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Dolores didn’t realise that Tío Bruno had left at first.
When she asked where he was at the dinner table, she was hushed by her Mamá, and told that he couldn’t come to dinner that night.
But there wasn’t a corner of the house far enough away for her not to hear how the grown-ups had whispered together for hours, long after the children had been put to bed.
“Where has he gone?”
“I’ve not seen him since last night—“
“—after Mirabel’s cere—“
“Shh!”
But she could still hear him. Muttering to himself, over and over.
“What have I done?”
It took about a week for the children to realise that Tío Bruno wasn’t coming home. Even Mirabel, upset over her failed ceremony, had noticed he was missing.
Yet his voice still echoed in Dolores’ ears.
She and Luisa set out to search the village. With her hearing, and Luisa’s strength, there was nowhere he could hide. But hours later they came home to their dinner. Defeated, tired, and empty-handed.
They sat at their places, and quietly ate their food, scraping their plates clean while the adults kept an overly cheerful conversation going.
Her Mamá hadn’t stopped raining in days.
“Where are you?”
She whispered it over and over, creeping around Casita when everyone was busy, tapping gently on the walls and paintings as she went. Pulling aside curtains like a game of hide and seek.
It had been months now, since Tío Bruno disappeared. The family seemed to think he was gone. At night, when she couldn’t sleep, she could hear Abuela praying that he was safe, that he would come home.
Yet, every day she could hear his voice. As clear as any other in the house.
Which meant he was hiding, and Casita was helping.
But where?
They never went into each other’s rooms without permission.
It was a rule of the house they were taught young. A safety net, since each magical room was tailored to the magical powers of it’s owner. Besides, some of them were huge, larger than the rest of the Casita. A young child could get lost.
Yet here she was, staring up at the stairs that seemed to go on forever while the sound of the shifting of sand echoed all around her.
“Be brave, Dolores.”
She climbed the stairs, with nothing but a handkerchief in her pocket.
He wasn’t there.
“There’s a boy in town, that I like,” she says to the crack in the kitchen wall.
She doesn’t know how he’s hiding in the walls of Casita, but it’s the only place he could be. She imagines a whole maze of elaborate secret rooms, powered by the same magic that makes their doors.
“He writes poetry. Bad poetry.”
Over the years, she’s realised that Tío Bruno’s voice is loudest from the other side of the kitchen. She hears him, every night under the clamour of the Madrigal family dinner.
“I miss you. But I hope your prophecy is wrong.”
When little Antonio is born, she insists that they introduce him to the family in the kitchen. She manages to get Mirabel on board, who is full of life, laughter, and an irresistible smile even at ten years old.
“The kitchen is the heart of Casita!” they say to her Papá and Abuela, until they agree.
That evening, Mamá brings her day old brother to the dinner table. There hasn’t been a cloud in the sky since he was born.
And under the raucous joy of her family, she can hear Tío Bruno whispering blessing after blessing between his tears.
“Why won’t you come out?”
“Little Antonio is growing so fast, I wish you could see him.”
“Don’t you miss us?”
“I worry about Camilo. He only got his gift a few months before Mirabel. Sometimes I hear him, wondering if he used up the last of the miracle.”
“Luisa came of age yesterday. I heard her telling Tía Julieta that she didn’t want to marry, she only wanted to help the family.”
“Will I have to marry when I come of age?”
“His poetry has gotten better.”
“Sometimes I wonder what we’d be, without our gifts.”
“We miss you.”
“It’s Antonio’s ceremony tonight,” she says, following the footsteps behind the wall. “Will you not come Tío Bruno?”
She stops, and stomps her foot as she hears the footsteps disappear up some secret junction she cannot follow from the main Casita.
One day, one day she’ll figure out how to get into the secret half of the house. “C’mon Casita, let me in!” she begs, pressing her figures against the plaster. Instead she’s forced to step back as Isabela’s vines bloom across the wall.
She sighs as she hears Mamá question where she is, and goes to help set up.
When Mirabel crashes Antonio’s party, claiming the Casita is cracking, she doesn’t know what to do.
She’s heard it cracking for years, heard Tío Bruno’s desperate muttering, his attempts to fix it from the other side.
For the first time since she can remember, there’s a moment when she can’t hear him, or the scurry of the rats, or the falling sand way up in his tower.
Her blood goes cold.
But then it’s back, as if it never left. They spill on to the courtyard, not a tile out of place, and the candle burning brightly in the window.
“That’s Bruno!”
And finally, finally Tío Bruno returns to them. Gets to meet Antonio properly, not through a kitchen wall.
“Yo, I heard him everyday!”
They rebuild the Casita, brick by brick with the help of the town folk. She works side by side with Mariano, day after day, hoping he will notice her. She misses listening to his poetry each night before she falls asleep, but having her family whole is worth more than any gift.
But then Mirabel does it. Another miracle, returning magic to their healing family.
Perhaps some prophecies were meant to be defied after all.