"I don't understand that. Where are they?" Abuela paced through the kitchen, not caring that her family was looking at her. Well, at least most of her family.
"I don't know, Abuela. All the people talking on the streets… I can't hear them." Dolores held her head, trying to focus on the voices and footsteps of the missing family members. She wasn't surprised that she couldn't hear Bruno all day long, but she also couldn't hear her brother and cousin, who were a lot less lightfooted than her uncle.
"Bruno always had a tendency for skipping meals when something upset him, but Camilo and Mirabel…I worry that something has happened to them." Julieta had to hold back her tears, but Augustín pulled her in a hug.
"No, mi Vida, don't worry. Camilo's door is still glowing; he must have used his powers lately."
"But what is with Mirabel? She has no door, and we don't know…." Antonio burrowed his head in his mother's dress; his face was wet from the tears he shed during the last hours. Pepa tried to console her youngest son, but she also worried.
"Osvaldo is coming, and he is carrying something!" Dolores suddenly screamed, but before she could say anything else, the front door swung wide open.
"Camilo, what happened to Mirabel?" Félix knew his oldest son too well to not know when he tried to impersonate someone else, but he didn't care this time.
"I don't know," he admitted, turning back into himself when his uncle and father took his unconscious cousin from him. "Everything seemed fine when we walked down the path Tío Bruno showed me, but when we reached the town, she suddenly passed out again."
"I told her to not overdo herself!" Augustín cried, holding his daughter in his arms. His wife checked Mirabel's pulse and sighed in relief when she found it. "It's ok, she isn't hurt. Just bring her to her room." Hr husband nodded, then he carried Mirabel upstairs, Félix helping him.
Abuela turned her head towards her grandson. "What do you mean "the path Bruno showed you" ?"
Camilo hesitated, but he knew that he couldn't keep a secret from his grandmother. "It's the path that starts outside the town and leads up to the river." He muttered, starring down at his feet.
"What were you doing there?" Alma interrogated him. "I know you have a perfect side on the river up there, but you were clearly not doing that all day long."
"Camilo." Pepa frowned, a cloud forming over her head. "What were you doing up there?"
Her son slumped, feeling defeated. "I met my girlfriend."
"YOU WHAT?!" A lighting stroke out of the cloud over Pepa's head; the sudden noise made her daughter flinch.
"We didn't do anything!" Camilo tried to calm her down. "We only talked, and Bruno told me that Dolores couldn't hear you up there and…."
"Bruno told you to go up there?" The cloud got bigger and bigger, now filling the whole kitchen. "Oh, I will kill him! I will smatch his stupid little head, and I will…."
"Pepa!" Abuela shouted.
"Don't tell me to calm down, Mamá, not this time! My brother deserves to…."
Alma shook her head, giving her daughter a stern look. "I don't tell you to calm down, but I have to get him back first." She grabbed her shawl that hung over her kitchen chair and wrapped it around her shoulders.
"Mamá, what are you doing?" Julieta frowned, glancing at her mother in worry.
"Giving my son some piece of my mind."
