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Julieta woke slowly, shifting in bed as she moved to escape the small beam of light making its way in through the gap in the curtains.
Behind her, she could feel Augustin rolling over in his sleep as she left the bed, face pressing deeper into the pillow.
Though it was their usual time to start the day, Julieta hesitated to wake him. Her mother preferred for everyone in the house to rise with the sun, but surely she would understand if she let her husband and children have an extra hour or two after…
Julieta felt her eyes burning as she tried and failed to stop the rush of emotion as she remembered the night before, the night of Mirabel’s Gifting Ceremony.
”Mama?”
Julieta pressed both palms against the top of her dresser, head falling forward she she thought of her youngest daughter’s beautiful brown eyes welling with tears as she realized that something had gone wrong. That she was surrounded by her family, everyone there to celebrate the gift she was meant to receive. The gift she wouldn’t be getting.
Mirabel had run from the party seconds later, escaping into the nursery as she and Augustin had chased after, begging her to come back.
They’d waited outside her door for over an hour, begging Mirabel to let them in, that everything would be alright and please, sweetie, open the door. Talk to us, please.
Their Casita was a sturdy house, and trying to get through a locked door was all but impossible without the person on the other side unlocking it or the house itself deciding to intervene. Julieta had tried anyway, pushing uselessly against the nursery door as the sounds of her baby crying alone inside broke her heart.
They’d both asked Casita to help them, but their home had remained strangely silent, not even offering one of its customary gestures for declining a request.
Augustin eventually managed to lead her away, promising that they would sit Mirabel down in the morning and assure her that nothing would change their love for her, gift or no gift. They’d put Isabela and Luisa to bed quickly, neither girl putting up a fuss, and retreated into their own room, exhausted but unable to sleep for hours.
Dressing quickly, Julieta left her room, making her way down the hall to the nursery.
She would wait for Augustin to wake up before talking to Mirabel, but she wanted to just see her, to see that she was at least able to sleep.
If she could.
Stopping before the door, Julieta reached for the handle, fingers closing around it. The handle didn’t budge.
“Casita, please unlock the door.”
Several seconds passed. Was the house really-
Click.
The handle twisted suddenly in her hand as the door unlocked.
Slowly, Julieta pushed the door open, eyes adjusting to the darkness of the room.
Mirabel’s bed was a mess, pillows out of place and the blanket halfway draped on the floor, and in the bed-
Her daughter wasn’t in her bed.
“Mirabel?” Julieta looked around the room, jerking the curtain back and flooding the room with light.
Her daughter wasn’t in her bed, or anywhere in the room.
“Mirabel, where are you?”
Julieta left the nursery, checking the hallways before peeking her head into the bathroom her children shared.
No Mirabel.
Julieta started running.
Dining room.
Family room.
No Mirabel.
No Mirabel in the library, or the sewing room. No sign of her daughter outside, reading under her favorite tree.
No Mirabel anywhere.
“MIRABEL! MIRABEL!”
Had she gone to the village on her own? Mirabel wasn’t allowed to leave the property without an adult, she knew that. When would she have even left? Casita should have woken them up - but Casita should have unlocked her door last night and hadn’t and-
And now-
“MIRABEL! MIRABEL, WHERE ARE YOU?!”
Julieta was dimly aware that she was no longer alone, the others having been woken up by her yelling. Augustin’s concerned face swam in front of her vision, her husband’s features blurring in and out of focus as she sank to her knees.
“Julieta, what-“
“She’s gone! Mirabel is gone!”
.
.
.
The next year passed slowly, each day marked by another failure.
Failure to find Mirabel.
Failure to bring her home.
And failure to even find out how she’d gone in the first place, with Casita not responding to them at all, not even to her mother, their matriarch.
The family had remained optimistic at first. Mirabel was only five years old. Even if she had run away in the night, she couldn’t have gotten far, and surely she’d make her way back by the end of the day even if she had. They knew she was hurt by what had happened, and maybe scared for what it meant, but she had to know they still loved her.
That this was her home.
They’d looked, and recruited help from the village. They’d had search parties combing the house, the village, and the forests and valleys surrounding it.
When that hadn’t worked, Felix had sent word to the other villages, and then the nearest city.
