Chapter Text
Alma
When the last of the butterflies had disappeared amidst the clatter of fast-approaching hoofbeats, it was with a sense of inevitability that Alma had thought, ah, so they did find us again, almost without fear. An ending that some part of her had been awaiting for the last fifty years, and she knew in that instant how she would face it: standing in front of Mirabel, just as her Pedro had stood in front of her and the triplets. She hoped that when they reunited, Pedro would be able to look at her with pride, to recognise that she paid her penance for her mistakes and protected their family in the end, too late though understanding was in coming.
In a million years she couldn’t have anticipated who the rider actually was. Even now hours later, set up so kindly by Padre Flores in the quiet calm of the rectory, it doesn’t seem real: Bruno is here, alive and safe and in one exhausted-looking, tattered, lightly-concussed piece.
“I’m - ow. Juli, I’m fine, te prometo.” Bruno squirms away from Julieta’s third check of the bruise just starting to bloom into visibility beneath his hairline. “You don’t need to keep poking me.”
Julieta huffs at him. “Lo siento, Dr Bruno, of course sustaining a head injury and passing out is totally fine. I do it myself every morning. Maybe I wouldn’t need to poke so much if you’d tell me what happened.”
“I bet he fell off the horse,” Pepa interjects.
“I did not fall off the horse.”
“Yes he did,” Alma says, since it might be medically relevant. “He slipped while he was dismounting.”
“You got a concussion falling off a stationary horse,” Pepa says, with a distressed kind of glee. “A completely not moving horse.”
“No!” Bruno squares his shoulders for all of half a second before he admits defeat. “It happened before then and it was much stupider than that.”
“But you won’t tell us what?”
“El pasado está en el pasado. To dwell on it is pointless.” He sweeps his arm elegantly through the air, the effect somewhat ruined by the jaw-crackingly loud yawn he breaks into.
“Go to sleep, hermanito,” Julieta tells him, gently pushing his shoulder so that he’ll lie down . “I have to–I need to – Mirabel.”
“Claro, claro, go, go.” He flaps a hand to encourage her away, eyes already starting to close.
Julieta turns to Alma and Pepa, both sitting beside the bed. “You’ll need to check on him every hour. If he doesn’t wake easily or if he seems confused or in pain, come and get me,” and with one more wistful look at Bruno she bustles out to find Mirabel.
“You should rest too, Mamá,” Pepa says. “We can take turns sleeping on the other side of the bed.”
Bruno cracks an eye open once more. “Dn’t hafta stay,” he slurs and rolls over to face away from them, fast asleep almost immediately.
“As if we’re going anywhere,” Pepa scoffs. They watch the rise and fall of his breathing for a moment. “How is - where was –what happened at that river? Where did he come from? Did Mirabel find him?”
“I don’t know.” It’s impossible. It should have been impossible. He was gone.
Pepa reaches out as if to stroke Bruno’s cheek, her fingertips hesitating and pulling back just before she makes contact like she’s afraid if she touches him the illusion will be shattered. Her eyes are shining with tears. “What if he leaves again?” she whispers.
“He won’t,” Alma says with a conviction that she doesn’t truly feel, squeezing Pepa’s shoulder with one hand and tapping the knuckles of the other hand gently against the wooden bedpost. Somehow, for some reason, she has been blessed once more with a second chance. She only hopes that this one didn’t come too late.
***
Pepa
Pepa has to hand it to Julieta, only two days into their temporary living situation and it’s as if the kitchen there has always belonged to her, the well-practiced dance that is breakfast preparation as chaotically choreographed as ever. Julieta darts around in six places at once, throwing last-minute seasonings and side dishes and instructions around with pinpoint accuracy.
“Un poquito más de sal - Dolores, finish la changua, por fa.The eggs are over there. Tres minutos. Toñito, mi vida, time to sit down at the table, Isa will help you with your drink. Agustín don’t even think about it!”
Rescuing the olleta from Agustín before he flings boiling coffee across the room or drowns in it or something, Pepa raises her eyebrows at her sister. “Another morning without your little helper?”
“Ah, no, pobrecita, she’s sleeping in again, as she should.” Julieta wipes her hands on her apron. “Camilo! Stop sticking your fingers in everything, anyone would think we hadn’t fed you in weeks. Go and wake Mira up for breakfast.”
“¡Claro, jefa!”
“ Nicely ,” Pepa adds.
Camilo blinks at her, an unconvincingly painted picture of innocence. “Of course nicely. Just like Señorita Morning Person always wakes me up so nicely. I am a nice cousin.” He saunters off, squeezing past Luisa in the doorway while trilling a falsetto “oh, Mirabeeeeel!”
“Oh-oh,” Julieta says, sounding unbothered. “Pues, he can’t say we didn’t warn him. Luisa, buenos días! I think everything’s taken care of already, amor.”
“¿Estás seguro?” Luisa kisses Julieta on the cheek, then Pepa. “I can take Tío Bruno his breakfast?”
“He was feeling well enough to get out of bed this morning, actually. But I don’t know if he’ll want to eat with us, it might be a bit too–well– it’s… Pepa, what do you think?” as though Pepa has any more idea about Bruno’s feelings on his first family meal back than Julieta does. She shrugs.
“I think he’d like to,” Dolores says, softly but very firmly. “But someone will need to tell him to come or he won’t think of it.”
“I can –” Luisa starts, but Pepa interrupts with, “Luisa, can you serve the café? I’ll get Bruno.”
“I think he’s in the study,” Dolores tells her. Pepa smiles an acknowledgement and leaves the kitchen feeling a little disoriented: Dolores and Bruno were always very close before he left, and there are a few times Pepa has found the two of them talking together in the bedroom while Bruno recovers from his concussion so it seems the familiarity hasn’t been forgotten, but shouldn’t it be Pepa or Julieta who know what Bruno wants and where he is? They’re his sisters.
In Padre Flores’ neat little study room, Bruno has dragged the chair around the desk in order to place it directly in the bright beam of yellow sunlight pouring in through the window. He’s sitting on it cross-legged, hands resting on his knees in the meditative posture he’d always take to center himself before a vision, except in this case he’s snoring lightly and curled in one of his upturned palms is a rat snoozing along with him. It perks up on hearing the door open and scurries over to squeak curious and fearless around Pepa’s feet.
