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The bed was nothing like her bed in her room in Casita.
This bed was smaller, was shorter, was strange.
It wasn’t her bed.
She wouldn't mind it if the circumstances were different. She wouldn’t mind if she knew that it was just a brief change, one to be undone.
But it wasn’t.
Their Casita was gone, their rooms were gone, with them all the furniture that decorated their spaces, with them her bed in which she had felt safe and warm, and comfortable.
She turned around once more, trying to find a comforting pose, one that wouldn’t pull on her muscles and make her arm go numb but minutes were passing and nothing was changing.
She breathed through her nose, opening her eyes.
Isabela was sleeping in the other bed, her breaths deep and even, her face turned in the wall direction.
Her sister was asleep so why couldn’t she fall asleep too?
Luisa pushed back the covers and sat on the bed, then leaned forward to hide her face in her hands.
In a few hours, their whole family would gather in the church to attend her little sister’s funeral and to lay her to the ground, and it was something Luisa couldn’t accept. It was something that kept her awake, she realized.
She couldn’t just… let go.
One moment Mirabel had been there, hugging her, speaking to her about not worrying that much, about not carrying that much, and the other…
She had been lifeless on the floor in their mother’s embrace - cold and dead, and gone forever.
Luisa felt her lips tremble and she knew that she would break soon. She knew she couldn’t bootle those emotions forever.
As she didn’t want to wake up Isabela or her parents, she decided that a walk in the middle of the night would be the best idea. Fresh air, and the chilly little breeze that continued even after the rain stopped falling would do her good.
So she got up and as quietly as she could she dressed up, then sneaked out of the room, expecting the small living area to be empty but she didn’t have that much luck.
There, on the couch, were her parents, both asleep, her mother with her head resting on her father’s shoulder, Mirabel’s framed image on his lap, protected by Julieta’s hard grip, even in her sleep.
Luisa stood there for a while, debating if she should wake them up, so that they wouldn’t have any backaches the next day or if she should let them be because it wasn’t that easy for them to fall asleep those days. Especially for their mother.
The second option seemed the best.
She grabbed some blanket that lay neatly folded at one of the chairs and she unfolded it, then covered her parents, paying attention mostly to her mother as she knew Julieta hated being cold.
She wondered if she should take the picture out of her grasp, but that way she would risk waking them up, so she decided against it.
One look more and she left the house, closing the door after her as quietly as she could.
Fresh air touched her skin bringing relief like those chilling compresses that her mother used to make for her whenever her arepas couldn’t help to ease the pain Luisa sometimes felt in her muscles.
And just like that, it seemed to break something inside her.
She took a deep breath but it came out uneven, shaky. She felt hot tears gathering in her eyes and she started walking forward, as far from all those houses as she could, not wanting to disturb anyone’s sleep.
She was walking and walking for what seemed like many minutes but really she barely left the area where her family stayed.
She crossed the bridge, looking down at the river that was lapping softly in the silence of the night, then looking up at the sky, seeing all those bright, little points that were stars.
In awe with that sight, feeling her throat tightening as more tears were falling down her cheeks, Luisa just sat down on the bridge, her back to the village, her face to the front where a small path was leading into the forest that surrounded their Encanto.
She was sitting there and the hot tears were wetting her face and she didn’t care about it at all.
She had the right to be upset, she had the right to mourn her sister, she had the right to just feel, to show her emotions, to be weak. There was nobody who would see her, nobody who would look down at her because of that.
Just her, the silence and darkness of the night, the bright stars up in the sky and tears that escaped her eyes like water that found a hole in the pot and was leaking freely out of it.
“Lu?”
And her father.
Luisa quickly wiped the tears out of her face, not daring to look back, fearing he would see how upset she was, how terrified she was.
But he just came closer, put his hand on her shoulder and she couldn’t help but look up at him, a frown on her forehead, her lips wobbling, sniffs sounding in the air.
“Gracias for the blanket, amor,” he said, slowly sitting down beside her. “We’re grateful for everything you and Isa are doing for us. For Mamá. ”
Luisa shrugged, looking away. “She needs it.”
“She does,” he agreed.
Silence.
Luisa glanced over her shoulder. “You left her on the sofa?”
“No,” came a soft reply. “I carried her to bed,” then a sigh. “She’s barely eaten those past few days, so it wasn’t that hard.”
Luisa nodded and the silence fell once again.
It was a beautiful night and it reminded Luisa of times, when they were little and innocent, when all of the Madrigal children, save Antonio, gathered outside Casita, on Isabela’s flowery platform, to observe the night sky, to admire the moon, and the stars.
