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Despite her gift being super hearing, Dolores found that she also spent a lot of her time watching. Too, the older she got, the less these things were reciprocated; the girl both sadly and gladly accepted her role as a background member of her family. She didn’t have the luster of the golden child, nor display the flashy feats of lifting entire buildings in one hand or changing form in the blink of an eye. Neither did she have the same pressure to perform.
That being said, she wasn’t invisible. Instead, she was watched by the unseen, spoken to by him too.
#
“Lori, Lori!” burrowed into her ear a month after her youngest cousin’s failed gift ceremony.
The girl awoke teary-eyed.
It was unkind of her dreams to tease her so.
“I miss you, Tío,” she sniffled into her pillow, pulling it from under her head to hug it tight.
“I miss you too! Come and see me!”
Eleven-year-old Dolores sat bolt upright in bed. “Tío?”
“Hi!”
“Tío Bruno!” The preteen scrambled to her window and almost fell out of it trying to see the ground below.
“Ssh, shh!” the man begged, hands lifted in something like surrender.
For several minutes, the pair just stared at each other, mouths agape.
Then Dolores grabbed Isabela’s secret vine and slid down it.
Long ago, she had come up with the idea to help her cousin. Alma never had a reason or desire to go into the garden, and Dolores’s room overlooked it. Her presumed good-girl status further meant that Abuela didn’t feel the need to come into her second granddaughter’s room to make sure it was clean either. So, she never saw the giant beanstalk that gave her mini-me some late-night freedom and stress-release.
Sometimes, being on the periphery had its benefits. That night, it paid in dividends.
As he had ever since Dolores could remember, Bruno just swooped her up and held her for a long time.
Reduced to that little girl in her heart, his niece even wrapped her legs around his waist. “Tío, Tío,” she choked on tears and laughter.
“Mi sobrina,” Bruno breathed back, inhaling her scent and holding it in his heart. Chuckling weakly, he asked, “Did I miss something, or are you already twice as big as the last time I saw you?”
Latent worry rekindling, Dolores mourned, “No, you are smaller. Tío, I can feel your bones!” Her legs slid from around him so she could stand on her own two feet again.
The man laughed ruefully, letting the girl down but not letting her go. “Well, you’d never guess, but your tío is not a mountain climber.”
His niece groaned. “You’d think you’d have gotten some leg muscles climbing up those stairs in your room every night!”
They bantered back and forth a few moments more.
At last, Dolores grabbed her uncle’s hand and went to drag him around the house to its entrance and announce his return.
Bruno pulled back. “Lori, I can’t.”
The girl’s jaw dropped, and she whipped around to face him. “What do you mean you can’t? You’re back now! Abuela and Mamá won’t be able to stay mad once they see you. And everyone else-”
“Lori, I can’t,” her uncle repeated, melancholic but sure.
“Well, you can’t stay out here! You’ll catch a cold!”
He gave Dolores that smile she could always see through. “I’ll be fine!”
Jaw set, she shook her head. “Then I’ll catch a cold because I’m not leaving you out here!”
“It’s okay! I’ve been out here for weeks now, and only…” Bruno tapered off, knowing his confession of only contracting a bad flu once would not win him any points. But he also knew it was too late. For some time, he had wondered if Dolores could even hear the unsaid, people’s thoughts.
Or, the girl was just especially perceptive. She frowned at her uncle’s fond smile. “I mean it, Tío. I’m-”
“Your mother’s daughter. And ‘stubborn’ is her middle name!” His smile faltered; he let out a deep sigh. “And ‘stupid-’”
“Abuela didn’t mean that! She’s cried every night since you left!”
Ecstatic awe held Bruno’s voice and breath in his throat for a minute. Then familiar doubt colored his expression. His gentle hand reached out to cup his niece’s cheek. “You’re just saying that. And I thank you, but-”
“I’m not! If you come in with me right now-”
Anxiety overwhelmed the man once more. “I can’t! …Lori, I’m not ready. Maybe, if I just had more time…”
Dolores crossed her arms. “Then why did you come back?”
“I missed my little Lori.”
Sniffling, she smiled under hard eyes. “So, what am I supposed to do now?”