Pepa isn’t afraid of rats, primarily because of a bloody-minded childhood determination to not hand her little brother such an easy weapon. But she’s never been fond of the things, and used to avoid them as much as possible. Now, though, she crouches down to it, slightly wary, oddly moved.
“Hola, ratacita. It’s been a long time,” she says, though of course it can’t be one of the same rats that he had ten years ago. Did he take them with him when he left? Is this a descendant? Or did he find it in whatever far-off secret place he spent all these years and bring it back to the Encanto, and it left a whole little rat family behind, no warning, no message, is this the stupidest thing she’s gotten teary-eyed about this week? Almost definitely.
She can’t quite bring herself to touch the creature but places her hand on the floor in front of it and murmurs, “thank you for staying with him,” then jumps out of her skin as a sleep-scratchy voice crows from the chair, “aha! I knew you’d come around to them one day!”
Haloed as he is by the bright light she can’t see Bruno’s face properly until he steps forward to pick the rat up, nuzzling it lovingly against his cheek and fixing Pepa with an impressively smug look for someone who’s only been awake for eight seconds. “¡Manuela! Manuelita Soledad, did you meet your Tía Pepi? Did you melt the icy depths of her snowy heart with all your charm and poise?”
“Just because I’m talking to it doesn’t mean I like it,”she scowls. “Have you had that on you since you got back? I’m sure Mamá would have some thoughts about you letting a rat in a bed she was sharing with you.”
She expects him to laugh but he looks genuinely alarmed, cupping a protective hand around Manuela to hide her from view. “No!” he says urgently. “Please don’t say that to her, I didn’t, I swear they weren’t in there, I didn’t have them in there,” with the exact cadence of when they were very young and got in squabbles that went too far, though Pepa will admit that she was usually the one babbling I’m sorry you’re okay let’s find Julieta, you’re fine, don’t tell Mamá please don’t tell Mamá.
Maybe once it would’ve been funny to bring that up, tease him about which one of them used to be the tattletale when they were five and all their disagreements were so silly and simple and quick to heal, but clearly she doesn’t know what makes him laugh any more so she just reassures him, “Bruno, it’s okay, I won’t tell her,” and he looks relieved. “Espera, them? How many rats do you actually have?”
“Ah, you know…the normal amount,” Bruno says vaguely. He sets Manuela down on a pile of Padre Flores’ paperwork and starts patting through his pockets like he’s looking for loose change, pulling out various rodents as he goes. “A ver, here’s Gabriel, Silvio, Etelvina…Andres and Amancio were here earlier, they’re off causing trouble no doubt, and Las Hermanas Morales only ever show up when it’s time to eat, those greedy little things. Ha! And of course Ovidia, as if I’d forget!” He spreads his hands out proudly at the collection of rats piled on the desk.
“Oh, ¿eso es todo?” Pepa says faintly.
Bruno pauses then shakes out his leg and one more rat tumbles out from where it was clinging on to his pant cuff. “Sí,” he confirms. “That one is Bruno Junior.”
“The collection has grown.”
“There were way more before–” he interrupts himself with a click of the tongue, looking deeply melancholy. “There used to be more.”
If there’s an appropriate condolence for disappearance of unspecified number of rodents under mysterious circumstances then Pepa doesn’t know it, so she settles for making a sympathetic face and informing him that breakfast is ready. He says, “oh, okay,” and then stands there looking patiently blank at her until she remembers her rusty Bruno-specific conversation skills and clarifies, “do you want to come and eat with us?”
“Oh! Um. Should I?”
“We’d really like it if you did,” she says and this he does laugh at, a surprised, disbelieving giggle. He keeps shooting doubtful sideways glances at her as they walk to the dining room but to his credit he doesn’t falter for long at the door, only pausing to knock on the wood and take a steadying breath, then another which he holds as he passes the threshold, fingers crossed down by his sides. Everyone at the table immediately falls silent and stares openly at him, because the Madrigal family is many things but subtle has never been one of them.
Bruno gives a startled “ah!” at the sudden attention and steps backwards, right into Pepa. Antonio, god bless her sweet little angel, waves and calls, “Tío Bruno, you can come sit near me!”
Mirabel quickly strikes up a distractingly loud conversation with Camilo, and Bruno and Pepa take their seats on either side of Antonio in relative privacy. It feels so unceremonious, but she can’t bring herself to address the elephant in the room when Bruno is clearly happier fading into the background, nodding along to whatever’s being discussed, stuttering whenever someone addresses him directly, and trying to unsuccessfully dissuade Julieta from plying him with second, third and fourth helpings.
“How many arepas do you think a human is capable of consuming?” he asks her.
“At least one more,”Julieta says severely, depositing two onto his plate. Bruno accepts with good natured resignation, and it’s only because Pepa has been fussing over Antonio as a useful cover for keeping a watchful eye on her brother that she notices him slipping both arepas under his ruana and presumably into the waiting paws of some very happy rats as soon as Julieta turns away, quick and deft as a pickpocket.
I’m sure he ate something , though , she thinks, eyeing his hollow cheeks and sunken eyes and the sharp jut of his collarbone, pretending she doesn’t know exactly what it sounds like to lie to herself about Bruno.
***
Julieta
Julieta has been accused by her family of being very particular about her kitchen space. Also “possessive”, “terrifying”, “homicidal”, other funny little things like that. All in good fun, of course: Julieta, like any cook, has her preferred ways of doing things but she isn’t unreasonable about it. It’s just that some people are doing everything wrong and she has to step in and fix it before she starts screaming and never stops. Which is perfectly reasonable.
Padre Flores - with nothing but respect to such a devoted man of God, she crosses herself briefly - is clearly one of those people. To think that someone could hold the spiritual wellbeing of the whole community in their hands when they don’t even have achiote.
“No guascas, either,” she laments aloud to Camilo, who is dutifully transcribing the grocery list as she takes inventory with predictable investment in making sure that the cupboards are properly stocked. “Is this a kitchen or a wasteland? I may as well just cook sawdust.”
“¡No te preocupes, Mamá!” Perfectly timed, Mirabel busts the kitchen door open with her hip brandishing with some difficulty a giggling Antonio in her arms. “I’ve been out hunting and look what I caught! Dinner is served .”
