Casita was not only reborn, but rebuilt stronger. The walls grew brick by brick, each placed with a care that a house appearing all at once by magic could not match. Each nail was kissed by a hammer into its bed- every shovelful of sand in the foundation mooring the family to the valley.
So when the family lost Abuela, instead of breaking, Casita ossified. The brightly burning souls of each of its inhabitants flickered, and it shored up its walls against the draught. It stood firm and still beneath the feet of those finding their way, softened the bite of voices, and let the troublemakers have their tricks if it kept them shining. Some left, and Casita kept their rooms warmly lit and moved the still air out of their windows for when they returned. It allowed the most fragile souls to retreat behind thick, stucco walls to regain their strength.
Bruno had taken advantage of that- avoiding the difficult grief of his family. But Casita could only do so much. It was home, but the family was what made it so.
This was what Bruno surmised when he attempted to sneak past the dining room, truant again, and found himself unable to progress. The floor of Casita rippled with the sustained effort to keep him in place- to at least consider. Dinner with the family was what he always wanted all those years in the walls, right? They were still his family even when he seemed to bring them only misery again.
Bruno heaved a sigh, clasping the ruana tighter around himself. He could defy Casita, but it had a point.
After all, it was his birthday.
Bruno turned to join the family in the dining room, trying not to let reluctance show in his gait. He couldn't help but notice all of the family's eyes turning towards him as he slunk into the dining room. So, it had been a while since he had eaten with them. Happy birthday.
He could still remember the sunken atmosphere in the dining room the first week after Abuela's death. The empty chair that had once been hers let her absence reign at the head the table. A mist followed Pepa wherever she went, leaving clammy drops on fabric and flat surfaces. Isabella had looked like she was ready to cry at any moment, and often did, burying her face in her napkin and refusing to look up for the rest of the dinner. Camilo emitted a constant stream of distasteful jokes, and seemed incapable of stopping himself. Bruno could see the panic growing in his eyes as he went uninterrupted in the newly somber meals. One time, Felix shouted at him and Camilo looked perversely grateful. Bruno couldn't stand it.
Things were markedly easier now. There was idle chatter, muted pleasantries and comments on the food. The candles on the table cast jaunty flickering light that illuminated all the dark corners of the room. He dropped into his place, surprised to find his chair was not the only one empty. Dolores. His heart sunk- and Mirabel. Dolores he could understand. She had another family in Mariano that she could eat with. Her husband, daughter, and the two twins. Birthdays didn't matter as much when a person had so many.
Mirabel, on the other hand, loved birthdays.
"Salsa?" asked Antonio, offering him the bowl with a nod.
"No thank you," Bruno responded automatically. He scanned the table looking for hints on how things were shaping up with the rest of the family, hunting for the weariness he had witnessed in Julieta. Bruno belatedly realized he was supposed to take the salsa from Antonio and pass it across the table. Instead, the boy was forced to lean awkwardly over the spread to get it to Agustin. Sorry. This was going just as well as he expected.
The topic shifted to weather- Julieta and Pepa doing most of the talking. The rest of his nieces and nephews were struggling to feign interest. What choice did they have? Because at the other end of the table, Felix and Augustin reliably spoke about topics like mortar, property easements, and shoring up the village fields against floods. Charybdis and Scylla of boring conversations.
Bruno tried to savor the ajiaco in front of him. A simple and healthy soup. Good luck to eat at birthdays. It was pleasant to be able to join the table and not have to spirit away leftovers. He supposed that's what Mirabel would be doing.
Mirabel's absence at the table was concerning, and if that made him a hypocrite so be it. No one had mentioned it. Was it habitual?
"So Antonio," Those two were close, right? Bruno struggled to find a more subtle way of inquiring before giving up.
"Mirabel's missing, huh. Everything okay?"
Antonio looked at him like he was insane. Right. Antonio was a teenager now. A parrot poked its head out from under Antonio's hair and gave Bruno an equally skeptical look.
"Of course not?" Antonio said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Camilo cut in from across the table, clearly starving for a new conversation topic.
"Pretty rich thing for you to ask, Tio Bruno. I was wondering if we had lost you to the walls again, haha."
No one laughed.
The truth was that he hadn't had much reason to spend time with the rest of his family. Even before Abuela's death, Mirabel was the person who could stand his advice, the person who best tolerated his attempts to help. Rather than try to make work which he was bad at, he'd compacted himself away like a rain jacket during summer.
"Nice one, Camilo," said Isabella from the opposite end of the table, slitting her eyes. "I'm sure Tio Bruno loves when people bring that up."
