after Miguel had been cursed and Imelda knew the truth, he had gone through on his own. He didn't think there was another photo of him in the land of the living. Even if there was, he didn't know if Miguel had been able to find it and put that photo up.

He was very sure the scanner was going to reject him again. But Imelda had wanted him to try, just in case. For her sake, he had gone along, still expecting to be refused. He'd insisted they go through separately. He didn't want Imelda to be held back just because he couldn't cross over. He had felt overwhelmed with joy when he'd been able to cross that night.

Héctor had no anxieties about the scanner rejecting him tonight, so he and Imelda had gone through together. It caused no end of frustration when the stupid machine started making a strange noise.

The light was flashing rapidly and a turbine started whirring inside it. A little plume of smoke rose alarmingly from the corner of the box.

"What is your devil box doing?" Imelda asked, with some irritation.

"I'm sorry. It appears Héctor Rivera is on so many new offrendas, it has temporarily confounded the machine." The woman behind the counter apologised.

It is I, Frida Kahlo. Shall we skip the scanner? I'm sure I'm on so many offrendas it will overwhelm your blinky thingy.

"That can happen?!" Héctor asked excitedly.

He'd finally broken one of these? One of his crazy schemes had been right?

"Yes, but very rarely. I apologise. I don't wish to hold you up. You will have a busy night. Here is your list of offrendas and their locations" She handed Héctor a print out and ushered them through.

Hector looked in astonishment at the paper in his hand. A picture of him was on nearly every offrenda in Santa Cecilia, as well as offrendas all over the country.

-0-

Santa Cecilia had changed in a year.

He'd been properly buried next to his girls! That was amazing. The police must have got him out from under the titty bar and released his body to his family. It warmed Héctor's whole heart to see that he was finally where he belonged. He was next to Imelda and Coco. He had a simple headstone that matched Imelda's. The dates of his short life followed by the dates of his of re-animation were etched into the stone along with some lyrics from that song Miguel wrote:

Our love for each other will live on forever.

Héctor liked that.

The Ernesto Statue had been replaced by a statue of his guitar. Héctor liked that too.

The sun had only recently set. The annual talent show was getting started. Miguel was the opening act. He wasn't competing. He was there to get the crowd excited. Miguel strode on to the stage proudly and let out a loud grito. It got everybody's attention. People clapped wildly.

"So I'm going to start by singing you one of my Mama Imelda's favourite songs. It was also the first song I ever performed live in front of an audience with my Papa Héctor, so it will always be special to me; get ready for Un Poco Loco."

-0-

"Héctor's here Abuelita, if you want to say hi." Miguel said to Elena in the courtyard.

" Welcome home, fool musician." Elena said, suppressing a smile.

"Ah, don't let her fool you Héctor. She's really missed you. She's made a Mount Héctor for you." Miguel said fondly, smiling at his grandmother.

"It's not a mountain, Miguel! It's only a hill. That's very different." Elena huffed, crossing her arms and sounding embarrassed.

Héctor rushed to the offrenda room, feeling like a kid a Christmas. He was curious to see what Elena had left him.

There were wrapped presents, music awards and statues, (was that large one a Grammy?!) lots of CDs, a CD player so he could play the CDs, a large assortment of snacks, some of his favourite clothes, spare glasses, several books, and a box of letters. She'd piled her letters neatly and in chronological order. How very like Elena.

He opened the first one.

Dear Héctor ,

We love you and miss you. I am not going to be writing to you everyday, because I am not a ridiculous idiot. I have other things to do!