Julieta grabs Toñito by the chin and dots enthusiastic kisses to his cheeks, making a little yum yum yum noise while he shrieks. “¡Ay! Qué regalo, we’ll eat him all up.”
“There’s not enough of him to feed all of us,” Camilo disagrees.
Mirabel sets Antonio down on the ground, shaking her arms out as she stands back up. “Oof, you wouldn’t say that if you were the one carrying him. ¡Estás tan grande, Antonio! You’ll be as tall as Luisa soon.” She purses her lips at the extensive grocery list. “Padre Flores' pantry not measuring up to the Julieta Madrigal standards?”
“I couldn’t possibly say.” Julieta flicks one of Mirabel’s curls. “I thought you went to wash your hair, amor.”
Mirabel slumps along the counter, a floppy mess of sprawled impatience. “I was going to but someone is still in the bathroom. It must be Isabela, what’s the point of having a big dramatic makeover if you still take so long in the shower about it? She should’ve shaved her head.”
“Best part of having to rebuild,” Camilo says. “If I’d known we were gonna get two bathrooms out of it I would’ve told Mirabel to yell the house apart years ago.”
“That isn’t what happened, Camilo.”
“Be fair to Casita, there weren’t so many of us at first,” Julieta points out. “Although two bathrooms might have been a good idea anyway, you should have heard how Pepa and Bruno used to fight over it. As if they weren’t just as bad as each other.”
Camilo raises an eyebrow. “We talking about the guy whose hair is literally a rat’s nest?”
“Rats are very clean creatures,” Julieta says, because that’s exactly what Bruno would always tell her, generally while letting them run all over his plate and nibble at food he’d then take a bite of himself. Her brother has always been a man of fascinating contradictions. “And Bruno is too. He might be a little scruffy around the edges and have some odd habits, but I’d never see him with greasy hair or dirt under his nails.” She takes Antonio’s hand demonstratively. “Una lección para ti, hm? Look at this, have you been digging Casita’s new foundations with your bare hands?”
“I was helping the worms get home!” Antonio says happily. “They live in the mud.”
“They sure do,” Mirabel agrees. “Looks like we know who’s in line for the bath after me.”
“Nooo!” Antonio wails. “Mirabel, nooo! Not bathtime!”
“It’s either that or we toss you in the river, hombrecito,” Camilo says. Antonio pumps his fists excitedly and says, “ yesss.”
“The river? Pero what if he floats all the way out to sea, then I’ll have to hang out with you instead, Cami.” Miirabel pinches Antonio’s cheek, then pinches Camilo’s too, smirking at his outraged noise. “I better kick Isabela out so that the rest of us can get clean.”
She thunders off down the hallway, followed by a loud thumping on the bathroom door echoing through the house. “IsaBELA! Hurry up and get your flowery butt out of–oh! Tío Bruno, lo siento, I thought it was Isa!”
Julieta smiles knowingly at Camilo: what did I tell you ? He grins back at her. Bruno says something too quiet to hear, Mirabel laughs and answers, “no, no, it’s fine! I bet Mamá has one somewhere, she always does.”
A few moments later Bruno pokes his head into the kitchen, damp hair like a mop obscuring most of his face. “Do you have a hair tie, Juli?”
“Yes, I–” She pats her pockets with a frown. “Ah. Camilo, leave the list in here, I will know if you add extras. Vamos, Bruno, there’ll be one in my bag,” and sure enough when she digs around in the bottom of her bag in the living room she finds what is apparently her last hair tie. So many things they need to replace, down to the smallest inconveniences.
“Gracias,” Bruno says, reaching out for it.
“Sit down, I’ll do it for you.”
“No es necesario, I’m sure you have more important stuff to -”
“I don’t.” She more or less shoves Bruno down onto the chair, and takes the opportunity to quickly check the bruise on his head before she combs out his hair with her fingers. He meekly accepts his fate. Ah, how many times over the past ten years has she done this for Mirabel while pushing down younger, bittersweet memories of styling another so similar set of dark curls? And now here he is, hair more streaked with silver than before but still so heartbreakingly familiar, her ghost of a brother finally tangible in front of her.
She could just scrunch it and tie it into a quick bun like she tends to with her own hair, but instead she indulges herself by taking her time, meticulously coiling sections around her finger to define the curl. It doesn’t escape her attention that his shoulders are so tense that he’s almost folding himself in half, that she’s finished half of his hair before he starts to relax even a fraction.
“Do you think Mirabel is upset with me for taking so long in the bathroom?” he asks after ten minutes of silence.
“She would have only been annoyed if it was Isabela in there,” Julieta replies. “She’s much more forgiving of everyone else. Especially you, I think.”
His shoulders immediately draw right back up to his ears. What are you so afraid of, she could ask him. Mirabel probably would. Probably already has. Julieta wishes she had half the bravery that her youngest daughter does. He says, “I didn’t realize anyone was waiting. It’s just… ooh, it’s nice being able to take a real shower whenever I want. Plumbing, right? Underrated. You’d think it’d be a breeze to throw a couple pipes together and divert some water but nobody ever tells you how to make it go hot once you got it.”
So the facilities can’t have been great wherever he was. Another baffling fragment of information about all those missing years, one more solitary puzzle piece disconnected from any clear picture. Julieta should push him for more information, and she doesn’t.
“ Nobody begrudges you being able to look after yourself, cariño.” She picks some loose hairs out from where they were tangled around her fingers - she frowns. Quite a few loose hairs. “But you might be washing it too often, you’re shedding a lot.”
“Ay, mierda, I hoped I was imagining that. It’s not noticeable, is it?”
“Todavía te queda mucho,” she assures him, and with a strange sense of sadness that the moment is ending she ties his hair up in a pineapple on top of his head so that he can sleep without messing it up. “Hair loss can be a sign of stress, you know.”
“And when have I ever been stressed?” He gives her a goofy smile. “I’m sure it’s fine and I should just stop washing it so much and that there isn’t some kind of horrible curse on Padre Flores’ house that makes every man who showers here go bald, haha.”
He ruminates on that for a few seconds, then knocks very firmly on the wooden end table, and once against his head.
**
Alma
After Bruno had disappeared, Alma had wanted nothing more than to forget him, but try as she might, for ten years faint imprints of his former presence haunted the edges of her awareness daily. A certain shade of green in the grass, the scratching sound of rats in the walls, a hand-drawn bookmark in the middle of a novel abandoned halfway through reading. He’d flicker around in the curling corners of Camilo’s smile, in Antonio’s gentle hand holding an animal, in Mirabel’s patient way with children and the one curl of hair that always drops in front of her eyes and the scrunched-up face she makes when she’s grumpy.
