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Camilo stood outside his uncle’s door and sighed. This was going to be so awkward. Even more awkward than he normally felt around Bruno. Maybe this would help, but he’d been avoiding this conversation for weeks, and he thought it was probably even more awkward now than it would have been before. But they hadn’t really had a house before, which meant no privacy, so….
He huffed, annoyed at himself, and knocked on the door. It wasn’t like Bruno was actually scary or anything.
The door opened after just a few seconds, and Bruno’s eyes widened when he saw Camilo, before he quickly broke into a nervous smile. Which was… basically his normal smile. “Camilo,” he said. “Do you need something?”
“I, uh… kind of wanted to come visit?” Camilo said.
“Really?” Bruno asked, sounding startled, but quickly doing the nervous smile again, though it was maybe a little less nervous, and that made Camilo feel better. “Well, come in, then, it’s good to see you, mijo.” He opened the door more so that Camilo could step in, before knocking on his own door several times, then his head. “Knock-knock-knock, knock on wood,” he said to himself, before coming in with Camilo and waving his arm around in a dramatic twirl. “So, what do you think, huh?” he said. “It’s um, it’s a lot better than it was before.” He gave a nervous laugh. “I guess Casita decided to have mercy on me.”
“I… don’t actually know what it looked like before,” Camilo said.
“Oh,” Bruno said, and gave an awkward laugh. “You should ask Mirabel, she, uh, she wasn’t happy about all the stairs. They kind of went around the whole room.” He gestured vaguely. “Now, it’s, it’s still got this wide open space for visions, uh, when I, when I have visions, which isn’t often, but if, if I do need to, you know. But, uh, in the meantime I can get to bed easier and, and I have chairs! For visitors, you know, when I, when I have visitors.” He looked really happy for a moment. “So, you can use one of them.”
“Thanks,” Camilo said, sitting down, and his tio sat in a different one. He wanted to find his tio’s mannerisms amusing, or maybe endearing, and he kind of did, the second one at least. It was like his mamá’s constant weather changes. But all he kept thinking when he looked at Bruno was that he’d spent the last ten years with no human contact, hiding in the walls, watching and missing them. He’d watched Camilo grow up and Camilo hadn’t even known. He barely even remembered Bruno, but Bruno loved him and called him mijo, even after he’d said all those stupid things.
“Are you okay, mijo?” Bruno asked. “You seem sad about something. Can I help?” He froze. “O-oh. You, uh, did you… come to ask me for a vision?” He looked like he was already coming up with arguments to talk Camilo out of it.
“No,” Camilo said quickly, because Mirabel had already told him how terrified Bruno was of giving people visions, and he didn’t want one anyway. “I just… wanted to see how you’re doing. With… everything. Readjusting and… stuff.”
Bruno gave a huff of relief, then offered a half smile. “It’s, uh… a little overwhelming, but good.” He laughed a little. “Sometimes I forget that people can see me and I can talk to them.” He looked suddenly concerned. “Oh… is that why you’re sad, mijo? You don’t need to be sad about me. I’m with my familia again. And I have this great new room. Or… great old room, really, do you know, it was actually more like this when I first got my gift.” He laughed a little. “It, it seemed like there were more stairs when… it started causing problems.” He rubbed his arm. “Maybe Casita was trying to tell me something.”
He sounded a bit like Mirabel did back when she’d tried to convince everyone she was fine with being the only one in the family without a gift. “Was it because you didn’t want to have visions?” He’d sometimes had things in his room change when he’d felt differently about things.
A pause. “I, uh, didn’t think about that. Maybe.”
“And you… got your gift when you were five?”
“Of course. We all do.”
Camilo considered this. “Did you… like it? Were you excited?”
Another pause. “I…. Honestly, I… didn’t really know what to think,” Bruno said. “Telling the future, that’s… a weird thing for a five-year-old to understand. I’d sometimes see good things, like what Mamá was making for dinner. Or that someone would be having a baby. But sometimes I’d see bad things, like someone getting hurt, or hurting their family, or…. And I couldn’t control it very well at first. But I was… hoping I could do some good with it.”
