Page 7 of The Enforcer

3Zoe

We makeit to Roma Termini and thankfully manage to snag a couple of tickets on the next train to Naples. It’s still early morning. In a perfect world, Shae and I will get to Naples before lunch, find Zahra before nightfall, and be back on a plane tomorrow afternoon.

I don’t care how big Naples is. I don’t care that there are more details missing from that plan than men leering at us on the train platform. My mother raised Zahra and I to believe that, in the absence of good sense, reckless hope was also effective.

Shae never quite took to that lesson.

When I turn to her, I’m not surprised to find Shae looking nervous and a little sweaty. It’s a warm summer morning, and we’ve lugged our jetlagged bodies and luggage through clumps of tourists at the airport, commuter traffic at the train station, and down a flight of surprisingly steep stairs to arrive at our platform. My conviction that something is absolutely going on with my younger cousin has only intensified during this trip. As soon as we find Zahra, I’m going to figure out what she’s hiding from me. But until then, all I can give her is a gentle, and maybe empty, platitude.

“Everything’s going to be alright,” I tell her, even though I have no idea what we’re up against.

When she looks up at me, I can see that the dark circles under her eyes seem to have deepened in color and begun to take over more of her face.

“I promise.”

She smiles sadly. “We’re not kids anymore, Zoe. You can’t fix the world for me.”

“The fuck I can’t,” I say as our train’s arrival begins to flash on the screen above us.

I pretend to work on the ride to Naples.

I thought my editor would be pissed at my sudden departure from the country and the brief email explaining why, but when we land in Rome, she’s sent me a bunch of ideas for stories I might like to write about.

None of them sound interesting, and I don’t plan to be in Europe long enough to do any actual research, but I spend the train ride toward the coast scrolling through other people’s stories so I can pretend to have done my due diligence. I also want to take my mind off of everything at home. And because the universe is conspiring to exhaust me, I get the email notification at the worst possible moment.

“What’s this about you leaving the country? Zoe, are you serious? Are you really going to let it end like this?”

I read Tyrone’s email more times than is necessary. I understand his question. I understand why he’s mad. I don’t understand how to tell him that yeah, I’m seriously going to let it end like this. As far as I’m concerned, they made this decision, not me.

A year ago, I thought I’d spend a good decade or so with Tyrone and Kevin. I had an entire plan for my life that included them, but only as much as we all agreed. We did not agree on kids, though, so now I have to rethink my entire life. Alone. I’m not a crier, but I do get choked up reading and rereading his email. I loved them. I’d been happy with them. But I don’t know what else there is to say between the three of us.

I don’t want kids. They do. Where are we supposed to go from here?

Nowhere.

Or Italy, apparently. I text my mother to let her — and by extension, the rest of the Council of Aunties — know that we’ve made it to Italy, and we’re on our way to Naples. I hope she doesn’t respond. I can’t handle Tyrone’s email and communicating with my mother so close together. Not today. As much as my mother was willing to acknowledge my relationship, she would frown at me, suck her teeth, and accuse me of being greedy and afraid of commitment.

For the record, I’m not. Well, not in the way that my mom thinks. I am greedy, but it is my personal opinion that every person should be greedy with their joy. There can never be too much joy as far as I’m concerned. And I love my mother, but I won’t let her shame me for that. And while she knows me very well, of course, my mom also still sees me as an extension of her. Whenever my life veers off the path she’s laid out for me, she freaks out. That’s why she thinks I’m commitment-phobic when really, I am desperate to have people to spend my life with.

It’s the people part that freaks my mother out. I imagine she’ll be happy to know that I’ve broken up with Tyrone and Kevin. She probably won’t care at all that I’m bereft.

I don’t want to think about this anymore.

“Oh, shit,” I hiss.

“What?” Shae has been drifting in and out of sleep, but she wakes with a start.

I pat her right hand. “Nothing’s wrong,” I reassure her. “I just remembered that I had a way to find Zahra quickly.”

“You do?”

I nod and turn back to my phone. I start typing the text I would have sent yesterday if my relationship hadn’t imploded and my family wasn’t supremely strange.

“KeKe, any word on my sister?”

I’m hoping for a fast response, and I get it.

“Yep. Sending the report now. She hasn’t spent any money recently, but a friend of a friend of an NSA agent says her phone is still in the city. And since you’re on your way to Naples…”

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