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~~((The National Jelly Bean Day Special -- page 3 of 10))~~
That had been the first time in which Raul and his brothers had really gotten to know Ibai. Right away, they could tell how different he was. Raul knew now that Ibai must have already been in his twenties by that point, but it didn't feel like a memory with someone eleven years their elder at all. Ibai had always treated them like peers. Like equals.

But he wasn't. Without even realizing it, they'd learned so many new things from him by the end of that trip.

And Ismael.

Agh.

Thinking about him hurt. Raul had loved him as much as he'd loved his own father--maybe even more, terrible as that was to admit.

The Triplets had loved to play pranks, and that trip had certainly been no different. But Ismael had never gotten upset at them for it. In fact, he actually seemed to enjoy them.

One time, they filled his water bottle with coyote urine. The look on the man's face when he drank from it--Raul could hardly remember anything funnier than that.

They'd expected to get punished severely for that one. Time out. An ass whooping, maybe. But no. Ismael just laughed. And hard, too. And then he cried, for some reason.

Raul hadn't understood why at the time, but in retrospect, he wondered if that didn't have something to do with Ibai, also. As he understood it, Ibai had been even more of a little hellion in his day than the Triplets had. Perhaps to Uncle Ismael, that prank was tame by comparison.

But when they saw him crying like that, their attitudes toward the man shifted dramatically. They'd never seen a grown man break down in such a way. It was confusing and saddening. Esai tried to comfort him.

Then Ismael shoved the bottle in Esai's mouth and made him drink, too.

Even to this day, Raul had never laughed so hard in his life.