She had called off the search after little more than a week. Pepa had stormed for days about it, Julieta had given her betrayed and disappointed look that she’s never been able to get out her her mind, and somewhere inside Alma a young woman with two dark-haired braids had raged with a fire that she’d long since tamed to a candle’s flame - is it really so easy for you to give up on him? - but she’s grown used to ignoring that version of herself. She had to think of the rest of the family. Bruno left because he didn't care, he was out there somewhere, selfish and thoughtless and most importantly, alive, because it was easier for all of them if all of those things were true, and if they stopped searching, they’d never have to find anything to prove otherwise.
It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
For all she could never stop seeing him while he was gone, though, now that he’s home he remains almost as elusive as if he were still missing, always skittering to the smallest and tightest corners in the dark alongside his rats. Even now working at the construction site under the bright sun, he’s tucked himself away from the rest of the townsfolk, apparently sorting piles of wood into differently-categorized piles of wood for reasons that Alma can’t understand, though she’s coming to realize that she doesn’t understand most of what Bruno does. She sits separate herself, observing every tense and weary line of him from a distance because as soon as he knows she’s there, he’ll slip away from her sight like sand through her fingers.
“¿Puedo unirme a usted, Señora Madrigal?”
She shields her eyes to squint up at the figure by her side and dips her head in recognition, indicating for Padre Flores to sit beside her. “Padre, it’s good to see you. ¿Comó está su hermana?”
“She sends her regards, gracias. Y su familia, I hope that you are all comfortable at the rectory? Not too crowded?”
“For a time when I was a child we shared a house with two other families,” Alma muses. “Perhaps a little bit of crowding will do them good. They’ll appreciate having their own bedrooms all the more for it.” She gives Padre Flores a conspiratorial smile. “Of course I’d join them but at my age, it is no good sleeping on the floor, and so sadly I must make do with the bed.”
Padre Flores laughs with her, but his face quickly becomes serious, his voice low and private. “Señora, forgive me if this is intruding on personal matters, but I also wanted to ask about your son. It seems that he is unwell.”
Pride would tell her to deny it, but it hardly takes a doctor to look at Bruno and see that something is wrong. Alma sighs. “He has been gone for a very long time,” she says. Her fingers find the rosary in her pocket. “We know very little about it, still. I am…concerned for him.”
“Things which burden the mind can eventually take their toll on the body,” Padre Flores says with quiet sympathy. “I was born only a few years before we were blessed with this safe haven and so I remember nothing of the world outside, but in my time as a priest I’ve spoken to enough people who do remember the things out there that we have been fortunate to be shielded from.”
He indicates towards the newly-formed crack in the mountains, which Alma has been doing everything she can to not think about. She would want with all her heart to believe that Colombia outside had found the peace she deserved, but naivete is a luxury that her generation was never afforded. What to fear more, then: that in his time away, Bruno found those things beyond the borders that Alma had spent her life trying to keep at bay, or that whatever weighs him down so greatly came from within their own town, their own home? She would want with all her heart to believe that the Encanto was a place of safety, too.
“It is a time of great change for our family,” is all she says on the matter. ”And for Bruno more than any of us. I would ask that he’s given the same patience that the rest of us have been afforded while he finds his place again.”
Padre Flores gives her a grave, somber look. “Como usted dice, señora. Perhaps it is time for all of us to change.”
He stands with a blessing as he takes his leave and makes his way directly to Bruno, who visibly jolts in shock as the priest calls out a greeting to him, and then scrambles to his feet with his hands gripping the hood of his ruana as if to pull it up.
From her vantage point Alma watches with fascination as something ripples around the area: within an instant, Luisa moves to work on a section of rubble within a few feet of Bruno, Isabela and Dolores without breaking their conversation shift their position apparently aimlessly until they’re almost right beside her. It’s all done so smoothly that nobody outside of the family would ever notice that this is a shoring up, a small and subtle fortress, except that Mirabel with characteristic forthrightness flits immediately to Bruno’s side and slides her arm through his. They are the Madrigals, and they know how to build walls, for better or worse.
They stay in this casual vigilance until Bruno gives a small, uncertain smile at the priest and lets go of his hood - he clutches at his arm instead, the way he always has done when he’s nervous, but it’s clearly enough that Mirabel stands down, chatting amicably with Padre Flores herself. The others follow her lead, drifting slightly further out but still within earshot.
Alma presses the rosary beads into her fingertips, and like a confession of a guilt she doesn’t fully understand, the question arises unwanted in her mind of whether they would have felt the need to do the same thing if she had been the one to approach him.
***
Julieta
Julieta has never considered herself a voracious reader, especially not compared to her siblings. Pepa tears through stories like a hurricane, finishing one book in the space of an afternoon and immediately moving onto the next. Bruno can sit and pore over a single page for hours to wring every ounce of symbolism out of it. But while Julieta is perfectly competent with her letters, sitting down with a book has never been something she chooses to do for fun. She always much preferred stories in the form of one of Bruno’s dramatic one-man re-enactments, or Pepa tearfully recounting whatever plot had gripped her heartstrings that day, or Agustín reading aloud while Julieta prepared supplies for a busy day of healing. Oh, she could listen to that for hours, she loves the way he reads out loud, with a careful gracefulness to his voice that she only otherwise sees in him when he’s playing the piano.
Unfortunately, as Julieta is discovering, what works so wonderfully for a novel or a play is not as helpful for studying dry, dense medical texts. Determined not to let a lack of miracle healing get in the way of her doing her job properly, she’s raided the local library and the bookshelves of the two suddenly-out-of-partial-retirement doctors in the village. After the fourth consecutive hour of straining her eyes reading about the minute differences between this cough and that, she had been delighted to accept Agustín’s offer of help. But she finds herself falling into the soothing cadence of his voice and forgetting to actually take in the information, or he’ll pause in his reading to tangent about how intelligent and caring and spectacular his healer wife is, or worst of all, he’ll keep stopping to suggest it’s about time they put the book down and did something else.
“If you’re tired of reading then feel free to leave instead of distracting me,” Julieta says.
