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The sun shone on the day of her birth. Gusts swept across the valley, treetops billowing and grass rippling, Pepa pacing with Camilo in her arms.
Mamá and the doula tended to Julieta in her room. Whimpers slipped through the spaces between the walls and door. He joined Pepa in her pacing though he knew the beautiful outcome that awaited them. Dolores sat on the stairs, covering her ears.
The cries of a child filled the halls. Pepa rested her cheek against Camilo’s head and beams of sunlight burst forth from the sky.
“Thank goodness,” she murmured.
The dust settled and the family trickled into her room to welcome their new gift. He vacillated. He was beginning to believe that no one wanted him at these things despite their posturing. He drew in a sharp breath and strode over to her door.
They were gathered around a glowing Julieta, the new Madrigal pressed flush against her chest. They fawned and cooed, wiped their watery eyes. It was a girl; Julieta and Agustín had declined his offer to determine the gender as they always did, but his own curiosity had gotten the better of him.
He walked over to her, reluctant, awkward. Ebullience drowned whatever dissonance existed between him and the rest of them. His sister beamed.
“Do you see?” she whispered to the girl. “That’s your tío Bruno.”
Julieta placed her in his arms. He still didn’t know how to handle infants, little humans, after the four who came before her. Images of dropping them on the floors, their heads flattening like arepas, flooded his mind.
“Her name is Mirabel.”
She was smaller than Isabel and Luisa had been. A full crown of dark hair circled her soft head. Her eyes opened just enough that he could make out her brown irises, as profound as a window into the night.
He cupped her cheek and said, “Welcome, Mirabelita.”
He had held Dolores, swaddled Isabela and Luisa, cradled Camilo, felt the warmth of a family unfurling. None of them stoked this sensation in his chest, arresting in its intensity. He could blame no vision for it. It raged and suffocated him: the searing urge to protect her.
“Bruno?”
He looked up and the rest of them stared, flummoxed. He passed Mirabel back to her mother’s arms. Julieta’s eyes teemed with sympathy.
“Your face,” she said, gesturing to his cheeks.
He reached up and felt them then—tears, fresh and senseless.
“So, here’s what I’m thinking: something spooky. You know, ghosts and stuff. Haunted house?”
“No way. No one takes those seriously anymore.”
He throws out his arms. “Come on! People eat that stuff for breakfast!”
“Fine, fine! What were you thinking?”
He bats away a cobweb and bumps into a bare lightbulb. She’s tried persuading him for two long years to take up residence in his actual room again to no avail.
“All right, so basically, you’ve got this couple and they’re about to get married, right? They move into this old house, but the house is haunted by the guy who used to live there. So the ghost does ghost stuff, you know, scaring them, whatever, but get this: the ghost falls in love with Yolanda, the bride-to-be.” He plucks one of the rats from its place on a ledge and sighs. “He’s watched her from afar, enchanted by her beauty and kindness. Ah, but it doesn’t end there. The day before their wedding, she decides to be with the ghost, Raúl!”
She blinks.
“So? What d’you think? Captivating, right?”
He flashes the hopeful grin that is uniquely his, the one he offers in deference to her judgment, one that she can’t help but return.
“It’s…romantic.”
The wedding dominates mealtime discussions. The flowers, the guests, the colors, the dresses. Mirabel pushes food around on her plate, weaving between enthusiasm and painful discomfiture. She exchanges glances with Camilo, who’s too detached from the minutiae to even take the time to tease Dolores.
“Red and yellow,” Abuela says. “And white, of course.”
Pepa jabs a fork in Dolores’s direction as wispy clouds swirl above her head. “You’d never think you were getting married for how much you seem to care.”
“I am! But I’m listening to them talk about it over there, too.”
Mirabel’s gaze shifts to Bruno. They share an uneasy smile, innocent as anything, but she blushes and averts her eyes.
Small talk flows, a brook between their various branches, and breakfast comes to an end. She’s the cousin on kitchen duty today, gathering and balancing plates. She straggles behind Mamá and Pepa before stopping outside the kitchen at the mention of her name.
“Did you see the way Bruno and your Mirabel were looking at each other?” Pepa says amidst the clatter of plates and silverware.
“I’m sure it was an inside joke.”
“Those two have certainly made up for lost time.”
Her mother laughs. “They have. Such a relief. You remember how they were when she was little.”
They say no more. Mirabel loiters by the door, waiting for Pepa to offer a rambling response, but all that drifts through the walls is the sound of shuffling footsteps.
The silence ferments for days, growing, adopting meaning when they couldn’t have meant anything by it.
They weren’t wrong. The two of them had made up for years of absence. He had disappeared before her memories could crystallize, but her heart remembered him, recognized him when her mind did not. They are the same in ways she cannot name. The family still doesn’t know what to do with either of them; they saunter on the fringes of the filial circle, outer planets in the greater orbit. When it’s the two of them, there is no such thing. They are the sun in each other’s orrery.
