So, I'm loving everything you're writing at the moment (I mean, my god, the Bedside Ghost is sooo good, but thinking of your Heaven and Earth series recently made me question the state of Héctor's and Ernesto's parents in the Land of the Dead for any of your stories. Maybe you have answered it and I missed it but are they still around? Did Héctor's parents ever wonder what happened to him after he died? Sorry but your writing makes me care!
Aw, thanks! And I don’t think I got into Héctor’s parents yet! I figure they died before Héctor’s got married (I may or may not kill them off before he turns 15) and that for a time Héctor got to be with them in the Land of the Dead. But eventually they were forgotten, and the only family Héctor had left was wanted nothing to do with him. I suppose that was when he moved to Shantytown!
As for Ernesto’s, I brought them up in Down to Dust! Gimme a moment to find the quote, I’m a lazy bitch.
His parents were definitely there, but he had no idea in which part of the cemetery . He hadn’t been there when they’d died and been buried. He’d meant to, for his mother at least, but he’d been busy. There had been places to be, crowds to play for, movies to shoot; he had no time to go back to bury a body that wouldn’t even know he was there.[...]It wasn’t like he’d neglected his duties as a son. He’d sent money, plenty of it, so that they could live comfortably. He’d written home when his father had died, sent more money for both funerals when needed. He’d seen them again in the Land of the Dead, sure enough, after his own untimely death. Now they were forgotten - they’d both been forgettable people - but from the day they had known their memory was beginning to fade to their last moments in the Land of the Dead, they had lived in his mansion. Ernesto couldn’t let them spend their last years in a shack, after all. What would people say if they knew Ernesto de la Cruz had let his own mother and father spend the remainder of their existence in a shack?
He hadn’t precisely spent much of that time with them; they were too reserved, too out of place in the parties he would throw, with the guests he would entertain. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of them, precisely, but… well, they all had known they were simply not what people would expect, so they’d kept to themselves. But they had been comfortable to the end, he had made sure of that. He’d done all that could be expected of him, right? Right?
I wasn’t happy to see them go, but it was a relief in its on way. It is a relief now. What would they say if they knew?
