Chapter Text
Mirabel’s mother, Julieta, was standing next to the stove, stirring a delicious-smelling stew. Mirabel sat down at the table and sighed contemplatively. The long and difficult process of rebuilding the family home, had finally paid off. But now that Mirabel was no longer preoccupied with tiling and spackling and managing the whole cumbersome project, a few lingering questions remained.
“Mama?”
“Yes, dear,” Julieta replied, adding a dash of seasoning to the soup, and then, tasting it with a small spoon.
“I was thinking about Tio Bruno. What happened between him and the family…to make him hide from us for such a long time? Tio Bruno loves us so much, and he was so lonely living in the walls, so why did he hide there and not speak a word to us for something like ten years? He missed basically my whole childhood, and the birth of one of his nephews. So, if he was so lonely, why didn’t he try to reach out to us before that? The more I think about it, the more it just doesn’t make sense,” Mirabel said.
Julieta turned away from the stove and sighed, thinking of her strange and exhausting brother, though she loved him tremendously, she had to admit, at times, she had trouble understanding him herself: “Mirabel, Your Tio Bruno is…I don’t know how to say this…well, he’s always been….um…a little different.”
“I don’t want to be mad at him, but sometimes I can’t help it. How could he have missed so much of our lives when it would have been so easy for him to just come out and say hello?”
“I understand how you feel, mi corazon, but you mustn’t be mad at Tio Bruno. We’re all so lucky to have him home with us again, and the last thing I want to do is scare him away.”
“I know, I know, and I would never tell him any of this. I know how sensitive he is. But the truth is that I feel guilty about what happened too. The prophecy about me is the reason that he left.”
“Don’t feel guilty, dear. That’s not the reason why he left, not the only reason anyway. Your Tio Bruno’s friction with the family, and the villagers, goes back to years and year before you were even born”
Julieta put a bowl down in front of her daughter and poured in a few ladles of steaming soup.
“Have a snack, and I’ll tell you a story about my brother that might help you understand.”