That night, long after the sun has set on the valley, she steals away into the walls. She holds her breath and tiptoes along the wooden planks toward the soft yellow light at the end of the passage. She stretches her leg, arches her back forward—
“It is I, Raúl, come to whisk my lover into the darkness!”
He yelps and jumps from his seat to face her, sending rats scattering into the walls.
“Not cool, not cool!” he cries between her peals of laughter. He reaches into his pocket and thrusts a spray of salt behind his back.
“I can’t believe you still fall for that stuff. There’s no way you didn’t hear me coming.”
“Do I look like Dolores to you? It’s not like your hearing gets any better when you get old.”
“Uh huh. Whatever you say.”
She throws herself on the sofa and he joins her. She slides up, resting her head in his lap and hugging her knees to her chest.
“Didn’t we, uh, talk about this?”
“You never told me I had to stop.”
He fails to supply a retort. She stares up at the ceiling, the bones of their home, looking as old and worn as they did before. The perfume of dust and age wraps her in its placating embrace.
“I’m happy for them. Of course I am, but…”
“Say less, mija. I’m right there with you.”
His hand hovers in the air before patting her head. The tips of his fingers brush against the sensitive skin behind her ear.
“Do you ever get angry about it, tío? Ten years is so long. I can’t even imagine it.”
“I mean, of course you can’t. That’s, what, half your life? What do you even remember from when you were seven, anyway? I don’t remember anything from back then. Nada.”
She scowls. “Oh no. You’re not changing the subject. Not on my watch.”
He picks errant threads from the sofa arm. Beats of silence pass, dense with significance.
“It’s hard not to, but I hate that I feel that way. Like, get over it already, you know?”
“No, that’s—it doesn’t work like that. You need to feel what you feel.”
On his face is a melancholy smile, a bittersweet peace. He weaves her hair between his fingers and his touch tames the tension in her soul. She thinks back to her mother’s words.
“Do you remember anything from when I was little?”
He frowns, pensive, before laughing softly.
“Oh, you know, some stuff. You were just the cutest thing, I remember that. Kind of a troublemaker too, now that I think about it.”
His smile grows distant as he recedes into the sea of his memories. She waits for him to continue, but just as it was with Pepa and Mamá, no words supplant the silence. Only he can see how deep the waters run.
They warned her to stay away from Isabela’s flowers, not caring to intervene in the tiffs that ensued. Mirabel—tenacious little Mirabel—paid no heed and plucked whatever she pleased from the rainbow beds, tumbling through grass and crawling through gardens, reaching for butterflies before they ascended to the sky once more.
“Will you keep an eye on them? Our hands are a bit full over here,” Julieta asked him the day before Camilo’s ceremony. He was less equipped to contend with a possible crisis than the children themselves, but he agreed. Opportunities to make himself useful were scarce.
He followed them to the side of the house where the manicured gardens flourished. Camilo’s voice echoed from inside—“Come on, I already know all this stuff, I wanna play!”—and a smile tugged on his lips.
He sank into the grass and watched the three of them dash through the emerald fields, trampling across well-worn earth that he and his siblings had tread over so many years ago. The image left a bitter, powdery aftertaste, the taste of a question: what had happened?
“Tío Bruno!”
He lifted his gaze from the ground, peeling himself from the murk of those muddled memories. Mirabel waved a flower in his face, an out-of-season lily with drooping pink petals furbelowed by thin white edges.
“I picked it for you ‘cause you looked sad!” she chirped.
He took the stem and twirled it between his fingers. Dirt and chlorophyll colored her blue dress and he heard the mouthful from Mamá that awaited her. He smiled sympathetically.
“You’re very sweet, cariña.”
Isabela stomped over from across the gardens as little Luisa watched, perplexed.
“Those are my flowers. I didn’t say you could take one.”
Mirabel scowled. “No fair! You can grow a bunch more!”
She flipped her hair and sneered. “Whatever. You picked the ugliest one anyway. I don’t want it anymore.”
She marched away, having already determined that the issue—that Mirabel—wasn’t worth her time. Mira’s lip quivered; she wilted. However much he loved all of his nieces, a pang of indignant anger simmered in his chest. He scooped Mira into his lap and held the lily up for her to see.
“Hey, guess what?”
She sniffled. “What?”
“Don’t tell Isa, but this one’s actually my favorite.”
Isabela tears the sheets off of her on the morning of Dolores’ wedding. Her nightmare snatched all good sleep from her. The pink light of sunrise, the hue of fresh guava, breathes a dreamy glow into all it touches.
“What gives?” Mirabel mumbles, fumbling for her glasses on the nightstand.