Agustín leans across the sofa and says, “what if I want to be distracting?
“I have no doubt that you do.” She obliges him with a kiss, but ducks out of the way of his attempt at a second one. “Agustín, I have to finish this.”
He lifts his hands innocently, and stands up from the couch. “Claro, far be it from me to keep my wonderful wife from her work. Dios no lo quiera.”
She shakes her head as he blows a kiss towards her and leaves the room, and she gets about four minutes of peace before someone apologetically clears their throat. “Hola,” Bruno says. “I’m about to make some tea, you should have some too because Agustín told me I need to come in here and do whatever it takes to make you take a break.”
“It would probably be more effective if you didn’t tell me the last part.”
“Yes, I suppose it would be. ¿Qué estás leyendo?”
She flips up the book so he can see the title. “Since I have to do things the old fashioned way now.”
Bruno nods understandingly and then says, “so are we getting tea then, or?”
“Hermanito–” she starts. He turns those big sorrowful eyes on her and she sighs, but only internally. Agustín knew exactly what he was doing, sending Bruno along. “I would love to have some tea with you.”
She does have to admit it feels good to stand up and stretch her legs, to let the cacophony of medical knowledge clamoring around her head quiet down for a while. They retain a comfortable silence all the way into the kitchen, where Julieta keeps herself busy finding something to snack on while Bruno falls into a deep reverie gazing into the teapot with an expression like he’s staring straight down into the depths of hell until she nudges him with her hip.
He makes a little oop ! noise and pours out two cups of tea, bringing them over to the small kitchen table. In return, Julieta slides the plate of cocadas his way, which he shakes his head at. “Estoy bien, we just had lunch.”
“Lunch was hours ago,” she replies. “And your plate was still full when we finished. Have you even - “
“Bup! Nonono.” Bruno wags his finger at her. “We’re not turning this into another What’s Wrong With Bruno conversation, we were talking about what’s bothering you .”
“We weren’t talking about anything. And nothing is bothering me, except you going around looking like you’re about to snap in half.”
“If nothing is bothering you then why did Agustín feel the need to make me come get you?”
“No sé, why don’t you ask him?”
“I did ask him, he says that you’re upset about losing your healing powers and that you’re going to overwork yourself trying to make up for it because you’ll feel like it’s your fault if something happens that you don’t know how to fix.”
The frankness stings all the more for being perfectly accurate. Julieta folds her arms. “Excuse me for wanting to be prepared the next time you come home with a concussion.”
“I wasn’t planning on turning it into a hobby.”
“It's no joke, Bruno, what if it had been more serious? Or if one of us hadn’t got out of the house in time when it was falling down, or if Casita hadn’t been able to shield Mirabel properly?"
She wants so much to stay matter-of-fact but her throat is getting tight, and Bruno is looking at her with such kindly understanding on his face that she can’t stop herself from talking.
“I tried to get her to leave and she just kept going for that candle. It could have got her killed , for what, a candle? A miracle that never even gave her a gift? For all the good it’s done for us - poor Luisita, I knew she worked too hard and now that she can’t…you should see the look on her face whenever she can’t lift something. Dios mio, Bruno, do you know, the other day Isabela told me that she never even wanted to marry Mariano? If she’d gone through with it…they’re my daughters . It’s my job to fix things for them, and they didn’t come to me.”
“Growing up in our family is never an easy thing. That doesn't make it your fault. Sometimes bad things are just going to happen, and you won’t be able to help it,” Bruno says, his knuckles knocking a hypocritical prayer under the table, uno dos tres four five six, please don’t let anything bad happen, please don’t let it be my fault .
She thinks, you didn’t come to me. “I have to try. ¿Tú entiendes? I have to try, because if I don’t and next time things are worse…”
“Lo sé.” Bruno takes her hand. His fingers are freezing, which is oddly grounding: Julieta holds on as tightly as she can. “You’re a good healer, Juli, miracle or not. I’m not saying don’t do some reading, I think it’s great that you are, but that shouldn’t be all you do. Maybe you and Agustín could - uh, what do couples, you could do a, go for a, uh, soothing walk in the jungle? Look at some…nature? Or spend some time with the girls, maybe they need someone to show them that it’s okay to slow down for a while.”
He gestures his tea around with his free hand and adds, “Oooor you could construct a whole system of rituals in a futile attempt to exert any control over the universe around you until that also spirals out of control and you have to come up with rituals for the rituals and now everything you own is always covered in salt. That’s also an option!”
Julieta snorts. “If you need to go for soothing walks in the jungle with someone you can borrow Agustín.”
“¿Con nuestro suerte? I don’t see how the two of us immediately getting eaten by a jaguar would make less work for y–agh!” he squawks as she pulls him into a hug. He always said he was never good at people but sometimes she thinks that it’s precisely that reason that he’s someone who gives such reassuring advice, because he has to listen harder, pay more attention, take apart and study the things that everyone else takes for granted. She didn’t even know how much she missed that. Tentatively, he returns the hug. It’s nothing like the way he used to embrace them, so stiff and uncertain now, but it’s enough that he’s here.
***
Pepa
Once, when they were only about ten or eleven, Bruno had asked Pepa whether she’d ever get rid her gift if she could and, being Bruno, had done so right in front of Mamá which led to such a tedious, guilt-ridden hour of your father’s sacrifice, do you know how many people would be grateful for a blessing like this, earn what we’ve been given et cetera that when he asked her again later in private Pepa had accidentally blasted a nearby bush with a bolt of lightning and then told him he should think before he speaks next time. Understandably, they never discussed the topic again.
She’s thought about it many times since, though: the solid reassurance of perfect weather for a harvest versus the desire to simply scream without worrying about bringing the mountains down. How wonderful to not be soaked to the skin every time she reads a sad book, how boring to reach the bittersweet ending without a rainbow spilling its colors in an arc above her head.
Casita clean-up has been an emotional process from the start, and even more so for Pepa today: they reached the rubble of hers and Felix’s room. They find waterstained and ruined photo albums, dresses, letters. They find unscathed in the box the set of earrings that Dolores got her for her birthday, the protective bag containing the suit that Camilo had worn for his gift ceremony, a handprint set in clay from a six-month old Antonio. Things she’s heartbroken to have lost, things she’s overjoyed to have found unbroken, but no matter which the weather stays a steady gray all day and both her delight and her loss feel dulled and overpowering at once. She suddenly feels sorry for all the clouds she’d shooed away and squashed down for so long. How claustrophobic for them, to be a skyful of feelings confined to the inadequate prison of one single body.