“I mean, you did,” Camilo said. “You gave Mirabel the courage to keep trying. Things are better now because of that. Even if we did have to spend a lot of time rebuilding. But the house is better now, so….” He felt like he was rambling and slumped a little. “I wish you’d gotten a fun gift.”
Bruno smiled an actually happy smile, barely at all nervous. “Like you, mijo? I always thought that would be fun.”
“It is, usually. Though it gets tiring if I do it too much.”
“I know how that feels,” Bruno said, nodding.
It didn’t escape Camilo’s attention that Bruno seemed to be feeling less anxious, and that gave him a little more confidence. “Tio Bruno?”
Bruno smiled like he liked being called “Tio.”
“Were you… listening? That one time… people were singing about you?”
Bruno’s eyes lit with amusement. “I guess, uh, singing is a loophole around talking, huh?”
Camilo didn’t know whether to smile. “You liked it?”
Bruno gave a laugh. “Hey, you want some snacks? Your tia was showing me how to make some things.”
“Tio Bruno….”
“Of course, it’s been a while, so they’re probably not as good as you’re used to, but I think they turned out pretty good for my first try in over a decade.”
“Tio Bruno.” Just the word “decade” made Camilo’s heart hurt.
Bruno looked at him. Then he smiled, a big, warm smile that made Camilo feel safe and loved, like this guy would do anything for him. “Do you know, I used to babysit you and Mirabel. And the others, too, though by the time I left, they didn’t need a babysitter so much.” He laughed. “You used to climb on me, you told me to pretend to be a tree so you could be a monkey. One time Mirabel asked you why I should be a tree, and you said it was because I was always wearing green, and you had an argument about whether monkeys could be yellow.” He laughed again. “You tried to shapeshift into a monkey when you got your got your gift and you were so mad when it didn’t work.”
Camilo thought he remembered, a little. He wasn’t sure what to say. Or where this was going. Did Bruno even have a point, or was this just nervous chatter?
“But one time, I think when you were four, you slipped and I couldn’t catch you, so you grabbed onto my hair.” He laughed again. “It sort of shocked me, it hurt so much, but then I was trying to see if you were okay because you started crying so hard. But it turns out, you weren’t crying because you were hurt, you were crying because I was hurt.” He shook his head and gave Camilo that big smile again, leaning back in his chair. “That was when I knew I wasn’t ever going to have to worry about whether you’d turn out to be a good kid.”
Tears were threatening at the corner of Camilo’s eyes now, and he tried to remind himself that he wasn’t four anymore, but he was suddenly so mad. He could have grown up having Bruno in his life, this funny, dramatic, quirky, loving uncle who smiled so big at him and thought he was a good kid, and it just wasn’t fair. But it had been so much worse for Bruno, orders of magnitude worse, and even though Camilo hadn’t known….
“Hey, sobrino.” Bruno scooted his chair closer to Camilo’s, looking worried. “Uh. I was trying to make you feel better. But I think I made things worse. How can I make them better?”
Camilo sighed a little, thinking that Bruno had probably also been the type of kid who would start crying if he accidentally hurt someone else.
“The song had a good beat,” Bruno offered, smiling a little. “Stuck in my head for hours afterward.” He offered Camilo the plate of empanadas like a peace offering, like he was apologizing to Camilo.
Camilo’s chest tightened as he took the plate but didn’t eat anything. “I’m really sorry,” he blurted out.
Bruno looked surprised. “Sorry for what, mijo?”
“For… the stupid things I said about you. Acting like you were some kind of…. I’m just… really sorry.”
Bruno blinked. “Well,” he said. “I mean, you were right about the rats.”
“I remembered you being taller.”
Bruno smiled. “Well. You were five when you last saw me, so. I think it was more that you were shorter.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Mijo, it’s okay.” Bruno scooted his chair closer. “It… honestly, it was… kind of nice to hear people say my name again.”