“I don’t wanna hear it. I’m doing your hair and makeup.” She stands akimbo and smirks. “Unless you want to do it yourself?”
She throws her hands up in defeat.
Isabela ushers her into the powder room downstairs and sits her down in front of the white wooden vanity. She wastes no time. She scoops white creams from elegant glass jars and smears them all over her face. The pungent scent of rose and chemicals buffets her lungs and she coughs.
“And they call me a drama queen.”
She pokes and prods and smudges red eyeshadow across her lids. Mirabel squirms on the bench.
“Get used to it. It’s gonna be worse when you’re the one on the altar.”
She grimaces. “Who, me? Shouldn’t you be the one worrying about that?”
“Ugh, gag me. Mami didn’t even get married until she was, like, twenty-seven.”
“Then what makes you think I’m in a rush?”
She rolls her eyes and lilts, “Oh, nothing.”
Mirabel appraises herself in the mirror, evaluating herself against all the fine gems in her family. A frisson sweeps across her arms, leaving bumps in its wake, and a voice within speaks unbidden.
No. That’ll never be me.
She sets the last of the cosmetics down in front of the mirror and roots through one of the drawers to exhume a bristle brush and hairpins.
“Your hair’s so long now,” Isabela continues. “You got mami’s curls. Lucky.”
She runs the brush gingerly through her hair, just enough to tame it, before slipping the pins between her locks. Petals peek over the top of her head. She reaches around to run her hand along the blossoms.
“This is kind of show-offy, isn’t it? What about Dolores?”
“What about her? You think some flowers are going to turn everyone’s heads? Keep dreaming. If you’re lucky, tu traga will—”
“All right, all right!”
She examines her painted face, her flower-studded hair, a shower of red and yellow anemone. Isabela hums, satisfied.
“Yep. You’ll have definitely have tu traga drooling.”
The ceremony is stiff and starchy in the way all ecclesiastical affairs are—she entreats the Almighty for forgiveness, an afterthought. Dolores takes step after practiced step toward the altar, ethereal beneath her winding train of white fabric. Mirabel tries to conjure the apposite enthusiasm for which such an occasion calls. A spark of joy brings with it a storm of sadness. Everyone weeps and so does she.
She sidles up next to Luisa and Isabela as the town proceeds from the church’s grounds into casita’s open arms where an opulent reception awaits. She searches for his face like a ship for shore, eyes passing over the party until she identifies that meek smile, that priceless piece of her soul. He haunts the perimeter, looking as lost as she feels. Hair tied back, facial hair pruned. She weaves through throngs of guests to reach him and his eyes are alight with delight.
“It’s you!”
She grins. “Yeah, it’s me, you goof. Who else would it be?”
A blush blooms on his face and creeps up to the tips of his ears.
“Anyway, you got the Isabela treatment too, I see.” She kisses his cheek. “Bien guapo.”
“Oh, this? It’s nothing. You—You look beautiful.” His eyes sweep up and down her figure and he forces out a stilted laugh. “You’d think you’re the one getting married.”
Her face glows. “Just call me Yolanda, off to run away with her Raúl.”
He chuckles before hesitating. “I’m way outta my element here.”
His voice shakes. She reminds herself what all those years of solitude have wrought upon him and offers her arm.
“I got you,” she says.
She guides him through the crowd. The scent of his cologne comes in waves, dense and earthy. She rubs her thighs together. They pass Abuela, too preoccupied with the Gúzman matriarch to pay them any heed.
“—red for passion, yellow for the bright days ahead of them, and white for the purity of their love.”
“How perfect!”
His arm stiffens against hers.
They reach the rest of the family and Camilo whisks her away to dance before passing her off to Papá and moving on to Luisa. Papá takes her hand and leads her in an ungainly pastiche of bolero and tango.
“Between you and me, I won’t mind if you elope. I don’t know if I can handle four more of these,” he confesses in her ear. She giggles, says she won’t make any promises.
He releases her and she dashes over to Bruno, who’s had more than enough time to analyze the writing on the wall.
“Mira, you know I—”
“Come on, it’s not a wedding if you don’t dance!”
She drags him by the arm to the dance floor and their bodies sync. This is normal, the natural order. She already danced with Papá and Camilo. The thought that it matters at all rakes its icy digits down her spine.
He’s anything but agile, holding onto her with a vice grip as she spins and laughs and soon he’s laughing too. The tempo drops, vallenatos románticos replacing high energy beats, giving all of them a chance to catch their breaths. They sway, skin to skin, and she wonders if they’ll ever dance like this again.
Their surroundings morph, smudged and bleary like the world of an oil painting, until he’s all she sees. His trembling breaths are hot against her ear. His hand descends and stops shy of her hip. Something clicks into place.
“Tío,” she murmurs into the crook of his neck. He swallows. “Tío, I—”
He clamps his hand down on her hip. “Don’t say anything else, mija.”
