“Hey.” Georgia spoke up softly, insulted.
They ignored her.
“What made you confide in her and not in me, even after sharing what happened in your past with your home and family?”
“Well, she didn’t tell me that part.” Georgia pouted, trying to lessen the blow. “Paul, the creep, did that. He was so creepy, like heebie-jeebies creepy.”
Nena said, “Georgia, perhaps you can give your father and me a moment?”
Georgia hesitated, as if she didn’t want to leave them alone, afraid the adults would screw things up without her there to mediate. In her face, Nena saw a discord of emotions, the want to be defiant and demand she stay, the awareness of her place as a child and that she should do as told. Begrudgingly, Georgia stood, casting an apprehensive glance at her dad.
“I didn’t get hurt and I’m not scarred for life, so don’t say anything stupid, Dad,” she warned, heading toward the door.
As she passed Nena, Georgia suddenly threw her arms around her in a hug that lasted longer than Nena was accustomed to. Nena allowed it and found she liked it, even though Georgia hadn’t asked. Eventually, she extricated herself from Georgia’s grip and waited until Georgia left them alone.
Nena moved closer to the bed, assessing Cort’s injuries. He looked so beautiful, despite his abrasions and swollen face. Her hand reached to touch him, but she managed to stop herself before she made contact.
“Why didn’t you tell me everything?”
She balled her hand, bringing it back down to her side. “Because if you knew, then you would walk out of my life and take Georgia with you. I couldn’t bear it.”
He searched her eyes. “Do you understand that I am an agent of the justice system? I prosecute criminals, killers. You are a killer, Nena.”
He was right.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re only killing other criminals for the benefit of your mobster family. It’s still a crime.”
She inclined her head. “The Tribe is not a mob—”
“You all are criminals.”
She shook her head vigorously. “We are not. My team, when deployed, tries to right the wrongs our more problematic members inflict on others, wrongs that may fracture and weaken our organization. Any we feel impede the advancement of the African people, we handle.”
He scoffed, “By taking the law into your own hands. Some kind of international vigilantes.”
If that was what he wanted to call it. “I mete out justice for our own, by our own. It’s how we do things.” She thought for a moment. “Is it dissimilar to your Black Panthers? Malcolm X?”
He laughed dryly. “Who said how they went about things was the right way to do it every time? You can’t speak about them. You’re not even from here.”
He made a point. “But their message, their goals, their intent to make strong Black Americans, to give you rights and freedoms, to give you safety from racists and others who sought to keep you under their thumbs. Was that not right? How different is it from the Tribe?”
He shook his head. “It’s against the law, Nena. That’s why we have laws, rules from which we govern to keep everyone in check.”
“As do we. We have rules, and without them, there is chaos. I prevent chaos.” If they’d already gone this far, Nena decided that Cort might as well know everything. “There’s only been one time I’ve broken the rules.”
He looked at her suspiciously before finally asking, “When?”
“When I shot Dennis Smith instead of you.”
The monitors hooked up to Cort began a chorus of beeping as his pulse and heart rate quickened. Nena worried he was going to have a heart attack or the nurses would have to come in.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he whispered.
She told him.
Told him how she’d recognized him the night before when she’d brought Georgia home and how she’d chosen to shoot Attah instead of him two days later.
“You killed him because of what he did to you,” Cort said. “If he wasn’t there, would you have killed me?”
She shook her head. “No, because when I saw you the night before, I—” What was she supposed to say? Was this when she professed her feelings for him? “I felt something different about you.”
“You felt what?” he pushed.
She was struggling. Professing love—emotions—was not her norm. The word love floated in her head, still so like a dream to her that she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. She didn’t say it to her family. They just knew and accepted it as her way. She wished Cort could do the same.