When the rain finally breaks it brings with it relief, something close to how it used to feel when she still had her gift. Pepa is the last one to leave Casita, lingering well past when she could actually get anything done, and when she finally returns to the rectory finds that she isn’t the only one out in the inclement weather: Antonio and Bruno are standing side by side on the grass, perfectly still and silent, Bruno with one arm held out so that Antonio can shelter under the ruana like a canopy.
Pepa had always tried not to think about how the two of them might have got on if they’d ever met, but if she had done, this seems about how she would’ve pictured it.
“What are you two doing out here?” she calls, hitching up her skirt to step across the damp grass towards them.
Antonio waves at her and says, “rain makes trees grow!” which explains nothing.
“Are you hoping it will work on you too?” She leans down and whispers loudly, “it’s too late for your Tío Bruno, he stopped growing when he was Camilo’s age. More of a houseplant than a tree, really.”
“Hey,” Bruno protests.
She ignores him, lightly pushing Antonio towards the house. “Anyway, rain might make trees grow but it just makes people get all wet, so you should get inside because if you catch cold then Tía Julieta won’t be able to fix it.”
Antonio pouts. “But Mamá…!”
“I think Ovidia wants to go inside too,” Bruno says. He fishes around under his ruana for a minute and pulls out a sleepy-looking rat which, to Pepa’s untrained eye, seemed perfectly content where it was. “I know she likes it when you carry her, Toñito, can you take her for me?”
“Yes yes yes!” He takes the rat with a reverent sort of awe, cradling it in one arm against his chest and holding the other hand over it like an umbrella. “¿Vienen tú y Mamá?”
“En un minuto, sobrinito. But you should run along with Ovidia, she’s a very important rat, you mustn’t keep her waiting in the rain.”
“Take your shoes off at the door!” Pepa calls after him, and then turns to Bruno. “So you’ve learned the secret to babysitting Antonio.”
“Heh, if bribing people with rats worked on everyone I’d be a lot more popular.” He smiles at her. “He’s a really sweet kid, Pepi. Smart as hell, too, I think he’s already smarter than me.”
“Like that’s hard.” She nudges him and before she can stop herself says, “you could’ve known that about him years ago if you’d been here.”
Bruno’s loose slouch goes rigid and closed in an instant. He wraps the soaked wool of his ruana closer around himself. “We don’t need to–”
“I just want to know where you were. Why is that so much to ask? Why won’t you talk to us?”
“Oh, so now you want to talk about me,” he snaps and then cringes like he’s expecting to be hit by lightning. Pepa’s heart is racing: he can't know, can he? There's no way he could know. “Sorry. I’m sorry, no quise decir eso. I just—I know you’re going to find out sooner or later, but I – I can’t tell you.”
“¿Por qué no?”
“Because you’re going to be really, really angry.” He squeezes his eyes closed and says, “I don’t want you to hate me.”
“I would never hate you.”
“Pretty sure you’ll change your mind when you find out.”
“Pretty sure you can’t tell the future any more, so stop making predictions about me,” she says crossly. A faint smile dances across his face. She’d never asked him if he ever wished he didn’t have his gift: the answer seems fairly obvious. “Do you remember my wedding?” she asks, and he twitches his eyebrow at her. “No, not that part, I mean the part where I dragged you out of hiding in the kitchen when the dancing started.”
“Of course I remember, it was terrifying. I don’t think the cumbia is supposed to be quite so threatening .”
“But we did dance.” Mamá had told her that she should focus on calming the storm, Julieta had told her more gently that she should focus on her new husband and let them worry about Bruno, and Pepa had ignored both of them to go looking for him because when she looked back on her wedding, she wanted to remember dancing with her brother, she wanted him to be there for it. No matter how furious she is with him at any given moment, it’s always better that he’s there. She thought he would’ve known that, but it seems like she was wrong. “I’ve been angry for long enough, Bruno. I would love to be able to move onto the next part.”
Bruno screws up his mouth and then looks to the sky. “I missed the rain,” he says.
“Sí,” she says. “Me too.”
**
Julieta
“When I told him to tell us where he’d been,” Pepa grumbles, “I didn’t expect him to just blurt it out at the table in front of everyone.”
“Well, why not,” Julieta says, only slightly hysterically. “Get it all over with at once. Did you expect the part where he ran away before we could get a word in?”
Pepa thinks about it and says, “yes,” then hollers “Bruno, this is stupid!” into the night.
Mirabel had dashed after her fleeing uncle as soon as he left the table, too. Logically Julieta knows she’s probably just checking he’s okay, but she can’t say it feels great to be spending any more time walking around in the dark calling for either of them. Once was already far too much. She cups her hands around her mouth and shouts, “Mirabel!” and thank god, there’s a “¡por aquí, Mamá!” in response.
Out of the doors of the church nearby, Mirabel appears dragging Bruno by the hand. Julieta can feel Pepa gearing up to demand answers: she givers her a quelling nudge as soon as she catches sight of Bruno’s face. “Are you okay?” she asks. There are tear tracks on his cheeks that he scrubs at with a fist, and gives them a look that clearly says, I don’t think you want me to answer that . “We need to talk, Brunito.”
“I’ll say,” Mirabel agrees. “Big day! Lots to unpack.”
“Maybe just the three of us for now, mi vida?”
“Oh. Yes! Obviamente. That’s what I thought. Private triplet chat, I get it.” She looks at Bruno before she makes a move to go anywhere though, and only leaves once he gives her a nod, with a kiss to his cheek and a reassuring smile at Julieta.
The silence holds until Mirabel is out of sight and then Pepa steps towards Bruno so suddenly and aggressively that Julieta almost pulls her back on instinct. Bruno throws his hands up in surrender and yelps, “don’t kill me in a church!”
Pepa grabs him in something that vaguely resembles a hug but more closely resembles a bear attack, his feet swept right off the floor. “We’re not in a church, we’re near a church.”
“Reassuring,” he squeaks, trying to wiggle away. “Is this - are you – I can’t tell what kind of reaction you’re having?”
