"You're standing three feet back from everything that matters and calling it strategy." She squeezed his hand once, hard. "Your father did the same thing for forty years. He called it discipline. Your mother called it cowardice, and she wasn't wrong."
Nico looked down at her. "Rosa."
"I'm old and I almost died tonight," she said plainly. "I've earned the right to say what I mean."
She released his hand and folded her own back around her rosary. "This girl ran toward gunfire for me. Do you understand that? She heard shooting and she ran toward it. Not because she was obligated to do so, or because it was politically strategic."
Rosa's voice was quiet but very certain. "Infact, one could even call it stupid. But still, she did." No one interrupted her. "She did it because it was the right thing, and because somewhere along the way this family became hers."
