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Bruno was home again.
Even as she thought it, Julieta found herself hardly believing the new reality. Bruno, their little brother, the youngest of the three- even if it had only been by minutes. The one that had vanished in the middle of the night all those years ago. Back, back with the family, back with them. It was like a dream come true.
Not everything was perfect, though. Because even the best frosting could do only so much to cover up cracks in the cake. And there had been enough to send Casita crumbling down once before. To think, to pretend new walls and fresh paint would cover just how broken they had become over the years was ridiculous.
It was getting better, though. Slowly, wounds that had never really healed over the years were being picked at, torn open again, but they were finally taken care of—scabbing over—and it seemed that, though it would take time, there was hope of them healing properly this time.
It was strange, knowing there were things her food couldn’t fix. It was… a feeling, not one Julieta was fond of. She mused to herself – sneaking an arepa con queso off of the plate before setting it down on the table – sighing as the smell wafted through Casita and the family slowly but surely honed in on the fresh treats.
“Hola Julieta,” said Pepa, snatching another off of the table and joining her sister in the kitchen. “I always loved these.”
Julieta smiled. “And you wonder why Camilo keeps sneaking in for seconds.”
Pepa shrugged. “What can I say? He takes after his mother.”
Pepa took a big bite, and Julieta counted the seconds until her sister’s face scrunched up. Casita rattled as winds buffeted it and Julieta rolled her eyes, pouring her sister a glass of water. Pepa downed the entire thing in a single gulp, glaring daggers at the eldest Madrigal triplet.
“Careful, it’s hot,” Julieta said, taking a much smaller bite of her own, allowing herself to feel a bit of pride as the delicious treat warmed her from inside. Pepa grumbled something to herself, taking a smaller bite that left a balmy warmth hanging over the room.
“So good.”
“You know, I could-”
“Ooh, don’t mind if I do.” Both women turned to the source of the sound. Julieta shouldn’t have been surprised to see her sister’s kids show up first, Dolores had probably heard her take the arepas out of the oven. Her oldest niece took two, no doubt for her and Mariano.
“Later!” she called out, waving to Pepa who could only mumble back through a mouth full of food.
“Oh if Mamá could see you right now,” Julieta said to her sister
“Like you didn’t stuff your face anytime you- Antonio! What did I tell you,” Pepa called out. Julieta looked over to see Antonio quickly shooing half a dozen of the ring-tailed critters off.”The Coati are not allowed on the table!”
“ ¡Lo siento, Mamá!” Antonio called back, taking two arepas himself before hopping off the table. Julieta could hear him whisper something as he tore one of them into little pieces to share among the animals. She checked to see if Antonio’s favored jaguar wasn’t around. Last time it had gotten into the arepas… Julieta hadn’t even known wild cats could be that lactose intolerant.
Eventually everyone came by, and—save for when Camilo tried sneaking off with the entire plate- everyone got a pair of Julieta’s favourite baked goods before the oven had even cooled. All except two people, Mirabel and-
“ Ay, Bruno, ” Julieta muttered sadly, putting the pieces together. Dark clouds marbled the sky overhead, even sneaking inside.
“He didn’t show?”
“No, just like he didn’t show yesterday– or the day before that.”
“Or the day before that?”
“Mhm.”
Julieta knew it was foolish to think Bruno’s re-introduction to the family would be seamless, but it hurt her to know her little brother still got overwhelmed even when surrounded by nothing but family.
“Should we check up on him?” Pepa asked, pulling at her plait in an attempt to ease her bubbling storm. Julieta pulled her sister into a one-armed hug, both of them looking towards where Bruno’s door was.
Julieta hated that she hesitated for a moment. “He’s probably got Mirabel with him,” she reasoned, even if it didn’t sit right with her. “She’s– they’re really close, maybe it’s better to just… leave the two of them be, but–”
It didn’t sit right with her. Despite how much she tried to get Luisa to ease off. How much she encouraged Isabella to show her true self, Julieta’s youngest hija still wasn’t convinced she was enough, like she needed to make up for something.
Casita might have been rebuilt, but the mind wasn’t like mortar and stone, and scars didn’t heal the way wounds did. They might fade and dim, but they stayed with you. But a fifteen-year-old should not have to bear her uncle’s burdens atop her own, Julieta knew that much.
Not that it mattered since Mirabel became his sole confidant.
“I wish he’d talk to me,” Julieta lamented aloud, sighing as Pepa pulled her in closer.
“Really?” Pepa asked. “He hasn’t said anything to you?”