“That makes three of us,” Julieta says. “Bruno, explain yourself.”
“Ah, pues,” Bruno says breathlessly. It’s a very tight hug. “Es como, there were prophecies, conversations were had, the house is magic, I made some choices, you know how…things just…happen?”
Pepa finally drops him. “ Things just happen is what you say if you oversleep and miss an appointment. This doesn’t just happen. It's not like you can trip and fall and accidentally start living in the walls for a decade. Where was there even space back there?!”
He winces pre-emptively and mutters, “Casita made, there was a hole behind one of the paintings and, and I don’t know if it was there before but there was. A room. Behind the. The. Family tree?”
It sends Julieta reeling: I lived in the walls was near enough nonsense before, a meaningless statement that couldn’t connect to any kind of reality, but as soon as he tells them that she can picture it, and it’s unbearable. “So every time we sat down to eat you were right there and none of us knew.”
Pepa gasps, both hands to her mouth. “Dolores?”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Bruno says sharply. “She did the best she could, more than I ever should have asked her to, if you’re going to blame anyone it should be m-– oh, no, Pepita, ¡no llores!"
“Ten years,” she sobs, flinging her arms around him. “Oh, Bruno, ten years ? All by yourself? ”
He pats her hesitantly on the back. “Hey, come on, it’s okay, it sounds worse than it is. I had my rats, and I got lots of time to write, and it was right by the kitchen. Not a bad set up.”
If he meant that to be comforting, it’s the opposite. Right by Julieta’s kitchen the whole time, and look at the state of him. Julieta dreads to even think what he looks like without all the extra padding from the ruana. “I never noticed food missing, not enough of it to feed a grown adult. You can’t have been taking that much. Ay, no wonder you’re so thin! All that time, it’s a miracle you managed to survive this long without serious –” she pauses. A miracle, perhaps. They don't have one of those any more. "You were eating my cooking."
Pepa looks horrified, clearly coming to the same conclusion. “No more magic healing. And you still aren’t eating properly, are you? I’ve seen you hiding food when you think nobody’s looking.”
“I do eat.”
“How much? It doesn’t look like you’ve put on any weight at all since you got back.” Julieta touches the back of his palm, then picks his hand up to examine it closer. “Do you know the symptoms of malnutrition? I do. Weight loss is only part of it. Cold hands. Hair loss. Nail ridges, see this? Do you feel tired, achey? Do you get nauseous or dizzy a lot?”
Bruno tugs his hand away, rubbing agitatedly at his knuckles. “Pero– o sea, it’s not that bad, I just, yes I lost a bit of weight, but… is it that bad? We don’t even know if your gift would have– you have to want to heal a person, right? And you didn’t know I was there, así que…”
“It’s more effective if I know who and what I’m treating, yes, and I don’t know exactly how it would work for something like this. But if we’re talking about wanting to heal someone…” She shakes his shoulders. “Hermanito, do you think a single second went by in all those ten years where I wasn’t praying with my whole heart that you were safe and healthy?”
“I’m sorry,” he says, as though her caring about him is something he did wrong.“What, um, what happened with Mamá after I left the table? Is she mad at me, did she– did she say…anything?”
Julieta hesitates. “She…we were distracted, it was a lot to take in, and–”
“No,” Pepa says quietly. “She didn’t say anything.”
Bruno nods calmly like he was expecting that. And why wouldn’t he be ? Julieta thinks. He knows that they stopped looking for him. He knows they stopped talking about him.
How is she supposed to fix that?
***
Pepa
Of course Pepa didn’t expect one conversation with Bruno to resolve everything, but she does have to admit that she at least thought he’d try and start eating properly. All that seems to have happened so far is he’s got even sneakier about hiding food, and it’s not that she isn’t grudgingly impressed that he somehow manages to sneak his arroz con coco under his ruana without anyone seeing, but she does think he’s underestimating their intelligence - was she supposed to just not mention that his pockets had leftover rice clinging to them when she did the laundry? Does he think she’s that unobservant?
Well. Maybe that’s a fair assumption, he did manage to live in the same house as them for ten years without them noticing. And she hasn’t actually mentioned the rice to him, because what right does she have now to play the role of concerned sibling?
He saw everything. Did she say she wanted to move past the anger? Ha! She wishes she could be angry again. It was much easier. Right now she's just suffocating in guilt, so what can she even do except watch and worry from afar and vent all her many, many fears to Julieta?
“It will take time,” Julieta says, yet again. There’s a manic edge to how she’s mixing the empanada dough, like she’s trying to beat it into submission.
“Bueno, so how much time do we give him to decide whether or not he wants to starve to death right in front of us?”
“What do you want me to do, Pepi, hold him down and forcefeed him?” She throws the dough hard against the side of the bowl. “I can learn everything there is to learn about nutrition and make as much food as possible but I can’t make him care about himself enough to do anything about it if he doesn’t want to, so I’m open for ideas if you have any.”
“Ahem.” Camilo coughs politely and they both spin round to see him standing awkwardly at the other side of the kitchen, pointing towards a cupboard. “Ah, I was going to set the table for dinner?”
Julieta looks flustered. “Sí, sí, gracias. Food should be ready soon.”
Camilo pauses on his way past to murmur, “¿está todo bien, Mami?” at Pepa. She says, “of course, Cami, everything is just fine,” and it’s clear from the look he gives her that he isn’t buying it, but he just nods and grabs the plates from the cupboard without a word, which is always a very worrying thing from Camilo.
He stays quiet even when they’re all seated at the table. Dolores enters, soft as a shadow, avoiding eye contact with her: it’s been a week since Bruno’s revelation, but they still haven’t talked about what she knew. Pepa hasn’t asked Mirabel about how she came to find him back there. They haven’t asked the children why none of them seemed surprised to hear about Bruno’s hiding spot, and none of the children have come to them to discuss it. Nobody has said a word about that awful, tragic facsimile of a plate that they’d found painted on a broken wooden table in the space behind Casita’s dining room two days ago. Mamá has said nothing to anyone about anything. That easy old pattern arises again: they sit down to dinner and they don’t talk about Bruno, even when he comes into the dining room with Mirabel on one side and Isabela on the other, wearing the distinct look of a man who has been physically dragged somewhere he really doesn’t want to be.