"Right, because you've never made a joke in your life,"
Camilo transformed into Isabella, disgusted expression and all.
"Stop that!" Both Isabella and Camilo-as-Isabella said. Then they both groaned identically in frustration.
"No transforming at the table," said Felix, stern but very tired. A new rule since Bruno last ate with them. Camilo slumped back into his own form, arms crossed and head of curls flopping in front of his eyes. Bruno didn't need to respond to any of that, right? He used to glance over to Mirabel for an indication for what to do - a shake of the head, an encouraging nod, a grimace. But she wasn't there.
The table lapsed into silence. The sound of cutlery scraping and small sniffles from someone the punctuation for the rest of the dinner. The meal ended without fanfare and each family member sprung to their assigned tasks: Isabela and Pepa gathered dirty plates, Julieta consolidated leftovers, Antonio wiped down the table. Bruno felt guilty to be out of the rotation of chores.
He prowled into the courtyard, trying to get to his tower before he could further darken the event. Skip the singing and cake this year.
Bruno had a plan.
He was going to make up for his earlier failure and bring Mirabel back. Failures, he corrected himself. He'd let down Julieta when he'd promised to look after Mirabel, Mirabel herself, and the whole family, again. He just had to not be a coward for once in his life.
The plan had come to him quickly- it was so obvious that he was sure Julieta had already attempted it. Apply food to a mourning, probably hungry young adult. Have a talk. Simple. But it had taken him a good part of the night to goad himself into action. Even now, he hesitated in front of Mirabel's room with a plate of arepas unsure of his welcome.
He supposed it didn't actually matter if he was welcome. This was a rescue mission. But he hated to feel like he was imposing. His banishment to the walls, for all the lack of good it did in the end, had protected him from the feeling for ten years.
Steeling himself, he knocked on the door. Knock on wood, he thought to himself.
That wasn't so hard was it?
There was no response. Bruno put his hood up out of nerves, then decided against it. He knocked again, firmer.
"Mirabel?" he called, as loud as he dared while the rest of the family was sleeping. He tried the door. Locked, of course. He shifted the plate of arepas to his non-dominant hand as he awkwardly bent his ear to the doorframe, listening for the sound of anything on the other side. He'd feel like an idiot if Mirabel was asleep despite his hunch that she wasn't. And, treacherously, he'd feel a bit relieved. The shame of that petty emotion spurred him on.
"Casita?" Bruno asked aloud, feeling a bit silly. He never addressed the house as readily as Mirabel and Abuela did. He waited for a sign that the house was listening and did not receive one. "Do you think you could…?" Bruno placed his hand on the door and gave it a light push.
The deadbolt of the door clicked and it opened into darkness. Thanks. He stepped forward into the room, breath catching in his chest as he tempered his nerves.
The curtains were drawn, and the scarce light that came in from the door suggested the faintest outlines of the room. The still-made bed, the vanity, the drafting table Mirabel used to sew. Then, at the farthest wall of the room, his eyes could make out a shape curled on the ground at the foot of the bed.
Bruno waited for Mirabel to either greet him or tell him to go, but she didn't. All he could hear in the darkness was the sound of her irregular breathing. Perhaps she was too tired to decide what he should do either way. This was already not going to plan.
Bruno approached, trying not to stumble on anything as his eyes adjusted. He placed the plate of arepas on the drafting table as he passed. They seemed irrelevant now.
Mirabel had wrapped her arms around herself like she had before, in the garden. On her knees like some sort of distorted penitence. She could have been trying to master herself, but the mask didn't slide back into place this time.
"Um, hi… missed you at dinner," Bruno whispered feeling grossly inadequate. Mirabel was the one good at this. He sat down on the floor next to her, struggling to arrange his limbs into a comfortable position. "Bad day?"
Mirabel raised her head to look at him then, tears streaming down a face strained with the unnatural task of sobbing in complete silence. At least crying was honest.
"Why couldn't you tell me?" She rasped.
"About what?" Bruno was confused and a bit alarmed. Mirabel was already deep into this conversation and he had only just shown up.
"Abuela…" Mirabel struggled to get that one word out, and it was all she seemed able to say. She looked down, ashamed on top of everything else. She knew very well why Bruno never warned about this kind of thing. But that wasn't the point, was it?
"Everyone has their time," Bruno said, and it came off as rote even to his ears. Mirabel laughed, an awful sound.
"I can't stand it… Abuela's gone," her breaths were ragged, words hardly making it out.