She bites her lip, tamps down her tears.
“I’m happy for them.”
His stubble rubs against her cheek.
“Me too.”
The devastating portrait of her disappointment etched itself into his very eyes. He squeezed them shut and there she stood, eyebrows furrowed, palms open, bemused. She hadn’t screamed, hadn’t wailed, hadn’t thrown herself on the ground, hadn’t done anything a girl her age might do. She simply withered.
Mamá called him to her room and shut the door with a quiet click. The susurrus of the thinning audience had already died down and left silence in its stead. She looked smaller than he had ever seen before.
“What if it’s fading, Brunito? What if this is the beginning of the end for our miracle?”
He said nothing.
“I had hoped that I would never have a reason to fear such a thing, but we must know.”
That familiar pang of anger brewed in him once again. The candle, the gifts. He grit his teeth and felt sick.
“I’ll do it,” he mumbled.
He retreated to his domain. Wind rushed around him and the window to the future opened amidst the gale. The candle wavered; the house quivered. A symphony of destruction.
And in the crescendo of that destruction stood her.
She was older. Her heartbreak traversed the boundaries of time and her face twisted in despair. The world disintegrated around her and he extended his hand into the sandstorm, grasping at nothing, wishing against all good sense that he could pull her into the present and guard the precious flame that burned within her. His eyes traced the subtle curve of her hips and his own flame burned within: shame.
The winds receded and sand fell like rain around him. He retrieved the resultant tablet, its image fluid and ambiguous.
He didn’t need to peer into the future to know what awaited her in the arduous years ahead. He could not stomach it. He would not be party to it.
He let the tablet slip from his grip to shatter on the rocks below. Emotion tightened his throat, stung his eyes. He had made a solemn vow. If there was anything he was good for, it was his word.
The jade shards of the future glowed and the fiery yellow light of the present persisted. He left it behind, left her behind, left them all behind, and walked into the embrace of the night.
Her dreams carve a window into her heavy heart. She stands in a facsimile of her home, their home, brought to ruin. Splintered wood, fractured tiles, crumbling clay. The color has bled from the flowerbeds, leaving white blossoms in their wake. The house lives without a heart.
She wanders from room to room, each door dull brown. Her footsteps echo in the halls and voices whisper back. Ivy chokes the walls; the shape of the shadows shifts in the corner of her eye. It would hurt less if the house weren’t here at all.
She calls out names. No one remains. Boards creak and sigh as window whistles through the decay. She reaches out into the tenebrous air, grasping for his hand, but he’s gone like the rest of them.
She hauls herself down the hall. Her will falters until a glimmer in the corner catches her eye.
A thin shaft of light bisects the darkness. She rushes over to its origin: a hole in the wall, no larger than the head of a pin.
She takes a step. Her foot lands upon the tile and fear floods her heart. She spins on her heel and runs from the light until the floor gives way and she falls, body brushing against the waxen blossoms. She falls, she plummets—and never lands.
“Here, have a bite.”
“Mom, I’m fine, I swear.”
“Just a bite, Mira.”
She nibbles a patacone before rolling onto her side. Her mother’s shoulders fall.
“Oh my. It really must be a matter of the heart. I don’t miss this age.”
“Come on. You don’t think I might be a little tired from all the excitement lately?”
Mamá’s weight disappears from the bed. She leans down to squeeze her in a brief embrace. “Rest up, then.”
She leaves and Mirabel sinks into her bed. Her dream sucked up any hope of restful slumber. She draws the blanket up over her face and floats beneath the surface of consciousness until a voice rips her from the seductive grip of sleep.
“Mirabel?” he calls out. “Julieta said you weren’t feeling so good, so I wanted to see if you were, you know, all right. I mean, you probably just want to be alone, but…”
She smooths down her hair, fixes her glasses.
“No, it’s okay! Come in.”
The door whines as he crosses the threshold into her room. Distress deepens the lines on his face. Sunset’s saturated light bathes him in orange and she holds her breath. He kneels by her bed, level with her.
“What’s got you so down?”
She shakes her head, eyes misty at the memory.
“It was a dream. A nightmare.”
He waits, inviting elaboration. Words hover behind her lips, but if she speaks of it, she may breathe it into existence. His gentle gaze coaxes everything out of her.
“It’s casita. I keep dreaming that it’s still whole, but none of us are still there. It’s just me. And it’s like no one’s lived there for a long time.”
He listens intently before frowning. “What d’you think it means?”
“I don’t know,” she concedes. She sits up. “Maybe nothing, I don’t know.”
He offers no reassurances and she understands. There is rot inside her dreams and out of them.
“Anyway, how’s it coming along with Yolanda and Raúl?”