“Not really,” Julieta said. “I mean, small talk, sometimes even a bit of reminiscing, but the moment I try to actually talk to him—about where he went, how he’s been—he just clams up.”
“I figured he would have talked to you at least,” Pepa said, frowning, before the rumbling outside grew loud enough for her to recant an old calming mantra.
“Hey, stop that,” Julieta said, hitting Pepa on the shoulder.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, and another sigh left Julieta. It seems we all have scars.
“I tried talking to him, once,” Pepa clarified, steering the conversation away from her own nerves. “When we were rebuilding Casita. Same question you asked. He just… shut down, wouldn’t say anything. Walked off into the woods mumbling something I couldn’t quite understand. Mirabel went after him.”
“They both missed dinner that night,” Julieta said, remembering the day. “Mamá was furious.”
They shared a laugh as they thought back to that night, Mirabel and Bruno sitting side by side on a bench, Abuela shoving dish after dish at them whilst telling them that they needed the food if they were to continue helping with the reconstruction.
“I keep thinking back to something Dolores said,” Pepa said suddenly. “She said he never left.”
“Never?” Julieta said. “How?”
Pepa shrugged. “Just… she said she could hear him, daily, like he was in the walls or something.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I hardly do, either,” Pepa admitted. “But Dolores is not a liar, especially not when it comes to family stuff like this.”
On that, Julieta could agree. Her oldest sobrina had lived and died by her word before Casita had fallen. After all, hearing everything was only useful if people believed you when you relayed the information. Still…
“It’s still hard to believe,” Julieta said.
Unless .
She felt dread pool in her stomach as she mulled over Dolores’ words. “You don’t think he was in the woods all this time, right?!” It couldn’t be.
They had searched those woods a hundred times in the weeks after his initial disappearance. Had they missed something? A grove of trees? A cave? Julieta was running her thoughts ragged when Pepa put a hand on her shoulder, pulling her back to reality.
“I don’t know, that’s all Dolores told me. I think Antonio might know something too, but I’m not sure. The only one I am sure knows something about where Bruno was, is–”
“Mirabel,” Julieta whispered.
“You called?”
Both women leapt a foot in the air as Mirabel rounded the corner, arepa in hand. Mirabel looked at her mamá and tia, confusion evident on her face. “Did I… interrupt something?”
“No– no, you’re welcome– I mean, you didn’t interrupt anything,” Pepa assured her niece, in possibly the least reassuring way Julieta had ever seen someone string those words together. She wrung her hands, weighing her curiosity about her hermanito ’s situation against the weight of asking her youngest to spill what she assumed was a secret.
“Okay…” Mirabel trailed off, clearly not believing a word her tia said. Julieta almost snorted at Pepa’s annoyed expression, but Mirabel’s next words cut through any semblance of humor. “Tio Bruno’s in his tower… he’s feeling a bit under the weather.” Julieta sighed, sharing a look with Pepa.
“I know Mira… we were just talking about him.”
“Oh, what about?” Julieta’s soul shrank from the undertone in her daughter’s voice, hurt, indignation, and anger. Ay Dios, did she think they’d been badmouthing him? Julieta clamped down on the embarrassment and fear bubbling up in her gut. No, that was fair. Can’t expect a bowl of sugar to suddenly contain salt, but still… Glancing over, Julieta felt the room damen as a fog rolled in, casting Pepa in a graying blanket.
“We were… talking, about something Dolores said,” Julieta tried, watching Mirabel stiffen. “About Bruno, about how–”
“About how he never left?” Pepa cut in, looking like she’d swallowed a lemon. “That’s not true, is it Mira?”
Silence.
“ Mira.”
Mirabel looked between Julieta and Pepa, and let out a breath.
There was a—Julieta couldn’t place it—but a color to the silence. She and Pepa shared a look, and suddenly the kitchen became overcast.
The breath wasn’t an answer, but it was the answer.
Julieta surged forth, taking her daughter's hands in her own. “Can you show us?”
Mirabel looked like she wanted to bolt. “I– I don’t know if Casita remade it with the rest of the house,” Casita clinked its tiles, answering in a way only Mirabel understood, as her face fell. “ Mamá, ” she pleaded. “Are you sure?”
“Show us,” Pepa said, joining the two of them, expression carefully schooled. Likely to hide the desperation in her voice from Mirabel. Julieta could tell her sister was dying to know just where Bruno had been. “If you think we can’t handle it, you clearly don’t remember what Camilo’s room used to look like.”
“Don’t remind me, I still have nightmares ,” Mirabel joked, and the two of them shared a laugh, though Julieta saw it didn’t quite reach their eyes.