Nothing was found, and days became weeks, and weeks had become months. The villagers kept pictures of Mirabel, all of them knowing to call on the Madrigals if they saw any sign of her, but they had their own lives to attend to, and the search parties slowed to a stop soon after.
The family kept looking for a time, the adults sick with worry, and the children scared and confused. But, eventually, even they had to stop.
Julieta and Augustin held Isabela and Luisa late into the night a year after Mirabel’s disappearance, their daughters crying in their arms as they mourned their missing sister.
In the morning, Julieta woke to find they had all been tucked into bed, the comforter pulled carefully around the small family. She hadn’t asked which of the others in the household had done it, but she’d tried to smile when she went down to make breakfast, and she hoped whoever it was knew she appreciated their kindness.
In some ways, the next few years were easier. Julieta cooked for her family and healed the villagers. She cared for Isabela and Luisa, both girls growing like weeds. She walked hand in hand with Augustin when they went shopping and loved him more and more every day.
She held her newborn nephew for the first time and cried at the sight of a few loose curls decorating an otherwise bald baby head.
With Antonio, their Casita, which had lacked so much of its once all-encompassing presence, came alive slowly.
Lights would flicker playfully when he laughed.
Drawers opened slowly and locked into place, giving the growing boy something to grab onto as he made his first steps.
A curtain sent a gust of air to ruffle Isabela’s hair as she posed for a picture and a door swung around to helpfully point Dolores towards her missing slippers.
More than nine years after her world had shattered, Julieta’s smiles were real.
Maybe not as big as they had once been, and things would never be what they were, but she had her two daughters, her husband, her mother and her sister’s family, and she loved them all.
She would never give up on bringing Mirabel home, and she and Augustin kept calling and sending out photos of their youngest to anyone and everyone, but they would keep going in the meantime. For Mirabel to have a loving home to return to when she was ready.
And Casita…
Julieta would be lying if she said there hadn’t been a time when she’d resented their house for going silent when she needed it most. Those years when her lifelong home had refused to answer her increasingly desperate questions and seemingly shut down entirely but for a few random movements of paintings or oddly timed clicks of tiles.
Only knowing that it would further upset Isabela and Luisa to lose the only home environment they’d ever known had stopped her from bringing up the idea of moving away to Augustin.
But Casita had returned with Antonio’s birth, and the house was now warmer and more involved than ever before.
Every day, it would wake her and the others up with taps to their doors, curtains would move to shield her from Pepa’s windy outbursts, and a blanket would be pushed carefully over her shoulders on the nights she sat up alone on the couch, family album spread open on her lap.
Perhaps whatever went wrong with the ceremony had stolen the house’s power or maybe Casita had simply not known what had happened to Mirabel and had been as shocked as the rest of them. But with the warmth and love it showered onto her family, Julieta could no longer think it had been indifferent to Mirabel, or offended over her lack of a gift.
They had all lost something, but they were still here.
.
.
.
Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to her that Antonio was almost five now.
Almost old enough to receive his gift.
Part of Julieta wondered if the others had waited so long to start planning out of respect for her, or some misplaced worry that it would set her back to the shell of a person she’d been in those first few weeks.
Honestly, they were wrong to worry. Yes, the memory of that night would always hen fresh and painful in the back of her mind, but she knew what had happened wasn’t normal. Antonio deserved a chance to get his gift, and if history somehow repeated herself…
Then they would be at his side in an instant, all of them.
They wouldn’t let him doubt for a second that he was a Madrigal no matter what.
As the days ticked down, the sense of happiness and anticipation grew. Casita was more resplendent by the day, cleaning itself to a shine and throwing itself into helping with the party planning with energy that managed exceeded the children’s.
When it was time, the family gathered as the candle that represented the light of their magic and family glowed bright.
Antonio could speak to animals. It was a beautiful gift, and it suited him well.
Augustin wrapped an arm around her shoulders as the children celebrated. Pepa was sobbing with happiness and Felix wasn’t far behind her.
Julieta let her hand fall onto the rail at side as they watched everything going right, the way it always should have been.
Gently, part of the rail twisted over her hand, loose enough that she could remove it easily but firm enough for her to know what the house was trying to convey.
Julieta smiled as she looked at her Casita, at her home and family.
And Mirabel smiled back.