He scratches his neck, ill at ease. “Oh, you know. I’m really trying to get in their heads and I’m like, what does she see in him? He’s dead! So I’m stuck on that part.”
She nods. “Yeah, got it, got it. What does he see in her? She’s alive.”
“Nah, that’s exactly it. She’s so full of life. And she’s not scared by the whole ‘haunting your house and messing up your life’ stuff.”’
He continues delineating the ill-fated affair between specter and human, gesturing emphatically, and his words allay the ache in her heart.
She loves him and all of his unrepentant eccentricity, his awkwardness, his faux pas and his profuse compassion. She would kiss each part of him that he hates however many times it would take. And when he looks at her like this, eyes smoldering with something she’s too juvenile to understand, she thinks he would let her.
At night, she sees it, feels it. She kicks off the sheets and wades through the wet summer air toward the corner of the nursery. She leans into the wall, asking silent questions.
Her stomach twists.
She runs her fingers along the fissure and hopes that it’s a trick of the eyes, but they hook into the lacuna and she gasps.
“What is it?” she rasps. “What’s hurting you?”
“Okay, I think I’ve got it all worked out, but the ending—Mira?”
His voice knocks her down from her place in the clouds. His concerned eyes follow hers. “Huh?”
“Are you, uh, alright?”
She sighs, purses her lips. She doesn’t want to tell him. Spiders spin their webs in the corners of the room. He takes a step toward her, tentative as he always is, and envelops her hands in his.
“Was it that dream?”
She shakes her head.
“Is there…anything I can do?” He looks away. “Not that I’ve got a reputation for making things better, but I wanna try.”
Her heart quakes beneath the weight of what she feels. She searches his timid eyes, warm and kind, and wills him to draw closer, be closer, to feel her breath against his skin. She threads her fingers through his.
“I saw a crack.”
He tenses. “What? When? Where?”
“You might as well ask me ‘how’ and ‘why’ while you’re at it.”
“You would’ve fixed it by now if you knew that instead of telling me about it. You know you’re the go-getter in this house.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, but I’ve got nothing. What could it be?” She releases her hold on him and rises to her feet. Her fingers trace patterns on the walls, their invisible wounds. “Do you think it’s something I don’t know about?”
“Hey, you’re old enough to know all about our dirty laundry.”
“Lucky me, right?”
“You don’t think…” He wrings his hands. “You know, Dolores and Mariano?”
“No. I would’ve seen something a long time ago.”
She blinks and looks to him. She quivers.
“Is it me?”
It was always her. Singled out, sentenced to otherness. Her spirit never wavered after five long years.
“Come,” Mamá said. “It’s our day of service.”
She leapt to her feet, still harboring hope, and ran to retrieve her shoes. Yes, hope sprung eternal in her, even after repeated rejections, after countless times being cast aside, left out. Mamá pet her hair and smiled.
“Mi niña, why don’t you stay here and help papi and your tío take care of casita? They can’t do it alone.”
That evanescent wince. She drew back as if stung before forcing a grin.
“Okay, abuela!”
Hairline fractures had already begun to mar the inner walls within his sanctum. He did what he could to patch them, but they ran deeper than he could fathom. The seeds of discord took root day by day.
“Empecemos,” Felíx called out as he tossed her a broom.
They went from room to room, sweeping and dusting and mopping until she huffed and puffed. They laughed and sang, serenaded her with bawdy ballads, anything to assuage her pain.
When their duties were done, she looked up at Agustín, thick brows furrowed in confusion.
“Are we gonna clean tío Bruno’s room?”
He ruffled her hair. “That’s sweet of you, but there’s no need.”
“But what if he comes back?”
“Not gonna happen,” Félix said. “And the less said about him, the better, sobrinita.”
“I wish he’d come back already,” she murmured.
“What was that?” her father asked.
She shook her head, already tabulating the family taboos. “Nothing, papi.”
She gazed up at the sky and considered the clouds and he saw her mind with crystal clarity: she thought he had left entirely. His nails sank into the grooves in the wood as she walked away, her grief rending his soul asunder.
Cracks keep cropping up in her room—nowhere else. They’re tiny things, nigh imperceptible, but they threaten the foundation of everything for which they’ve fought. She beseeches casita for an answer, some kind of reason. Hasn’t she been singled out enough?
She perches on the window sill as he inspects the fissures for himself. The crisp light of the full moon soaks all in its argent glow, casting harsh shadows. He pulls back from the wall, collapses on her bed, and treads the water of his thoughts.
She swallows thickly. “You can still have a vision, can’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Then look! If there was ever a time you should be looking, it’s now!”
He cowers, shrinks back from her, withdrawing into his ruana, into himself.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to know,” he whimpers.
Disbelief nearly prompts her to lash out, but the pain before her is real, pronounced. She sighs and slides down from the window sill to join him on the bed. They sit thigh to thigh. He tenses and turns away from her.