Camilo slumped, putting his face in his hand that wasn’t holding the plate of empanadas. His heart hurt so much for his tio. It was hard for him to even fathom, being alone for that long, never even hearing people talk about him to the point where it would be nice to hear people talking like that. “They—we—were only saying bad things.”
“Well… I already knew people thought that. Honestly, I… I’d wondered if… maybe everyone just… forgot about me. I uh, I guess people only remembering the bad stuff is better than not remembering anything, right?” He laughed, sounding nervous again.
Camilo couldn’t take it anymore. He set his plate on the table and went to hug his tio.
“Oh, hey, hi,” Bruno said, initially starting in surprise, but then hugging Camilo back, then hugging him tighter after a second or two. Camilo ended up kind of awkwardly half-sitting in his lap, but he didn’t care, because it was pretty clear that Bruno had needed a hug. Which just made Camilo feel worse, because had Bruno really gone ten years without a hug?
“I’m sorry,” Camilo said again. “I wish I’d known. So I could at least visit, or something.”
Bruno let him go so he could smile at him. “You can visit me now whenever you want. And I really loved watching you grow up, mijo, seeing how much fun you have with your gift, and how you take care of your mamá and hermanito.” He gave a laugh. “I remember watching you play different characters in the little dramas you’d make. I always wished I could join in.”
Camilo felt a pang of regret, but he also felt a little hopeful. “You could now,” he said. “Mirabel says you like acting and dramas.”
“I, I do, actually,” Bruno said, looking shy. “If, uh, you don’t think it would be weird. Since I’m uh, old.”
Camilo shrugged, smiling. “We’re the familia Madrigal,” he said. “I think ‘weird’ comes with the territory.”
Bruno laughed. “Okay, then. Here you should really try the empanadas.”
Camilo’s stomach didn’t feel quite as knotted as it had a few minutes ago, so he took one. “What kind is it?” he asked.
“Pollo con queso,” Bruno said. “Uh… they’re probably better hot, but I think they’re still good cold….”
Pushing away the thought that Bruno was probably used to cold food, Camilo took a bite. It wasn’t his tia’s cooking, but it was still good, and he definitely wasn’t one to turn down food. “Yeah, this is really good,” he said, finishing it in two more bites before taking another one.
“You think so?” Bruno asked, smiling. “I had thought, you know, if Julieta can give me some more lessons, maybe I could try cooking for the family sometime, give her a break, you know? I’ll bet she’d like to spend some more time with your Tio Agustín.”
“Maybe I could help, too.” It was a little funny, how things had been changing lately. They’d been so stuck in their gift-related roles for so long, it was like they never thought about what they really liked to do until the house had been destroyed and they hadn’t had their gifts to tell them. And Camilo especially wanted to try new things. It was natural, since he was always observing different people. He’d been thinking about asking Mirabel to teach him to sew, or Tio Agustín to teach him piano. Cooking sounded even better now he thought about it, then if he got hungry in the middle of the night, which was often, he could make himself a snack.
“Sure, we could learn together,” Bruno said, smiling.
Camilo smiled back, taking a third empanada, which seemed to make Bruno happy. He looked at his tio while he chewed, thoughtfully. “You, um….” He paused.
“Hm?” Bruno said.
“You don’t need to pretend like you’re okay with everything.”
Bruno looked at him almost curiously.
“People should have looked for you,” Camilo said, his chest tightening again, and he set down his half-eaten empanada. “We should have found you and brought you out and listened to you, and… and then we would maybe be able to figure things out together, and, and then we could have all been together all this time and—”
“Cami,” Bruno said gently.
But now Camilo was angry, and he stood up without thinking, starting to pace around like Antonio’s jaguar. Some nearby rats scurried away at the unexpected motion, which made Camilo feel guilty, which made him more upset. “And people have barely even apologized,” he said. “It was just like, everyone saying all those stupid things about you, and you were alone for ten years, and it wasn’t even your fault, you hadn’t even wanted to have that vision, but then it was like… Mira found you and then you were back and it was like, oh, everything is okay now, we’ll just pretend like nothing happened. And it’s not okay, none of that was okay!”