“Um…” Bruno hadn’t thought that far ahead. He had only returned for a glimpse of Casita to give him the strength to try and leave the Encanto once more. But catching sight of Dolores had spurred his mouth to speak before his brain could intervene, a problem that had plagued him since his youth. “Go back to bed and pretend you never saw me?” His weak, hopeful smile did Dolores in.
“No!” she whimpered before dissolving into tears, flinging herself at her uncle and burying her face in his chest. “Please don’t leave again, Tío; please!” she begged him. “…I can’t smile without you!” came her last desperate plea.
“Oh, mi Lori… I thought…” Bruno sniffled too. “I thought it’d be easier for you with me gone. Isn’t it nicer on the ol’ ears?” The man tried to laugh as he worried a little lobe between his nimble fingers.
“I don’t care!” Dolores sobbed. “And Abuela…” Her body involuntarily shuddered at the earsplitting memories of Alma long and often yelling at her only son for upsetting this villager or the other, tarnishing the family’s image. “I’ll try again to tell- ask her not to! For my sake, if she won’t do it for yours. It worked with Isabela! …Kind of. P-please just come home! Stay home!”
“I-”
But Dolores was done arguing. Taking her uncle by the hand once more, she led him back into the garden and Isabela’s vine. His long, hesitant staring up into her window had her telling him, “You can stay in my room tonight, and we’ll figure it out in the morning.”
He quailed per usual under a hard stare from a female family member.
#
Luck arrived with the sun. News of some crisis down in the village led to the entire family charging out to help. Granted permission to stay home to avoid the painful cacophony of sounds that always came with emergencies, Dolores was halfway to sneaking her uncle a bunch of food when another amazing thing happened.
As soon as the front door closed behind the last Madrigal to pass through it, the still-life painting next to her bedroom began to shimmer and swirl like a new door at a gift ceremony.
“Tío, Tio!” the girl called. “It’s okay; everyone left already. Come look!”
Fearful as always as he peeked out of the shadows, looking to her for confirmation per usual, Bruno at last emerged into the light. The swirling glitter left him gobsmacked for a while. “What…” he wondered aloud without completing the thought. Absently, he reached out to touch the painting.
It immediately popped open like the door to a safe and revealed a large hole behind it.
Mumbling to himself, Bruno approached the secret passageway. “Oscar!” he cried joyfully, all but clambering through the hole at the sight of one of his rat friends within it.
Dolores slowly followed her uncle into the unknown.
For a minute, they meandered through the walls of their home.
“Yiiiii- Oh, I’m sorry; I’m sorry!” Bruno amended partway through his victory cry. He threw his arms around his niece and laid his hands over hers to soothe her ears, even kissing her forehead, but could not tear his eyes from the room laid out before them. One of his palms soon left the girl to press to a foundation beam. “Thank you, Casita.”
What seemed like a temporary solution would draw out into weeks, months, and finally years to come.
#
And still, Dolores kept her uncle’s secret. Once or twice, she tried to break it, only to find that she couldn’t speak the words. Or, her family couldn’t hear them. Other times, she slyly directed them to the painting, particularly her mother when Pepa got lost in her grief over her brother’s absence, unable to escape the downpours from her little dark clouds or big bright eyes for days on end.
But neither one of them could move the painting. No one but Bruno could open its door. His painting was almost like that of Abuelo, part of Casita and immotile.
#
Dolores faded more and more into the background as time passed. Or, became more of a wallflower. She liked it best there, her back pressed against the walls, exchanging heat and comfort with her uncle whenever they needed each other throughout the day.
When she would cry in her room from loneliness or frustration, Bruno alone would hear her. Then she would hear him moving through Casita to get to her. She’d know exactly where his hand would press against the wall and press back. Often, her uncle sang her to sleep, chased away her nightmares with his soft voice, cheered her up with silly rat telenovelas or gameshows. In return, she left trays of food with little notes attached on the nightstand between their doors after everyone else went to bed. And she would sing to and cheer him too, in her largely soundproofed room, so as not to disturb or alert the rest of their family.
Thus, they made it through the next decade, leaning on each other out of sight but not out of earshot.