“I’m scared, Jack.”
“Of what?”
Of never feeling about anyone else the way I feel about you.
“Of tomorrow,” I replied. “After what happened with Juma, I don’t know what to expect.”
Jack was quiet for a moment. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
“I want to show you something.” He flipped through it until he found a video. “This is the last dance performance I have of Lily’s. I recorded it a few weeks before she died. The look on her face—it’s pure joy.”
Lily lit up the small stage. She hopped off her right foot, then her left, swinging her arms in fun, upbeat moves. It was half choreographed, half free-style, and she couldn’t stop smiling through it. When she finished, she pointed to the camera and sent her dad a flying kiss before taking a bow.
“She always told me to sit in the front row, so she could find me.”
“She’s amazing.” I couldn’t bring myself to use the past tense, not with her energy and enthusiasm coming through so clearly.
“She wasn’t always easy with it. This was her, the first time she got on stage.” Jack showed me another video.
It was a different Lily, younger, but also unsure and nervous as hell. She was part of a group, and she lagged behind everyone because she was taking her cues from them. Her moves were small and stilted, as if she were dancing in a box that restrained her. She didn’t make it all the way through. Instead, she walked off the stage and slipped behind the curtains, while the rest of the group completed the performance.
“She was terrified because she looked different from all the other kids. Being biracial isn’t easy for a kid. She seemed to be okay in class, but up on stage with all those people watching, she lost her nerve. I didn’t think she’d want to go back. But she did. She watched this over and over again. And each time she accepted herself a little more, saw her own beauty, practiced the moves, gained more confidence. She asked me to record her next performance. And the next one. Then she watched those. Over and over again. Until she could go back and laugh at her first attempt.” Jack put his phone away and turned to me. “It’s okay to be scared, Rodel. I’m scared too. I stood in that parking lot, paralyzed by fear. I haven’t been able to shake it off. I don’t know if I ever will—if I’ll ever believe that the world is a safe place. Then I watch Lily’s videos, and you know what she says to me? That fear is a liar. Don’t let it whisper in your ear. Turn that shit off. Do what scares you. Over and over again. And one day, your fear will become so small, you’ll be able to laugh at it.”
“Big lessons from a little girl,” I replied. “I wish I’d met her.”
“You would have liked her. I lived for the times when she came to visit. I loved watching her race across the plains, in grass that was almost as tall as her. She was my flower, my rising sun. Blue jeans and a rainbow T-shirt.” He rocked his foot, setting the swing into a soft, lulling motion. “Nothing’s going to hurt you or those kids, Rodel. I’ve been at war ever since I lost Lily, only I don’t know who with. And it kills me. Because every fiber of my being wants to find them and destroy them, and I can’t. But if anyone . . . if anyone touches a hair on your head or tries to harm those children, I will rip them apart. I don’t want to play by the rules anymore. I don’t want to see them behind bars. I don’t want them getting a fair trial. I want them dead. I will put them six feet under, Rodel, so help me God.”
He clasped my hand under the blanket and threaded his fingers through mine. He’d held my hand once before, but this felt different, possessive—like he was staking his claim. A curious swooping pulled at my insides. We both knew there was a line we couldn’t cross, but it didn’t stop Jack’s arm from going around me or my head from leaning on his shoulder.
For a few hours that night, Jack and I sat out on the porch, with the scent of wild jasmine in the air, and nothing but the squeaking of the swing, and the buzzing of night insects breaking up the silence.
SOMETIME DURING THEnight, I had fallen asleep on the swing, and Jack had carried me to bed. I might have awoken when he scooped me up, but the feeling of being wrapped up in his arms was so delicious that I’d faked it. And then replayed it over and over in my head until I’d fallen back to sleep.
This is it, little sis, I thought, when I got up the next morning. We’re going to pick up the last two kids on your list and get them to Wanza.
There was no answer, and for a while, I wondered if it was some sort of sign from her, a warning not to go. I shook off my unease and got out of bed. I was making things up—my conversations with Mo, and now the silences too.
I had filled my parents in on what was happening. They weren’t too happy that Jack and I would be away for the next few days. They had lost one daughter and they wanted the other one back, safe and sound. A part of me longed to head home to them, and to my little stone cottage by the river, but another part, the part that had shifted and changed, felt a sharp pang at the thought of leaving. It was also the part that leaped to life when Jack opened his door, at the opposite end of the hallway, with sleep-rumpled hair, and nothing but his boxers on.
Good God, imagine waking up to that every day.
He was half-shadowed as he stood in the corridor, but it turned his body into a sculpted study in light and dark. For a quick, satisfying beat, his self-contained demeanor slipped, as his eyes raked over my bare shoulder, grazing the skin where my top had slipped off.
“Thank you forumm. . . carrying me up the stairs last night,” I said, attempting to cut through the crackling that happened whenever we got within a few feet of each other.
Jack didn’t say anything, but he must have caught the flush on my face, because a corner of his mouth turned up, but just barely, as if he’d been in on the whole thing all along.
Well, I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all.
“Good morning.” Bahati came out of his room, looked left at me, looked right at Jack, and then made a beeline for the bathroom.
“Hey, I was going to—”
“You snooze, you lose,” he taunted, shutting the door on me.
“Shh. Keep it down!” Goma stuck her head out of her room. “Scholastica and I have been up all night.”
“Everything okay?” asked Jack.
