Chapter 12 - Camille Without a Mirror
Camille moved into a small apartment in the Garden District.
Small, by Bowmont standards, meant two bedrooms and a balcony.
For Camille, it might as well have been a cabin in the wilderness.
She had never paid an electric bill.
Never chosen health insurance.
Never owned towels that had not been selected by someone else.
Delphine refused to rescue her.
She did, however, teach her how to read a lease.
“That clause lets them raise parking fees midyear.”
Camille stared.
“Why is life full of traps?”
“Because you spent twenty-three years with lawyers.”
Camille glared.
Then laughed.
Their relationship did not heal in a montage.
It healed badly.
Camille apologized too often.
Delphine became angry at apologies that demanded reassurance.
They fought about childhood.
About photographs.
About the third floor.
About the night of the insult.
“You enjoyed it,” Delphine said once.
Camille’s face went red.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because for one second, I thought I had finally done something worse than you.”
Delphine stared.
Camille cried.
“I know how disgusting that sounds.”
“No. Explain.”
Camille wiped her face.
“You were always the smart one. Even after the fire. Teachers came upstairs and talked about you like you were extraordinary. Dad complained about you constantly, which meant he was always thinking about you. I was the pretty one. That was my job. I thought if I lost that, there would be nothing left.”
Delphine sat back.
The cruelty did not become acceptable.
But it became legible.
Their parents had not only hidden Delphine.
They had reduced Camille too.
One daughter became tragedy.
The other became decoration.
Both were forms of disappearance.
“What do you want to do now?” Delphine asked.
Camille laughed helplessly.
“No idea.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“You get to find out.”
Camille eventually enrolled in a nonprofit finance program at Loyola and began volunteering with the Delphine Initiative, mostly in administrative work where nobody cared what dress she wore.
The first time a client yelled at her, she came home thrilled.
“She was furious.”
“Why are you happy?”
“Because I helped fix the billing problem and she didn’t care who my family was.”
Delphine smiled.
“That does sound nice.”
Meanwhile, Casius’s recovery plateaued.
He could walk short distances with crutches.
He could stand unsupported for several seconds.
He could not safely cross uneven ground.
His right foot still dragged with fatigue.
Neuropathic pain woke him at night.
One morning after a bad session, he threw a therapy band across the room.
Delphine picked it up.
“Good throw.”
“Go away.”
“No.”
“Wife privilege is becoming abusive.”
She sat on the mat beside him.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“That answer is lazy.”
He glared.
She waited.
Finally he said, “I thought if I worked hard enough, I would get all of it back.”
“All of what?”
“My body.”
Delphine’s face softened.
“You have your body.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
She leaned against the wall.
“When I was eighteen, I thought every surgery would be the one that made my face mine again.”
Casius looked at her.
“Wasn’t it yours?”
“That is exactly the lesson.”
He closed his eyes.
Delphine continued.
“I kept treating the scar like a tenant who would eventually leave. One day I realized I was the one standing outside my own house.”
Casius looked toward the wheelchair.
“I don’t want to give up.”
“Acceptance is not surrender.”
“I hate when you sound like Dr. Cho.”
“She’s smarter than both of us.”
He laughed despite himself.
Later that week, he attended a Ferraro business meeting in the wheelchair by choice.
No crutches.
No performance.
No one commented.
That mattered more than he expected.
The organization itself was changing too.
Under federal scrutiny and Casius’s insistence, Ferraro companies withdrew from gray-market operations, sold off cash-heavy businesses that depended on intimidation, and expanded legitimate logistics, disaster-response contracting, and port security.
Some old captains hated it.
Casius let them leave.
“We are not preserving a tradition that tried to kill me,” he told Salvatore.
The old man sighed.
“You young people ruin everything.”
“You’re welcome.”
The Delphine Initiative opened its first center in a renovated medical office near Mercy Saint Anne.
Burn survivors.
Spinal injury patients.
Families navigating long-term trauma.
Legal advocates.
Vocational counselors.
A media privacy clinic.
The opening ceremony was small.
Delphine refused a ribbon.
Hannah LeBlanc, the sixteen-year-old from Baton Rouge, cut it instead.
She had returned to school.
Her hoodie was gone.
Not because she had become brave enough to stop hiding.
Because she was hot.
Delphine considered that progress.
After the ceremony, a reporter asked whether Delphine considered herself beautiful now.
She paused.
Years earlier, the question would have hurt.
Now it merely annoyed her.
“I consider myself busy.”
The clip went viral.
Camille printed it on a mug.
Casius bought twelve.
Delphine threatened divorce.
That night, they sat in the kitchen eating takeout gumbo.
No chandeliers.
No formal table.
No alliance.
Casius reached across and touched the scar on her cheek with two fingers.
He had never done it without asking.
“May I?”
She nodded.
His thumb followed the edge of the texture gently.
Delphine looked at him.
“Does it bother you?”
“Yes.”
She froze.
He continued.
“It bothers me that anyone taught you to ask.”
Her eyes filled.
Casius lowered his hand.
Delphine caught it and placed it back against her face.
The world had spent years deciding what each of them was supposed to mourn.
Together, they were learning they could choose what deserved grief and what did not.
The board position forced Delphine to confront another fear she had not expected.
Visibility.
Hospital meetings meant photographs. Press releases. Donor dinners. Rooms where people would know her before she entered.
The first week, she nearly resigned.
Then a junior nurse stopped her in the hallway.
“My brother uses a wheelchair,” the nurse said. “He saw the clip where your husband said leadership was never in his legs.”
Delphine smiled.
“He complained about that clip for a month.”
“My brother stopped refusing his chair after it.”
Delphine went quiet.
The nurse shrugged.
“People watch more than we think.”
That evening, Delphine told Casius.
He groaned.
“I knew going viral would have consequences.”
“Terrible ones. You helped someone.”
“Reputation ruined.”
She leaned down and kissed his forehead.
Visibility still frightened her.
May you like
But for the first time, she understood it could be something other than exposure.
It could also be permission.
