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Dinners are the hardest part of the day for Bruno now.
For ten years, he’d taken his dinners at his small table, watching his family laugh and bicker and gossip together. He could see them all, but they couldn’t see him.
He keeps forgetting that they all can see him now.
He’s not free to make any face he wants when a pointless argument breaks out over whether the piano tuner visited four or five summers ago. It’s not like before, when only the rats could see his reactions, and presumably didn’t judge (Antonio probably knows, but Bruno won't ask.) Now he has to think about what he looks like to others, to adjust his expressions accordingly. He has to remind himself to smile.
When he sees someone staring at him, there’s a part of him that wants to ask Why? At the table, there’s a woman who can summon a hurricane indoors, a teenager who can impersonate anyone he sees, and a five year old who can have long conversations with a capybara. They are far more interesting sights than a twitchy, middle-aged seer who has no idea how to be seen.
But another part of him knows why. To some of his nieces and nephews, he’s been a bogeyman these long years. To his mother and sisters, he’s been a ghost. Mirabel has been utterly unfazed by his reappearance, but it will take time for the others to adjust.
As soon as everyone has taken their last bites of dinner, Bruno jumps up, grabs the plates, and takes them to the kitchen.
There are footsteps behind him. “Let me help. You wash, and I’ll dry,” says Dolores.
They work in silence for a few minutes. He decides he can either make eye contact or say what he needs to say to her. He stares down at the plate that he’s scrubbing. “I want to thank you for keeping my secret for so long.”
“Um,” Dolores says, and he risks a look up at her. Something complicated flits over her face, and she shifts from foot to foot. For some reason, this is awkward for both of them. “I knew, well, I didn’t know everything, but I knew you left for a reason. I overhear lots of things that I shouldn’t, and I just have to pretend I haven’t.”
Of course she understands him. The two of them have gifts that might as well be curses—they know things about other people that no one else does. Knowledge can be dangerous; knowledge can drive a wedge between you and the people you love.
She stacks a dry plate on the counter. “And I’m--I’m sorry I blurted it out at Isabella’s dinner like that. The part about Casita, it was such a shock, and I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Gathering up the strength for eye contact is difficult, but he feels must look her in the eye for this. “You don't need to apologize. You kept the secret and protected Mirabel until she was strong enough to look for answers on her own. I couldn’t ask any more from you.”
Dolores tilts her head to the side, perhaps to better hear something far away, or perhaps to try to avoid hearing it. After a moment, she asks, “Then can I ask you for something?”
Something twists in his chest as he braces himself for the vision she’ll request. Maybe she’ll ask for one about her future with Mariano. Maybe she’ll ask for one that will break her heart.
Still, he owes it to her to at least hear her out. “Sure.” He’ll let her ask, at least. Then he can try to talk her out of it.
“Can we just agree to do the dishes together every night? Dinner's a little hard on my ears with everyone talking at once, and now we have Antonio’s animals squawking all over the place.” Her voice trails down to a whisper. “I love everyone, but they can be just a bit—much sometimes.”
For the first time in a while, his smile is a genuine one. “Yeah, I get that,” he says. “I can do that.”