“What are you so scared of?”
He opens his mouth to respond, but no sound comes out—the words wisping away into nothing.
Years had lost their meaning long before, so when he woke up and realized that she had morphed into a young woman, the sight of her inaugurated a paradigm shift. No pain or bitterness could stymy her metamorphosis into a caring and considerate little adult whose beauty promised to rival that of her sisters.
She still sought every opportunity to help the family with a grin on her full lips, twirling and humming and swinging her skirts to and fro as she did so. She’d grow older and she’d find a nice boy from the village to be with, a boy who loved her for her, irrespective of any gift or gilded name. That age old pang of anger, a trusted friend, seized him once again. He would hang his head in shame and rap his knuckles against wood.
Desire manacled him, wrapped him in chains. If she could only hear him, see him, lead him into the light as he so fervently wished someone would. Disgust curdled within him like a disease, pure pestilence. But here he was, and here would remain, so he allowed himself his fatuous fantasies.
She deserved the same charmed life the rest of her family had been blessed to enjoy. She deserved a rich and boundless love, a heart to mirror her own, the wedding of her dreams. She deserved flowers in her hair, white lilies everywhere, children and history and all things in between. He wished nothing for himself—his life was over—but this he wished for her.
He evades her in the days that follow. He still tries to trade nervous smiles at means until her scowls mince them to shreds. He prepares convenient excuses, and when those run dry, he resorts to physically disappearing. Tiny cracks continue to slither up the walls like little garter snakes. Casita wilts whenever she asks for an explanation.
Crickets croon in the dead of night, crying out for love.
Slivers of green grow in the gaps, maturing and unfurling, until casita coughs up white petals. They flutter to the floor and form a bed of velvet. She stares, horrified, before swiping them up by the fistful and darting out of the nursery.
A groan reverberates against the walls of Isabela’s room, audible from the halls, before she opens the door.
“You’re up early,” she mumbles.
“Yeah, well, I was hoping you could tell me about these.”
Mirabel opens her hands to let the petals fall between her fingers.
“I found them in my room,” she continues vaguely.
Isabela leans against the doorframe and folds her arms across her chest, leering at the petals with contempt.
“Well, they aren’t mine. Maybe your crush snuck in and left them there.”
“Ugh, can you quit it with that?”
She should turn back. This conversation was doomed to never yield fruit and prolonging it would do nothing to alter that. Her hesitance comes at a cost.
“All right, fess up. You’ve got a look on your face.”
Her face flushes. “Me? Nah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, right. Spit it out before I make a cactus—”
“There are cracks, Isa. That’s where I found them.” She speaks in harsh whispers and thanks whatever entity rules over them for Dolores’ preoccupation with her husband. “They’re only in my room. I haven’t seen them anywhere else. And they’re little cracks, nothing like before.”
All the ambient sounds of their daily lives subside. Dishes clinking, doors opening, small talk, footsteps. Isa’s composure is the stuff of envy. She raises a finger to her lips and sifts through her thoughts before speaking.
“It’s just a guess, but casita’s probably feeling whatever you’re feeling.”
She pads barefoot through the halls and makes her way toward his room within the walls. Her gossamer nightgown billows behind her as she worries her lip between her teeth. Her mind is awake, but her body is trapped in an oneiric haze, heart racing, sweat beading.
Three knocks on the portrait in the north corner of the house. His insistence on maintaining the charade draws a quiet giggle out of her. He can make her laugh even in her throes of fear—even when he isn’t here. The portrait moves to reveal a glimpse of his tired face.
“M-Mira,” he stammers. “A little late for you to be scampering around, huh?”
“Let me in, please.”
He allows her passage into his enclave, conflict raging on his face. She should harbor the same reservations. She tugs on a stray thread on her nightgown as he knocks on the wooden boards. They reach his room and the quietude smothers her. She takes a reluctant seat on his bed; he stands, unsure of what to do with himself, before joining her.
“So, what is it? You have that dream again or what?”
“Why are you avoiding me?”
He scratches his head, cornered.
“Avoiding? Uh, well, I wouldn’t say that. I’ve been, you know, busy.”
“At least be honest with me. Ever since I asked you about the vision…”
She’ll keep the words from the wedding to herself. She’ll keep them inside to grow like seeds, like bulbs, to germinate, for as caustic as this sensation is, she would not trade it for anything. No words suffice. Perhaps nothing can. She tries. She closes her eyes, angles her face toward his, parting her lips.
He grips her shoulders and her stomach churns, heart stutters, before he pushes her away. His hands linger, taut with restraint.
“Mirabel,” he mutters. “I, I can’t.”
A wound throbs. “Why not?”