It reminded her how much Mirabel loved the night, and all those stars. How she would come up with names for constellations, how she would see some shapes that others hadn’t, how she would tell them stories she was creating while looking up.
She had been so creative and so funny, and she had a great talent to tell stories. They all always had been listening to her with interest charmed by her words, by her ideas.
That tradition stopped as they got older.
And now Luisa wished she could once again meet with all her cousins and sisters, and Antonio, on Isabela’s flowery construction and do it again.
But she couldn’t. Mirabel was gone and Isabela didn’t have her gift anymore. Any of them didn’t.
She sniffed, then broke into sobs.
A comforting hand landed on her back but she only cried harder.
“It’s alright,” she heard, as her father was drawing circles on her back, trying to comfort her. “It’s alright to feel upset, Luisa. It’s alright to cry.”
It made the stream of tears flow even faster and she felt an upcoming headache that was slowly creeping up her temples. She didn’t care.
She cried some more, and more until there were no tears left to cry. She knew her eyes were puffy, she knew her head hurt, but then, despite a faint ringing in her ears, she heard a sniff.
She turned her head. “Pa?”
Agustín’s face was hidden in his palms, his posture hunched, but he was, without any doubts, crying. “Sorry, amor,” he muttered, clasping his hands together and resting his forehead against them.
His glasses were nowhere to be seen and he looked so much different now, so much like a broken man, as if the glasses were something that kept him together for all those days.
“Pa,” she said, her voice small and hoarse. “It’s okay to cry.”
“Si, I know.”
“You’ve been strong for Mamá but she’s not here,” she said, slowly resting his head against his shoulder, as she did when she was a little girl. “And I know how it is to keep a facade. It’s– hard.”
He sniffed. “You have always been so strong, Luisa,” he said, his voice soft and vulnerable. “But you didn’t deserve to feel pressured into anything. To feel pressured to care about everyone and everything. Your Mamá was like that all her life, and it–” his voice broke a little. “It didn’t do her any good.”
Luisa heard some story behind those words but it was no time for questions, so she didn’t ask.
Agustín raised his hand to cup her cheek gently and she really felt like a little girl again, who was waiting for her father to start telling her about all those fascinating things that were outside Encanto.
“Lu, it’s hard for us all.”
“Si.”
“Every time I open my eyes, I feel this hope that Mira would come through the door, would smile so brightly and come for a hug as she so often did.”
Luisa sniffed.
“And then I look down at your Mamá, and I see that she thought the same, and it breaks my heart to see her like that, to see any of you like that.”
“But you suffer too, Pa.”
He was silent.
“You suffer too and that’s okay,” she said, raising her head to look at him. “I can’t even imagine how it is to lose a child. To lose a sister is a nightmare, but to lose a child?”
“It’s like a part of your heart just crushed. It’s like there are cracks that nothing would ever fill,” he said, looking at her. He raised his hand and touched her hair, then her cheek. “The next few hours will be hard for us all. For Mamá, for me, for you and Isa. I want you to know that you can express your emotions, that you can let them be seen. You’re mourning and you’ve seen in your tía Pepa that suppressing emotions makes things worse. It’s unhealthy.”
“I know, Pa,” she said. “But the same goes to you.”
He smiled sadly. “I’ll be fine. I have you and Isa, and your Mamá and you all give me the strength I need. The future… Our life won’t be easy… It will be empty without Mirabel–” a little crack of his voice. “We have no choice but to move on.”
She frowned, looking away from him. “But how?”
He took her hand. “Only time will tell, amor.”
And although his voice was smooth and quiet, Luisa saw tears in his eyes and on his face.
“Lu. Papá.”
They both turned back to look at Isabela, her hair in disarray, her face so worried and tired.
“What happened?”
A pained expression crossed her face. “Mamá’s looking for you. She had a nightmare and when she saw you weren’t there–”
“Ay,” he stood up, wiping his face but Isabela stopped him.
“Don’t hide away from her, Pa,” she said, her voice gentle but firm. “She doesn’t need you to be strong. She needs you to just be there for her. No matter if you cry or you’re upset. She just wants you near. Share this grief with her. She has to see she’s not alone.”
Agustín looked at her for a short while, then cupped her cheek. “You’re just as bright as your Mamá.”
She touched his hand. “Go to her.”
Luisa looked at her sister as their father walked a few steps away. “How bad it was?”
Isabela just looked at her, her face telling everything.
Luisa looked in the sky, a grim thought entering her head - how many times a heart could be broken before it stops?