Bruno and Pepa’s relationship had been… soured with time. Dolores’s prophecy and Pepa’s wedding being a pair of particular low points, but even so her sister had… understood Bruno, understood his problems in a way Julieta never had.
Julieta's burden came in the form of long days and early mornings. Filled with kneading, baking, boiling, and the weight of an entire town's health on her shoulders. It was what kept her pushing on through the now near constant ache in her hands.
Pepa’s and Bruno’s gifts were different. And Julieta still sometimes felt the pang of guilt thinking she’d gotten the best of the three. The aches and the tiredness were… something she’d gotten used to, something- she thought grimly- Pepa and Bruno never had.
Her sister had sometimes joked she would have traded rooms with Bruno in a heartbeat if there’d been less stairs. Julieta had lost track of the times she’d distracted Abuela so Pepa could thunder away in Bruno’s room, if only for a few minutes when they were younger. Just so she could feel something, unbothered by the pressure she faced Daily. Bruno often sat with her, those days.
There was a reason they’d stopped talking about Bruno, but of all of them, Pepa had taken it the hardest.
“Mirabel, please. He’s our hermanito, we just want to know,”
her daughter looked unsure, shrinking away from Julieta’s hand as it came up to caress her cheek, finally, she mumbled “It’s not.. pretty.”
What a world they lived in that her daughter was more concerned about ‘saddling’ her up with something she so easily took upon her own shoulders.
“Mira, please,” Pepa pleaded as shepushed past Julieta without the older woman realizing. Capturing her niece around both her shoulders, lowering herself down to Mirabel’s height. She spoke with the softness of a spring breeze and the bite of winter chill. “Please.”
Mirabel sought refuge in Julieta, but found her mother’s pleading expression staring back at her all the same. Confronted with that, she crumbled.
“Okay…”
--
It wasn’t until the moment Mirabel swung open a painting hanging next to Dolores’s room, that Julieta found herself truly worried. She peered inside, Pepa behind her, both staring into the dark, dim hole that had apparently been Bruno – her hermanito 's – home, for a decade.
Dust pooled from the hole like flour, thick and white and hard to breathe through. Worse was the smell, like the mold that always plagued Pepa’s room after a bout of thundering, only worse, much worse.
“I don’t understand,” Pepa said. “I must have knocked this painting crooked a hundred times when we were kids– ay, this isn’t even that painting. How was there a room here all this time, without us knowing…” Pepa said, seeing Mirabel’s expression shift. “Unless, did Casita add this later?”
“I… I don’t know, Casita?”
Casita clinked one of the tiles on a nearby railing back and forth. Mirabel turned back to them with a frown, it seemed she hadn’t been expecting that answer, either. “Casita said it was here all this time. Why would Casita just… have an extra room, and not tell anyone but Bruno?”
Julieta and Pepa shared a look, then her sister peered off into the dim, dusty crawlspace again. Staring as if she was looking at it for the first time. “Because it was meant to be a secret,” she whispered breathlessly, and Julieta understood.
In the fifty years since the Encanto had been formed, no one had found the valley with ill intent in their heart, in hindsight, that was an easy statement. But fifty years ago, when the wounds were raw and houses were burning, and the dead were still being buried, every day must have been filled with worry.
Julieta could vaguely recall her mother’s panic when they stayed out past curfew, if even for a few minutes. That had faded with time, but never truly went away.
When Casita had built itself, those wounds would still have been weeping red and grim, and a single candle could only do so much to keep thoughts dwelling in the darkness at bay. And a home could only protect so much, their mamá had found that out first-hand.
And so, Casita had made a refuge within a refuge.
Julieta glanced over, where Mirabel’s room – once the nursery – stood, and back to the secret entrance. It was more than close enough, separated by twenty feet with not a wall in sight, the frame large enough, even someone in the throes of panic couldn’t have missed it suddenly swinging open.
Casita had made them a sanctuary, a last resort if the unthinkable happened again.
They had driven one of their own inside.
“ Mamá never finds out,” Julieta said, eyes hard. Pepa nodded, face taut even as the still-drying fabric about her shoulder dampened itself again.
“Alright,” Mirabel said, pushing through her Tia’s rainstorm and straight into the darkness between the walls, followed closely by a pair of sisters with dread in their hearts.
--
Mirabel led them through the winding, crooked causeway of old wood and dust, always telling them to watch out for a loose plank or a jutting out nail. In the end, it took them upwards of ten minutes to reach their destination.
“Well, last chance,” Mirabel said as they came upon a small wooden door. “You guys ready?”
“Yes,” they said in unison.
Mirabel nodded, grabbing hold of the doorknob and pushing it open, before stepping back to let them through.
