Chapter 6

8:13pm

As the family finished eating supper, Casita's floor tiles tapped. "Casita says there is a group of people at the door," Mirabel translated.

Casita rolled everyone's plates and silverware off the table and into the waiting hands of Antonio's coatis. They scurried into the kitchen.

Everyone gathered around Abuela to answer the front door as a family.

When Casita opened the door, it was Señor Rendon standing with his hat off in front of almost a dozen other people. Luisa had forgotten all about Abuela's arrangement to make people apologize to her. Her gaze darted from side to side. Is it too late to hide? Why do I have to be so tall?

"Good evening," Abuela said.

"Good evening, Doña. We didn't wish to disturb you at supper. However, Casita just now herded us in front of the door, so we thought maybe that meant you were finished. We have come to apologize to Luisa."

Mirabel wanted to stay and get the satisfaction of hearing everyone apologize to her sister, but as she glanced over her shoulder to share a smile with Tío Bruno, he wasn't there. She slipped away from the others, worried, creeping up the steps while everyone was distracted. The first place she checked was his room, but he wasn't there. Hating herself a little, the next place she checked was looking behind all the paintings in case Casita had regrown secret passageways. After she drove herself crazy looking for passageways that weren't there, she crept down to the courtyard and looked around.

There in the moonlight, Tío Bruno sat on the roof.

Mirabel groaned at her own denseness and climbed up there. "Hey…" She trailed off awkwardly, approached, and sat down next to him. "Today was a lot, huh?"

"It's…a lot. Memories, and…stuff."

She felt a rush of guilt at how bad he was at talking about things. His timid vagueness just made her want to talk it out with him more. "You mean memories of what it was like before, don't you?"

"I just don't know how to…how to…make it all be the past. You know?"

"I'm sorry. I should have been thinking." She hugged him around the middle. "Of course having a new Gift doesn't change how you feel. It doesn't change the past. And it hasn't been that long since Señor Rodriguez managed to rally those men to help him try to throw you out. Going into town is the last thing you must want to be doing."

He hugged her to him tightly, tears in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I want to set an example for everybody. I want to show the town I've changed. I want to…I want to move on. But I know it will take me a long time to do that. I need to let it out, and I need time to get over my feelings about Mamá. When I really needed someone to understand, to protect me, she wasn't there for me. And I don't want to be bitter, and I don't want to dwell on it now, but I am. And that's...that's...that's not fair. She's not being asked to protect me anymore. She can't. I have to face this all alone. I am a 51-year-old man. No one can live my life for me. I've got to live it for myself. And despite that, despite knowing that, I'm terrified."

"I know you probably don't want to hear this right now, but it's going to be extra hard because you spent ten years never really going anywhere," Mirabel said slowly, as if saying it slowly could soften the impact. "I think that's why I wanted to talk to you. Because I think we're all getting used to this. I was never the center of attention before, and now I am. You were hiding - for good reasons. Lots of good reasons. And it's complicated. But now you're not. You're not hiding. We all know you're here. And that makes you nervous, right? But I don't think the solution is more hiding. Don't go back to hiding. Don't hide. Don't act like you don't care if you never get to walk around town ever again."

He sighed. "I...did some things in the past that made it really hard to be my family. I've been thinking about that today. What I do when I don't feel good isn't good. Today, instead of doing what I used to do, I hid in bed and took a nap. That was my version of doing the right thing. I used to...hurt myself. Sometimes. And that hurt the people who love me, because we're all connected. We're all part of one family. And I was always afraid of hurting Mamá, and Pepa, and Juli. But when I hid in the walls, I did just that, you know? I hurt them. By trying to hold back for so many years, when I finally needed some distance, an escape, I needed it for a long time, and that hurt them so badly that I've been afraid they were never going to forgive me. Now I think that they will, but things won't be the same as they were before." He looked up at the night sky. "Pepa and I used to be really close. Is that difficult to imagine?"

"Well...kind of," Mirabel admitted.

"Julieta was harder to get along with when we were all children. She would tell on us to Mamá, and she always acted like she knew best. I know now she was just trying to hold our family together, but at the time it really felt like she was our enemy. Pepa and I would sneak behind Julieta's back, and that would make everything worse. The arguments were intense."

"That's really hard to imagine." Mirabel stared up at the stars. "But I'm sure that when I have kids, and I tell them that Isabela and I used to fight each other all the time, they'd never believe me." She smiled a little. "Things are already so different now. I know that in the future, we'll have a great relationship."

Bruno chuckled. "If Julieta could go back and meet her child self, she'd have her hands full with that child. Julieta as a kid was very tense and rigid. That was her reaction to Mamá being in grief over Papá and all of us having to help make this new settlement in the Encanto work. The magic was this huge burden, and we were all so little."

"And you told me at the start that you didn't want the magic to come back. And, because of me, it did. So…I'm sorry." She leaned against him. "I didn't listen. I'm sorry that I got what I wanted at your expense." Her voice caught. "That's not what I wanted. I never wanted to hurt you."

He wrapped an arm around her, hugging her to his side tightly."Don't. Don't – please. Don't apologize for getting a Gift, or a room, or your new spot in our family. You're not hurting anybody. You never hurt the magic, you never hurt the family."

The stress of this day got to Mirabel at last. Her brave face crumbled. "This…isn't how I imagined it." She wiped her eyes through the magical lenses of her Gift glasses. "I had this grand idea that we'd all just be happy now. I'm sorry. It was stupid."

"Your heart was in the right place. Your heart was always in the right place. Te quiero mucho."

"Te quiero mucho. That's why I feel so bad about all of this." She looked into his eyes. "Why can't we both get what we want, at the same time?"

"I don't know," he mumbled. "But it's not your fault."

"And it's not your fault, either!" Mirabel retorted. "You had so much to deal with in the past, it's no wonder that you're a mess. I'm sorry I acted surprised when you were acting the way you acted when I first met you."

"The bad thing about trying to keep a secret for ten years is that it makes a person kind of crazy." He gave her a smile with genuine humor. "The house falling down was a kind of catharsis, as terrible as it was. I feel okay saying that now that we know Casita is safe and well again. The worst had happened, and we were all still here, still together. So..." He tilted his head. "That made it less scary. The thing I really feared never happened."

"Now if we can get you to feel that way about coming to town and sharing your Gift, we'll have solved the problem," Mirabel said.

Bruno looked surprised. "I guess so, huh?"

"I'm not saying that you have to somehow be okay right now," Mirabel added quickly. She hugged him again. "It's enough that you're back."

He gently patted her back. "Thank you."

She leaned against him in silence. In the end, this is what they both really needed: some time to be away from everyone else and reflect.