Chapter 9
Camille blamed herself.
I found her sitting outside Noah’s nursery with an ice pack against her mouth.
“You should be resting.”
She shrugged.
“I keep thinking if I came five minutes later…”
“Stop.”
She looked at me.
“I should have known Gloria was strange around him.”
“No.”
“I saw things.”
That interested me.
“What things?”
Gloria insisting on changing Noah even when Vivienne said no.
Moving his bassinet closer to her chair.
Calling him “our Mercer boy” once when she thought nobody heard.
Correcting Camille whenever she called him Bellaro.
Small territorial language.
Camille dismissed it as grandmother obsession.
So had I.
Then she told me Gloria had asked her something a week earlier.
“If Vivienne became too exhausted to care for Noah, would Dante let family take over?”
Camille answered yes because she assumed Gloria meant helping.
Words.
Always flexible enough to become permission after the fact.
“She used my answer.”
“Maybe.”
Camille looked sick.
“That’s my fault.”
“No.”
I sat beside her.
“You answered a normal question in good faith.”
I had begun learning this distinction repeatedly.
Trust is not stupidity merely because somebody abuses it.
Responsibility belongs to the person who weaponizes it.
Camille looked toward the nursery.
“Vivienne hates me?”
“Why would she?”
“I’m your sister.”
I understood.
Families teach loyalty like teams.
Bellaro versus Mercer.
She expected Vivienne’s anger at Gloria to spread through bloodlines.
“No.”
I looked at her.
“This house is not doing inherited guilt.”
She almost smiled.
Then Noah cried.
Camille stood automatically.
Stopped herself.
Looked at the door.
Waited.
Vivienne called:
“Come in.”
Camille entered.
That tiny pause mattered.
Permission.
May you like
Something Gloria had stopped asking for long ago.
Maybe rebuilding a family would happen through hundreds of moments that small.
