Letters to Camilo

Letter #14

I procrastinated too much and then stuff came up when I was supposed to start writing so this was finished very very late 😅

Sorry :')

Oh and we're so close to 1000 reads hhhhhhh

Anyways, I hope that you enjoy this chapter!!

Dear Camilo,

Hello! I finally, finally have some time to write a bit again. I hope that you are doing good up there in heaven and not getting into any trouble. Oooooo, I hope that you are having fun flying with your wings now! You must be very good at it because I never saw you flying in the sky.

Things have been very, very busy in here, especially since Dolores's baby is going to be born soon! Soon as in I think around 2 or 3 months. Her belly is quite big now, which mamí said is a good thing. It means that the baby is growing up healthily and how it's supposed to. It also means that Dolores can't fit into her old clothes anymore!

But it's okay, because she and the girls already bought new clothes for her that are for pregnant people. So now she has a lot of new, comfortable outfits! I'm going to be honest with you, I don't think that they are as pretty as her old clothes, but all that matters is that they're comfortable for her.

And speaking of clothes, yesterday Dolores asked me to go with her to buy more clothes for the baby! She already has a lot but she needs some more since babies get clothes dirty very quickly. She let me choose some clothes (which are very tiny!) and she also let me choose the first outfit that the baby is going to wear after it's born! But I have to keep it a secret for now, which I am really good at.

I chose a white babygrow with long sleeves and tiny baby mittens. It has baby cartoon animals all over it, like tigers, lions and elephants. It is very very cute. Dolores knew that I was going to choose that because it has the animals, but that was her favourite too.

The new nursery is almost ready too. It is all painted with a lot of different colours. The furniture is all put in, including the cot where the baby will sleep, which I also helped build! I was Mariano's and papá's assistant, they said that I helped them a lot! All that's left are some decorations and a proper bed for a toddler, but we won't be needing that for now. Mirabel and Isabela are taking care of the decorations together, and Mirabel is also making some soft toys for the baby from scratch.

It must be my brain playing some trick on me, but didn't Mirabel and Isabela use to hate each other? I'm not sure, I can't remember much from when I was younger.

Dolores is also doing good. She isn't doing any chores, inside or outside Casita, and is resting a lot, like she has to do. She is hungrier and more tired than usual, which is normal for pregnant people. That's how mamí, tía Julieta and Abuela felt too. Abuela probably felt the worst since she had 3 babies not one!

Everything is going like it's supposed to with Dolores and the baby so we don't have to worry. I even felt the baby kick one time! I felt it pretty well, I don't want to imagine how much it hurts Dolores when that happens.

Everyone is excited and happy for the baby to arrive. Even the townspeople, who know that there will be a new Madrigal. They offered to help us with anything we might need and some even gave Dolores and Mariano some gifts for the baby.

I also tried to ask tío Bruno to tell me if he knows if the baby is going to be a boy or a girl but he didn't tell me. I tried asking the rats too but they didn't tell me anything. I don't know if he knows or not, maybe he doesn't want to tell us. Nobody knows apart from maybe him.

Oh, I have another thing that I would like to tell you before I go to sleep. Remember all those letters that I wrote to you? Starting all the way back from when I was 5 years old? And how I gave them to Parce to post at the post office?

Like how I said in the last letter, I now know the truth on what happened to you and I also know that the letters couldn't have been delivered to you because there's nowhere where they could have gone to since you are dead and all and didn't actually run away like I thought you did.

So I asked Parce to tell me what he did when I gave him the letters to deliver and where he went with them. And he told me.

When I gave him a letter for the first time and told him to go to the post office with it so it would get delivered to you, he didn’t know what to do. He admitted that he did know that you were dead because he had heard it from some other animals but he didn’t want to tell me because he didn’t want to make me sadder and was afraid that I wouldn’t understand what you dying meant. And that's what would have happened.

So he took the letter I wrote and went out of my room, to maybe think of something to do while walking. But then he bumped into papá.

Papá looked at the thing in Parce’s mouth and he gave it to him. Papá was about to open the envelope but Parce stopped him. Then papá realised that Parce only wanted him to keep the letters. And that’s what he did. For the past 5 years, Parce has been giving papá every single letter I wrote and papá has been hiding them somewhere without ever reading them or telling anyone about them.

So today, when I saw that papá wasn’t busy and was alone, I went and asked him if I could have the letters that I wrote that Parce gave him. He looked a bit surprised but still took me to his and mamí’s wardrobe in their room. He was keeping the letters in there, in a box which was almost full.

He asked me why I came for the letters and I explained everything to him; how I didn’t know that you were dead, that I wrote the letters to tell you to come back home, how I gave the letters to Parce for him to deliver to the post office so they would get delivered to you, how Dolores told me not so long ago the truth on what had happened to you, how Parce just told me what he did with my letters and some other stuff.

At the end of my explanation, I was almost crying. Papá gave me a big hug and told me that even though you may be gone, you’ll forever be with us in our hearts and how you’ll be looking over us from heaven. We may not be seeing you here, but you’re here “in spirit”, kind of as a ghost.

That made me feel a bit better, because that means that you’re not entirely gone. You’re kind of still here, in a way.

After that, I took all the letters in my room. Now the box is under my desk, and that's where I will put all the letters I write starting from today.

Parce is telling me that I should sleep now, so I probably should. Or else he's saying that he'll eat this letter up, and I really don't want that to happen. Tomorrow's going to be another busy day, especially since I promised to help Jose with his animals, so I need the rest.

I'll love you forever and always and you'll forever be with me in my heart.

Lots of love,
Antonio ❤️

The Antonio choosing the baby's first outfit was what I did irl but choosing it for my baby brother (who's now 11 years old!! 😭😭)
It was the exact same babygrow described here :')

Also, I don't think that I ever made this clear, but the Madrigals always assumed that Antonio knew the truth about what had happened to Camilo whether in reality he had no idea. Poor boy.

Also if you already couldn't tell, I love myself some family fluff XD

I hope that you enjoyed this chapter and I'll see you in the next one! Bye bye and thank you for reading!! ❤️