“Why not? It’s wrong. We’re blood. It would hurt you—maybe you don’t get it now, but you would when you’re older, and you’d—no, I don’t even want to think about it. And what about the cracks? I’m sure it’d break our…”
He trails off. She can’t discern if this is his true belief or a soothing falsehood. The idea of it as the truth eviscerates her, excises her soul.
“You don’t understand. Those cracks are because of me. Because of you.” She grits her teeth and bites back a sob. “My heart is breaking.”
He freezes, his anguish apparent, and she swallows her obdurate pride.
“If you want me to stop, I will.” She balls her hands up into fists. “If you want me to go, I’ll…”
Hurt flashes across his face. “No! No, no. That’s the last thing I want.”
She’s come to know him well. The truth forever lives in his passivity, in the things he does not do.
She drapes her arms around his neck. Their heartbeats coincide, coalesce. He makes no motion to move her arms. The truth slowly comes to light like a candle flickering to life. He rests his chin on her shoulder.
“I’m not good with words, but I don’t want you to stop, and I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to hurt you, but I guess I was doing that in another way.” He rests his hand on her chest, seeking her heartbeat. “And if there are any cracks here, I’ll spackle them right up.”
“You mean Jorge will.”
He chuckles. “No, it’ll be me.”
But his laughter buckles under the weight of his real feelings, the raw truth that burns within him.
“Stay with me, Mirabelita.”
No room remains for words. She presses her lips against his, testing the waters, waiting for rejection that never manifests. The last of his willpower yields to a much greater force, cosmic in scale. He returns her kiss, shy and hungry, his years of loneliness resonating with hers. He cups her face and she parts her lips to sigh. Her tongue brushes against his, eliciting a pleasured whimper.
“I could never say no to you,” he murmurs against her lips.
She kisses him and a scorching heat accumulates at the apex of her thighs, the way his cologne did that day, and she sees the way love translates abstractions into reality. He falls back onto the bed and she pins his wrists down.
She straddles him, guided by instinct, hindered by inexperience. He presses against her thigh and sheepishness washes over her in a warm wave. Instinct wins and she grinds against his hardness, the fabric of her underwear damp against his.
“Are you sure?” he breathes. “Is this real?”
Her lips brush against his ear. “I hope so.”
His hand twitches and she takes it, placing it on her breast, and he squeezes and kneads and tweaks her nipple between his fingers. She sinks her teeth into his bottom lip and he writhes beneath her. She sinks into him, sinks with him into this amatory bliss, heartbeats coalesced.
“Love me, tío.”
The ghost of her gutted home lurks behind the curtain of her joy.
A beam of light shines from the corner of the house, the same one from before. It scintillates, tempts and captivates. That feral fear tries to trip her, impede her, but she bursts past her barriers and presses her face flush against the gap to peer at the proscribed wonders on the other side.
The lush mountains of the encanto are gone; in their place is a sprawling beach with bright blue waters and strange, grainy sand. The waves crest and fall, seafoam spraying everywhere.
She pulls back, breathless. Dozens of beams shine through gaps in the walls and she runs toward each one. A valley of odd rocks, textured and stoic. A sprawling glacier shored up against the firmament. The beams proliferate until the house shines in golden light, blinding and brilliant.
She thrusts her hand out and someone reaches back.
She’s shaken awake.
“I’ll do it,” he whispers. “I’ll look.”
His words percolate. She grins and kisses his hand.
“Lead the way.”
They redress and leave the walls to walk through the dark halls as they make the trek to his room. They suffer up the steep spiral of stairs until he threatens to keel over. She hauls him over the last pair of steps amid a chorus of apologies.
They sit in the middle of his vision cave, a smile on her face, a smile that infects him. A green glimmer shines in his eyes as he inhales. Curtains of sand dance around them and images emerge.
“It’s you. You’re sitting down, writing a letter? Writing something. It’s…it’s you and me, talking to…I don’t know. We’re at the top of a waterfall? We’re…casita is healing itself. The cracks aren’t there anymore.”
A tablet materializes in his hands where the picture of them peering down a waterfall lives immortal. Deep grooves form in the space between his brows as he studies it, bewildered.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“Good thing I do, then.”
“Yeah, yeah, rub it in, why don’t—wait, you do?”
“I didn’t need a vision. I saw it in my dream.” She leans into him, into the green light between them. “Let’s leave, tío. Not for good, but just for now. Let’s go somewhere no one knows us.”
He processes it, evaluates it, cycling through shock and distress and curiosity before landing on contentment.
“If you go, I’ll follow you, mariposita.”
“I’ve been thinking about it, and I want to see what’s out there in the world.”
Mamá ceases her motions, palm-deep in dough. The languid light of early afternoon highlights the spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
“You’re being serious? You can’t joke about that.”
“I’m not joking! I’m being for real. It won’t be forever. Just a year to see all the cool stuff out there. I’ll be a traveling seamstress and make a bunch of money. It’ll be great.”