He had to stop walking, because Bruno had gotten up and was standing in front of him, his expression unreadable. He lifted his hand and dropped it, then lifted it again. “Um,” he said. “Is it okay if I hug you?”
Camilo hugged him tightly, maybe too tightly since he was still mad, but Bruno didn’t seem to mind. It was weird, hugging him standing up, because Camilo could feel how thin he was. Seven foot frame, his ass, Bruno was smaller than he was, at least by weight. “You didn’t even have enough food to eat,” he added, his tone somewhere between frustrated and sulky.
Bruno gave a bit of a laugh, and hugged him tighter. “Thank you, Camilo.” He sounded so sincere that it actually made Camilo feel a little better. Bruno let go of him, holding him at arm’s length. “That… means a lot to me. It really does.” He sounded like he meant it, and that made Camilo’s breathing get easier. “But mijo….” Bruno smiled a little and put a hand to Camilo’s cheek like his mamá might. Or Abuela. “What good would it do for me to be angry?”
“I, I don’t know,” Camilo said. “Maybe it would make you feel better?”
Bruno’s smile widened a little. He shrugged and moved his hand to Camilo’s shoulder, guiding him back to his chair, where Camilo sat with a huff. Bruno knocked on the table a few times, then his head. “Knock-knock-knock, knock on wood,” he said. “You might have a point. It made me feel better watching you get angry about it. Felt like, uh, pulling out a splinter.” He laughed a little. “Do you know, that’s something so great about bamboo, that it hardly ever gives you splinters?”
Camilo gave him a look. “Tio Bruno.”
“Ay, Camilito,” Bruno said, smiling warmly at him. “I spent so much time in the walls, watching my familia. Wishing I could be a part of things. Wanting to spend time with you and my sobrinas, and… dios mio, it nearly broke my heart when Antonito was born and I realized I might never even get to hold him.” He laughed. “And now he climbs on me like you used to.” His voice broke, and he put up a hand to cover his mouth, and Camilo could see his tears escaping. Camilo reached over, squeezing his free hand. For a minute or so, they just sat there, Bruno breathing shakily, trying to get his bearings, squeezing Camilo’s hand, but not tight enough to hurt. Finally, he moved his hand from his face and gathered up his ruana to wipe his eyes. “I lost so much time,” he said shakily. “Time I could have spent with all of you. I’ve been angry. And hurt, and afraid, and sad more than anything. But even when I was living back here, it still made me happy sometimes, watching you, and… and now I can be out here again, and… dios mio, I’m so happy.” His voice broke again, but he drew in a shaky breath and continued. “I know I can never get that time back. So I don’t want to waste any more being angry. Do you understand, mijo?” He looked at Camilo with those big puppy-dog eyes that made Camilo wonder how anyone had ever even thought about being afraid of him.
Camilo leaned forward, reaching out his arm, and hugged Bruno again when he moved closer. He felt more peaceful, like he did when his mamá’s storms passed. “I understand,” he said. Maybe this was part of what it meant to be an adult, to recognize things like that. It occurred to him that despite his uncle’s weird quirks and superstitions, he could probably learn a lot from him. But still…. “But,” he said, sitting up and giving Bruno’s hand another squeeze. “If you ever… I don’t know, need to be upset or sad or decompress or whatever… you can talk to me. I can handle it.” He smiled a little. “I could even shapeshift into Abuela or something so you could yell at her if you want.”
Bruno smiled. “I don’t want to yell at you, sobrino. Or her, really. But… thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Camilo smiled back. “You got it.”
“And maybe don’t repeat all this to your mami. I think she feels guilty already.”
Camilo rolled his eyes. “I’m not my hermana.”
“Hey, give her some credit, she kept me a secret all this time.”