"Parents are getting older, and worse, you..." She cut off the last word prematurely, but it had already slipped out. Guilt filled her eyes as she looked at him.
Oh, him. Dying, long before Mirabel did. He didn't like to think about it, and he didn't have a particularly good rejoinder.
"Well, you can't stop loving your family because they're mortal…" he offered.
Mirabel rewrapped her arms around herself, stress ricocheting through her frame like heat shocked glass. It looked as if she'd break apart with a single point of pressure.
"It's true…" said Mirabel finally. "Should just… get over it…"
"I really don't know what to say to that."
Yes? It was impossible to tie a bandage over the injustice of loss, but that's what you had to do. And personally, Bruno felt he had lived for so, so long with the knowledge. So he was used to it.
As Mirabel clung to herself, Bruno noticed her fingers digging into the skin of her forearms, hard enough to bruise. His heart dropped at the sight.
"Hey, can I see your hands?" He tried to ask casually.
"No," came a curt reply.
"What about I go get Julieta and-"
"No!" Mirabel cut him off. She gripped onto her upper arms harder.
"Um, I sense this is kind of a coping mechanism, but I really wish you wouldn't do that," Bruno tried not to panic at the inviolability of his position. Even for him and his self-punishing ways, it was unacceptable.
"Please? Talk it out?" Bruno practically begged.
It hurt to look at. Surely he could do something. Anything? Bruno hovered, cursing himself. Move! Bruno abruptly grabbed both of Mirabel's hands.
He did expect her to fight.
Mirabel thrashed and Bruno almost immediately lost hold of her as she kicked away. Dios! Bruno closed his grip on her wrist at the last second, thumb over index finger.
Mirabel jerked her arms back and Bruno with them, the movement catching the side of his head on the bed frame. He hissed as pain bloomed along the socket of his right eye. It was like being awoken out of a dream of abstractions, dead air, social niceties- baptized into a cold river where every second mattered. At the sound of his pain, Mirabel's hold on his arms weakened.
Bruno seized the advantage.
Mirabel gasped in surprise as he clamped her wrists together and toppled her onto her side. He held her hands clasped in his, and refused to let go even when she dragged him down with her to the frigid tiles. Bruno wasn't going to give up this time. He couldn't fix what was broken in Mirabel's heart, but he could at least keep her arms from it.
Bruno made the split-second decision to pin her torso to the ground with his arms. Less ability to flounder or leverage her weight. As Mirabel struggled, the memory of play fighting with his sisters as a child drifted bizarrely into his mind. It was different with the strength of an adult. Mirabel was losing.
Finally, the last few sporadic final kicks and lunges subsided. Mirabel went limp. let out a ragged sigh as he sagged to the floor.
Had there really been no way forward than to actually, physically fight?
Bruno could feel the flutter of Mirabel's pulse in her wrists slow as they both caught their breath. Her skin radiated heat where it connected with his. The only sound in the room was their heavy breathing and an occasional sob on Mirabel's part. The adrenal panic that had shot through Bruno's body now left him feeling weightless and shaken. He tried not to shudder at the strange, staticky feeling of having a person so close.
The absurdity of their position lying in a crumpled heap on the floor urged him to speak, but he was truly at a loss. Feeling better? Obviously not. Mirabel seemed beyond it. Good effort? Suddenly, he had nothing left to try to talk out.
Bruno let his grip on her ease, but he did not pull away- in fact, when he tested his arms it seemed he could not move. In the time elapsed, the grapple had shifted. More like an embrace.
"Please stay," Mirabel's voice was rueful, cottony.
She had ducked her head so he could not see her face, but she was holding on as if a storm would snatch him out of her arms. He could feel her tears bleeding through the fabric of his shirt. The tension holding her together had transferred to him- hands digging into his back. He thought he might understand now what she needed- why everything else he tried hadn't worked.
Bruno relaxed, letting his head fall to the floor. At some point, Mirabel had run her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck and now clenched a fistful in her hand. He had never been held like this. Really, held by anyone.
Exhaustion and the drowsy heat of Mirabel in his arms weighed on his eyelids, but Bruno kept his eyes open, watchful. A splinter of moonlight that snuck between the drawn curtains scythed across their intertwined arms and shifted like a sundial as the time passed. The tactician working in Bruno's mind had enough wherewithal to reemerge, smoothing over his scattered instincts and the emotional ambiguity of the scene. At least Mirabel had talked to him. Tomorrow, he'd bring Mirabel to breakfast and they'd both be healed. Bruno mastered his nerves. He could stay on the floor with her for as long as she needed him to.