She frowns. “It’s not safe for a young girl to go out there by herself.”
“I’m not going by myself. Bruno’s coming with me.”
Emotions shift in a kaleidoscopic display across her face. Surprise, amusement. Suspicion.
“He’s not the first person I picture when I think of adventurers.”
She leans over the counter. “That’s exactly why he should come!”
Mamá continues kneading the dough, tilting her head back and forth in contemplation.
“If that’s what your heart tells you, I can’t stop you, mija. You’re going to be an adult soon. I’m not happy about it, but…” Her expression softens. “I’m glad you have that choice to make. The world’s a bit different these days. But you need to tell your abuela.”
Her blood chills at the thought, however rational the notion may be. Mamá slides a dish of sliced mango across the countertop.
“We’ll have time to talk about it. For now, eat.”
She straightens her back, rights her glasses.
“Okay. ‘Hey abuela, got a minute? Nice. Look, there’s something I need to tell you.’”
No, no. There’s no rehearsing for something like this. She walks toward Abuela’s room where the door already sits ajar, the soft static of conversation drifting into the hall. She presses herself against the wall and inches closer.
She sucks in a breath and looks around the doorframe. The scene is simple, unremarkable. A son stands over his mother sat upon a bed. Hands clasped, face sullen. She can’t hear their words, but she can hear their hearts and see the shapes of their souls, a lesser star facing the supreme sun. Abuela buries her face in her hands and Bruno hesitates before rubbing slow circles on her back. She looks up again and nods.
“I will accept it.”
“What? That’s wonderful!”
Several pairs of eyebrows shoot up around the dinner table. Pepa’s gaze sweeps across them all before she takes an impassioned stab at her arroz con coco.
“It’s just that the world’s so—big! At least one of us should see it and come back to tell us about it.”
“Does that mean I can go?” Camilo says, earning a light smack upside his head.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Mirabel smirks. “We’ll bring back lots of souvenirs, just for you.”
Pepa looks to Bruno. “How strange, to get so stir crazy after all this time.”
“Ten years in some dark room, I’d go crazy too,” Félix says around a mouthful of rice. “Go find yourself a nice chica de la ciudad, huh?”
They spend their nights in the nursery marking up maps and tracing contours, topographies. Places of which he’s only ever heard, of which he’s only ever seen the rare painting, the occasional photograph. Fifty years of the cloistered realm of the encanto have rendered him fearful.
“You won’t have to worry about a thing,” she promises.
A month passes and the night before the coffee merchants embark on their next journey, the night before they’re due to leave, she lodges a question.
“Whatever happened to Yolanda and Raúl?”
She stuffs skirts in her bags as crickets chirp outside to extol the arrival of eventide. He unearths writing supplies from one of her sewing table drawers and a strange smile spreads across his lips.
“You know what? I can’t decide how it should end. But I’ll figure it out.”
The sun shines on the day of their departure. Rainbows bridge the chasm between clouds. The coffee merchants park their caravan outside the house with the village in tow—an event as effervescent as any gift ceremony.
“Travel light!”
“Write often!”
“Don’t eat anything weird!”
The two of them pay their dues, crack jokes, exchange anecdotes. Mamá cradles Bruno close, pink rings around her eyes from stale tears.
“Watch out for her,” she says. “That’s all I ask.”
“Knowing her, she’ll be the one watching out for me.”
Luisa crushes her against her chest as she weeps.
“Don’t listen to those people. Bring back all the weird fruits you find,” Isabela says.
Antonio wraps himself around her leg. “You promise you’ll come back?”
She pats his head. “Um, of course. I’m not gonna leave my best friend behind.”
She doles out her farewells until one remains. The spring winds play with the hem of Abuela’s dress, the spun silver of her hair. A thousand sorrows swim in the sea of her eyes. Some are reserved for her; some are because of her.
“Abuela…”
“You don’t need to say anything, mi vida. There will be time. We will talk then.” She purses her lips, blinks away tears, before gathering her into her arms. “You must take care of yourself. Of each other.”
Mirabel blinks and tears well up, fresh and senseless.
“We will. I promise.”
Abuela lets her go, plants a kiss on her cheek. The merchants nod and she runs to leap onto the back of the caravan. Bruno turns back one last time before hoisting himself up and joining her.
“¡Vaya con Dios!”
Wildflowers wave to them from the crowns of the mountains. Casita shrinks; the faces of their loved ones fade. The horizon stretches and expands with each rickety revolution of the wheels beneath them. Her fingers slip between his.
“One year.” She looks to the sky. “One year, and then…”
One year and they would be ready. One year and they would weather any squall. One year and she would know herself as Mirabel, he as Bruno, liberated from their shared name, their mutual tether.
One year out of the house, out of the walls, and into the world.