And suddenly every breath was just that little harder to take, every thought a little darker, and Julieta fisted her apron. Trying to wrack her mind as best she could because it was real. Because he’d been here for a decade. He'd been right under their noses.
She poured over a decade of memories to try and grasp at a thread. A stray noise, missing ingredients, a chair where it didn’t belong. Trying to think of anything that could have – should have – made it clear someone had been in the house, that there was an extra person underneath their roof.
If there was any way she could have known?
The first thing Julieta noticed was how small the room was. She looked around, watching rats scurry about the place as she stepped further inside. Pepa wasn’t far behind her. It could have been a supply closet if not for the location.
It was a collection of second-hand furniture and hand-me down toiletries that had gone missing over the years. Mirabel’s toothbrush from back when she was seven, one of Pepa’s combs. Somehow Felix’ beloved red chair had ended up in the cubby between the walls too. There was a rickety table pushed to the side, flush against a cracked wooden wall through which the faintest –and only– glimmers of light made it into the room.
Cloying green fingers of mold crawled up the support beams, dust covered the floor in a layer so thick it left her footprints visible as she stepped further inside. Something six-limbed skittered into a hole in the wall when she pulled herself up to one of the higher shelves, filled with rat pellets and various things the family had lost through the years.
More than anything, Julieta felt sick.
There’s not even a bed . She realized suddenly, looking around the room.
“Are– are you sure this is it,” Julieta asked her daughter, slumped against the doorway with the look of a girl twice her age. “Did we take a wrong turn, or?” she pleaded, voice thick with dust, or horror, or both. She honestly couldn’t tell.
Mirabel shook her head. “No. He showed me this place himself,” the words hung like an executioner’s blade, and, as she looked her mother in the eyes, Mirabel brought them down. “He was here… all this time,”
“Mirabel,” Pepa’s voice carried far in the wind, which was now picking up within the small, dim room. Kicking up dust and junk and leaving a bad taste in Julieta’s mouth as she’d gasped at her daughter’s words. Both women looked to the source of the gale with worry.
Even in the dark, the shine in Pepa’s eyes as she turned around was unmistakable. “Would… would you mind giving us a moment?” she said. Mirabel sucked in a breath and nodded, stuffing a few stray rats in her satchel before backing out of the room. “I– uh, I remember Bruno saying he hadn’t had time to move all of his rats yet so…I’ll bring them over now.”
The sound of retreating footsteps disappeared quickly- fading beneath swirling winds, and Julieta turned back to Pepa with a sigh. “Pepa, please–”
“ Don’t” snapped Pepa, running a hand along the armrest of the room’s single splash of color, frowning as she rubbed the dust between her fingers, letting the winds around her carry it off before slumping against the far wall. “He was here . Julieta. Here . A decade, and he was only a wall away. I’m, I’m allowed to be upset, right now.”
“Of course you are,” Julieta stepped into the eye of the storm and swept her sister up in a hug. “I’m upset, too. This should never have happened,”
“ No , but what can we do about it now?”
Nothing. Julieta wanted to say, but she knew the wetness on her shoulder wasn’t just rain, and there was time for thoughts like those later. Right now, she had a sister to console. “We do better,” she said instead, rubbing circles on her sister’s back. “We have to.”
“Pssst, don’t tell Mamá , but you can have one too,” both women pulled apart as Antonio’s voice rang out from… somewhere. Pepa, panicked at the thought of her youngest seeing her openly crying, began frantically rubbing at the black tear marks across her cheeks, whilst Julieta looked around to try and see where her Sobrino was.
The answer came when she peered through the crack in the wall, seeing Antonio sneaking that blasted jaguar an arepa. Oh he would be cleaning it up afterwards if the cat got sick again, Julieta knew that much.
It was a moment later, when a metal can flew off the shelf above her head and the wind picked up again, that Julieta realized what she was looking at and dios mio if it wasn’t too much. Her mind reeled, her mouth went dry. And, as she looked down, the resolve she’d been holding onto for Pepa, for Mirabel, packed up its bags, boarded a boat, and disappeared beyond some far horizon.
“Bruno,” she read through the haze of tears, tracing the drawing etched into knotted wood as she took in the sketchy mimic of the Madrigal family plates – Bruno’s plate – the plate that had been gathering dust in one of the cupboards for the past decade.
He’d sat here, in a chair too small for even his tiny frame, eating stolen, rat-bitten food from the drawing of a plate, looking through the crack in the wall as his family went on without him.
He hadn’t even had a plate.