“I can’t believe she didn’t tell me,” Camilo said, annoyed again.
“Oye, calmate sobrino,” Bruno said with a laugh. “I think maybe you take after your mami, sometimes I can imagine clouds forming over your head.” He gestured vaguely over his own.
Camilo huffed. “Sorry.”
“Ay, you’re fifteen, it’s normal,” Bruno said. “She had her reasons, mijo. They all did. And they did look for me, actually, for a day or two, but I think they figured I wouldn’t have left unless it was a really bad vision, and maybe it was better that way.”
“But—”
“But you and Mira and sometimes Luisa would ask for me and cry, because you were too young to understand, and… I think Isabela and Dolores understood. That it was better for them not to talk about me so the younger kids could forget.”
“That wasn’t better,” Camilo said firmly. “I don’t even remember what I was thinking at the time, but I know that I would have never wanted to forget you.”
Bruno smiled again. “Thank you, Camilo. But who’s to say, really? I don’t know what would have happened if I’d stayed, if I’d shared that vision. It’s… hard for me to imagine that it would have made things better.” His smile had faded, but it came back a little, wanly. “Maybe I’m too much of a pessimist. But I don’t know if knowing the future ever really does anyone much good.”
“It did good,” Camilo insisted. “It helped us figure out what was wrong.”
“It didn’t stop the house from collapsing.”
“But it needed to collapse.”
Bruno looked at Camilo with raised eyebrows and a bit of a smile.
Camilo sighed. He didn’t want Bruno to be right. “I know it made a difference to Isabela,” he said, folding his arms. “It’s because of you she and Mirabel are friends now, and she’s a lot happier than she used to be.”
“Hey, that’s true,” Bruno said, brightening. He laughed. “I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”
“You’re not a stopped clock,” Camilo said, annoyed. “And there are other things you’re good at too, besides having visions. Like… making empanadas, and painting… rat… backdrops,” he said, gesturing towards the ones Bruno had semi-on display. “And being a tree, apparently.”
Bruno laughed at that last part. “I’m also pretty good at patching cracks in walls, though hopefully I won’t be called on to do that again anytime soon.”
“And just… being a good tio.”
“Ay, sobrino, you barely know me.”
“I know that,” Camilo said, folding his arms. Mirabel had told him about Bruno running after her on a horse to take the fall for her after Casita collapsed. And now that he was actually spending time with Bruno, refamiliarizing himself with Bruno’s voice and laugh and facial expressions, he was getting back bits and pieces of old memories. Memories of being read to, and carried, and played with, and tucked into bed, and generally doted on. He’d have to ask Mirabel if the same thing was happening with her, and if maybe they could do something nice for Bruno together sometime.
“Not as good as I would have liked,” Bruno said with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you growing up, mijo. But I will try to make up for it now.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty,” Camilo said, then paused and added, “Although… I wouldn’t mind you trying to make up for it. The lost time, I mean, not… anything you did wrong.” Bruno was smiling big at him again, and Camilo felt himself blush. Honestly, Bruno was worse than his mamá, she hadn’t acted like this over Camilo since he was about twelve. “Oye, you’re going to be really embarrassing, aren’t you?”
Bruno laughed. “What, are you worried I’ll tell your future romantic interests all your cute toddler stories?”
“Please don’t,” Camilo said flatly.
Bruno laughed again, open and warm, no nervousness at all. “Not until they’re old enough to appreciate them, I promise,” he said, crossing his heart.
Camilo rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help smiling.
“Now,” Bruno said, “how about you help me finish these empanadas and then… if you want, you could meet some of my star actors?” He sounded hopeful.
Camilo looked at the rats sitting nearby, some of them looking hopefully at the plate of empanadas. He broke off a little piece and held one out to one of them. The rat looked at Bruno, who nodded, and then it cautiously came forward, grabbed the treat, then ran a few paces off to eat it. Camilo supposed the rats were kind of cute when he thought about it. “I’d really like that.”