Dolores Madrigal is 12 and her tío Bruno just left, except she can still hear him. Not in a wistful thinking way. She can literally hear him: his light and nervous steps, his rapid heartbeat, his quiet muttering to himself, knocking on wood every five minutes, trashing in his bed at night because of nightmares.
She tries to tell someone but nobody listens. Mom starts literally thundering at the sole mention of his name (she says she’s angry over some old fight they had, but she heard her raining the night after he left, heartbroken). Everyone else is tense, tiptoeing around Mirabel’s lack of gift, trying not to incite Abuela’s anger. So Dolores does the one thing she learned soon after she got her gift: she keeps quiet.
Dolores is 13 years old and it’s been four months since her tío left when she hears him whisper from the first floor at night.
“You know I’m here, don’t you, kid?”
She squeaks affirmatively, but knows he can’t hear her with the clarity she does.
“You haven’t told them. Will… will you tell them? I can’t come back. I can’t. You don’t understand. I can’t do that to- I can’t.”
His heartbeat is so loud, Dolores is surprised no one else can hear it. She puts on her sandals, walks down to the kitchen, where his BUMBUMBUMBUM is coming from. She pours herself a glass of hot water, makes a tila tea and leaves it by the old portrait.
“I won’t tell them,” she whispers.
She pretends not to hear his relieved sob. She’s already by the stairs when she hears the portrait crack open and shut again, the gentle blowing over the hot surface, the hum of delight at the warm drink. His heartbeat finally settles.
Dolores is 17 and an expert at her tio’s moods. If she grabs extra arepas from the kitchen every morning and leaves them by the family portrait, she can always blame it on Camilo. Bruno laughs quietly at whatever joke is told on the table. He laughs most at dad and tío Agustin’s jokes, but Dolores finds he has a soft spot for Mirabel’s dry sense of humor. Once, he chuckles so hard, she has to pretend to bump into the table and “accidentally” knock over a glass of juice to cover the noise. Abuela chews out Mirabel over the mess, for some reason and Dolores can hear Bruno muttering guiltily at himself for hours.
“Why did you leave?” She asks, late at night, alone in the kitchen. His heartbeat jumps a little, but he doesn’t reply. She leaves a chamomile tea with some honey by what she’s come to think of as “his spot” and goes upstairs. He is specially quiet for weeks after that.
Dolores is 21 and in love and just found out Mariano loves Isabel. Everyone in town knows already, but she refused to believe it until she heard him tell his mom just now. She sobs quietly, little squeaks that no one else should be able to hear. No one must know. She can’t do that to her prima. It’s not her fault. And she won’t be the reason Mariano is unhappy.
There’s a knock on the door. Tiny. So tiny, she almost thinks she imagined it. (She never doubts her ears, though). When she opens the door, in the hallway is a warm cup of tea. She hears steps rushing away from inside the walls. She takes the tea, blows gently, takes a sip and feels her heart settle. “I am so sorry, nena, I wish I’d been wrong. Just this once.”
Dolores is 22 and just ruined her cousin’s proposal. She didn’t mean to, did she? No. She just had to tell someone. This is important. It’s about the magic and about that old prophecy Bruno sometimes still mutters about and about the miracle and she’s just so tired of holding it all in. She was already about to spill it all when Mirabel came asking, let it “slip” that she can still hear him, pointed her towards the rats in the walls… she is desperate for someone else to know.
She shouldn’t have talked, though. She listens, while everyone else loses their minds —abuela yelling for Mirabel, Luisa crying, Isabel fuming, Camilo trying to calm mom down, Agustin and Felix cleaning up the mess, Mariano’s distant sobbing, wondering what went wrong— but she tries to focus on her youngest prima to make sure she’s alright.
She hears everything. Mirabel! Bruno! She knows! Finally, finally, someone else knows. After years, Dolores finally discovers Bruno’s reason for hiding and her heart breaks all over again.
Before she can tell anyone, all hell breaks lose. The house falls apart and her gift is done and she can’t tell if her tío made it out alright. Mirabel is missing. Everything is a mess and the world for the first time is muffled and distant to her. She feels disconnected.
And then they come back. Mirabel, Abuela and Bruno. Together. There’s hugging and laughing and even if she can’t hear it anymore she can guess her tío Bruno’s frantic heartbeat when she finally approaches him.
“You’re much taller than I remembered,” he blurts out.
She finally gets to do what she wanted since she was twelve. She hugs him. He only hesitates for a second before returning the embrace. “You snore so loud,” she whispers.
He laughs, loud and clear. No more hiding.