Pepa let out a wail as she followed Julieta’s gaze, pressing herself tight against her sister in a one-armed hug that the oldest Madrigal triplet returned, resting her head against Pepa’s shoulder whilst her sister leaned her own atop Julieta’s graying curls.
She didn’t know how long the two of them had been standing there, nor would she have cared to break the silence as they looked down at what their hermanito had been reduced to.
Until something else broke the silence.
“I, uh. I see you’ve found my room?”
Julieta and Pepa whirled around. Finding Bruno in the doorway, he looked ready to bolt, but a pair of hands shoved him inside. Mirabel popped her head inside, giving her mom a nod before disappearing back down the corridor, leaving the siblings alone
“Mirabel showed us,” Julieta said, whilst Pepa kept herself quiet. “ Brunito, this– was it really that bad?”
Bruno slumped against the doorframe, fingering the edge of his ruana, refusing to meet her eyes. “I– just didn’t know what to do?” He shrugged pitifully as he said it, eyes red-rimmed. “You know what they say Julieta, even now… I might not be Dolores, but I’m not deaf,” he added, seeing Julieta’s shocked expression. “Bad luck Bruno, remember? I– I can’t change the future, only tell it. But that makes me the bearer of bad news, it’s what everyone thinks.”
It’s what Mamá would have thought. Hung thick in the following silence.
Julieta didn’t think so, what she did think, however, was that there would be some stern words the next time she went into town. Pepa still said nothing, listening to the conversation with a schooled expression on her features. “Bruno,” Julieta tried, motioning him closer, frowning when he stayed put. “Please, talk to us.”
“What’s there to say? I made a choice, and I’m sorry you all had to live with the consequences.”
“Wasn’t there any other option?” Julieta tried. And for the first time in living memory anger flashed in front of her little brother’s eyes.
It didn’t last, replaced by a hollowness that made him look smaller – more underfed – than he was. Bruno had never been a tall man, always the smallest of the three. He’d been well on his way to being outsized by Dolores and Isabella by the time he’d left. And even now he barely crested above fifteen year old Mirabel. But, standing across the room from them, half cast in shadow, her brother looked more ghost than man. “If there was, I wish I’d have thought of it,”
Pepa shifted, the creak of the floorboards as she slipped from Julieta’s side the first contribution to the conversation since its inception, and Bruno looked at her like he feared she would blow up.
Which, a moment later, she did.
“ Cabron.” Faster than Julieta had ever seen her move, faster than Bruno had expected, Pepa crossed the distance between them. Julieta had seen the fury blazing in her eyes, Bruno had seen it too– but he was still too slow to do anything but raise up his hands and shrink away from whatever Pepa was planning.
Said plan, it turned out, was to sweep him up in a hug so tight Julieta could see his eyes bug out. “You, you . You stupid, idiotic, rat-infested fool.” Bruno looked like he was in shock, only returning the hug when a sob betrayed the wave of grief sweeping over Pepa’s frame. “Don’t you ever leave us again. Promise!”
“I– I didn’t actually leave, see–”
“Promise me, Bruno !”
“I promise,” Bruno said quickly, looking to Julieta for help. She was too busy smiling to offer any, letting out a sigh of relief. Both at the sight in front of her, or the fact she wouldn’t have to interfere with attempted filicide… again.
“Hey,” Pepa turned to her, setting Bruno down and unlatching one of her arms to reach for Julieta, who joined them in the doorway, encasing their hermanito.
“We’re so sorry,” Julieta said.
“‘S alright,” Bruno mumbled into the dual embrace. Julieta and Pepa shared a look, one that said that it was not alright. And that they would make sure it never happened again.
“Names.”
“Pepa, no,” both of them said at once.
“Okay, I’ll just ask Dolores,”
“ No!”
--
That night, at dinner, the family Madrigal wouldn’t sit like they normally did. Bruno was placed square in the middle of his sisters as they talked about anything and everything. Nobody commented, not even Abuela, who looked at the triplets like she was looking at a memory. And Mirabel, sitting opposite of her Tio, shared a knowing look with him as she took in the sight of the siblings reconnecting.
The first time, it had taken Casita to crumble for Bruno to leave his exile. The second time Bruno had slipped out from that secret behind the painting, it had been flanked by his sisters, who were dead-set on making sure he knew he belonged. And though Mirabel felt guilty about sharing her uncle’s secret, she couldn’t help but smile as she saw him talk and listen and laugh like she’d never seen him do before.
And if there was a sudden upsurge of people finding themselves snowed in after badmouthing her uncle, she could only laugh and shake her head.
Nothing was ever normal when Madrigals were involved, after all. And she loved it.