Antonio, too young to understand the current of silent unspoken information but certainly perceptive enough to feel the atmosphere, tips over his juice, whines loudly about not being able to sit next to Mirabel, and steadfastly refuses to touch his dinner no matter how much they cajole him.
“Oh no, Antonio!” Félix flops the little toy jaguar that Mirabel had made for him all around the edge of the bowl. “¡Rápido!, you better eat it before el jaguar gobbles it all up!”
Antonio is having none of it. “He’s just a toy,” he says. “I’m not a baby .”
“Aha! Probarlo,” Féliix says, nudges the bowl towards him. “A real grown-up would finish all of their cuchuco so they can stay big and strong.”
Antonio scowls even harder. “No they wouldn’t. Tío Bruno doesn’t even eat anything and nobody tells him off and he’s a grown-up.”
Everyone looks at Bruno, who handily undermines Antonio’s whole argument by being the world’s worst example of anyone growing up big and strong, and who looks like he’s just been caught in the middle of stealing someone’s valuables. “Ahahaha, um. That, that’s not really – digamos, it’s like – uh. Listen to your father, Antonio.”
Camilo says, “no, he’s right,” and puts his fork down. “If Tío Bruno doesn’t have to eat, why should we?”
“Ahhh,” Bruno says, fingers dancing nervously along the edge of his plate. Luisa discreetly pushes the salt shaker towards him; he takes it and throws a pinch over his shoulder, and then two more. “I-I don’t, I’m not- I get plenty of food, gracias. Anyway, do as I say, not as I do, ¿verdad?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Camilo folds his arms, glaring defiantly at Bruno. “I’ll eat when you do.”
Dolores glances between them, and with a quiet little “hm” she sets down her cutlery too. Bruno looks like he's about to cry.
“Camilo, Dolores, please,” he implores, very quietly and very desperately.
“Es suficiente,” Mama interrupts. “I think it’s time that everyone focused on their own plates instead of Bruno’s, come on. Camilo, eat your dinner. You too, Dolores.”
“But-” Camilo starts.
“This isn’t up for debate.”
Pepa puts her hand on Camilo’s arm, and as the conversation picks up again she whispers, “I think you made your point,” nodding at Bruno. He hasn’t made a start on his own food, but there’s a contemplative look somewhere between epiphany and horror on his face - she almost expects to see the green cloud of a vision swirling in his pupils.
One thing that never changed about Bruno through all these years: he always did care far more about his sobrinos than about himself.
Her children really are very clever.
***
Alma
When her three babies were still just infants, the village doctor had assured an exhausted and worried Alma it was normal with triplets for them to have more problems with feeding than other babies. The women of the village had assured her that it was normal that she couldn’t nurse all three of them all by herself. Normal or not, though, every time Julieta had immediately thrown up everything she just ate, every time she had to hand Pepa over to another woman to feed, every time Bruno had simply refused to latch on, Alma had sat in her lonely bedroom and wept in shame. Surely the first thing a mother should be able to do is feed her children?
That was supposed to be one of many things left in the dark blur of the first days of the Encanto. But after a somewhat terse and awkward dinner, Alma speaks to Julieta, to Pepa, and then she excuses herself to the bedroom where she sits on the bed and stares at her hands in her lap doing everything she can to stop herself weeping in shame once more. She had sworn to herself that her children would never go through what her and Pedro had to go through. That was all she asked. Now here is her only son, a frightened, hungry runaway, a sacrifice at a river for a child he loves so dearly, a composition of every failure that she didn’t know she was leaving in her wake.
There’s a gentle knock on the door, and Mirabel says, “you should talk to him, Abuela.”
“Gracias, Mirabel,” Alma says, “Bruno and I are handling things in our own way.”
An expression that Alma can’t read flits across Mirabel’s face.“I know there’s a lot of…history between you that I don’t know. But he’s having a really hard time, and if you care about him then you can’t just leave him to deal with it by himself.”
“Of course I care about him!” she snaps, too harshly.
Mirabel flinches, but stands her ground. “I know you do. Does he?”
She gives Alma a challenging look, then ducks her head apologetically and hurries out of the room, and Alma recognizes a few moments too late that this is how she would have spoken to her granddaughter a month ago, before the candle burned out and everything changed. Her shoulders slump. It is so easy to forget herself.
It isn’t that Mirabel is wrong, or that Alma doesn’t want to talk to Bruno. She wants more than anything to repair what’s broken between them. She just doesn’t know what to say to make things better. Well. Where words have failed her before, Alma has taken practical action, and so when she locates Bruno sitting on the window sill of the study staring out into the night, it’s with a warm mug in her hands and a loud flutter of anxiety in her heart.
“Brunito,” she greets him.
He startles so hard he falls off the sill. “Mamá!” he sputters as he stumbles to his feet. “It- I-I, uh, hola, I was just–I’m just. Hello. Hi.”
“You didn’t finish your dinner again,” she says.
Bruno goes very still. “I didn’t mean for the kids to notice,” he says. “I was trying not to – the last thing I want is for any of them to start copying anything about me. Especially this."
“Of course they were going to notice.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose,” he says. An edge of bitterness creeps into his voice. “I’m sure you won’t believe me, but I don’t actually want to be like this.”
This is exactly what she was hoping to avoid: everything she says he takes as criticism, no matter how benign a comment. It was just like this before he left, too. She fights down what habit would have her answer with, but she can tell from his face that he sees the way she has to bite back her first response, and after that how could she find anything to say that would comfort him without it ringing hollow? All she manages in the end is, “I brought you this,” holding out the mug. Her voice sounds pitiful to her own ears.
He eyes the mug warily as he takes it, looking suspicious and surprised. “Chocolate con queso.”
“Julieta tells me that it can be difficult to find your appetite if you aren’t used to so much food.” She forces past the agony of vulnerability clawing in her chest to tell him, “when I first lost your father, there were days I used to find it very hard to eat anything at all. Many times I would make this when I couldn’t face a whole meal. It is better to have something than nothing. And it always…brought me some comfort, too.”
“You used to make it for us when we had bad dreams,” he says, so softly, and then a visible formality settles back over him. He straightens his back, looks somewhere just past her shoulder. “Thank you for the drink.”
The cracks between them stretch vast like a cavern, nothing so easy to rebuild as a house. Alma doesn’t know where to go next, but at least she knows now where to start: she is his mother, and the first thing she can do is feed her child.