Page 47 of The Enforcer

I want to squeeze her leg and tell her not to answer this. I can’t. “A man tried to steal my purse,” she says. “Alfonso stopped him. He rescued me.”

“And how did he stop him?” Dario asks.

My back stiffens, and my hand flexes. I don’t need to be looking at Ugo to know that he’s sat up straight or that my father has reached for the packet of cigarettes in his pants pocket as a reflex; he hasn’t smoked in over a decade. And even though Nicola didn’t hear the exchange between Dario and Zoe, he knows something has happened while he was away. He begins to clear the last few plates from the table, his eyes darting around to try and catch the thread of the conversation.

I want to tell Zoe to say nothing. To faint if she feels the need. I want her to do anything but respond to Dario’s question and accidentally rip open an old family wound. But she’s pushed my arm away, and if it is the jet lag finally catching up to her, it’s clouding her ability to read the proverbial room.

“What does it matter?” she says in a small, tired voice.

“I’m sorry?” Dario asks.

She turns toward him at the head of the table. Her eyes are dark flints of steel, and her normally soft mouth is hard. I can see her jaw working and imagine that she’s struggling to keep herself together in a way that I recognize viscerally.

“I said, what does it matter how your brother stopped a man from robbing me? He saved me. Isn’t that the important part?”

When Dario was a boy, he used to screw up his face when thinking deeply about an issue — what flavor gelato he wanted; blue tie or black; sleep or a few more minutes of television. He was the sweetest child. When he joined the seminary, that look went away. The childlike indecision became a haughty intellectual and religious elitism, a surety that God had ordained his train of thought.

I miss that curious and open version of my younger brother.

“Jesus says,” Dario begins, and my brothers and I stiffen for a lecture, a sermon.

“I’m an atheist,” Zoe says, cutting him off. Why hadn’t I ever thought to do that? “Like I said, your brother saved my life. That’s more than I can say about the other people on the street who just stood there and watched me try and keep hold of my purse, which had all my money and my passport inside. Save whatever you’re about to say for the next girl.”

The table has gone quiet. I’m staring at Zoe in awe. We’re all staring at her, even Dario.

It’s Nicola who breaks the silence. “It seems like she’s made for you,” he says in Italian. He’s laughing so hard there are tears in his eyes. Our father laughs with him before turning to Dario. “Take these plates inside,” he says in a soft voice that brooks no pushback, not even from Dario, our mother’s favorite son.

I watch this exchange in a daze. But then I lock eyes with Ugo. I so wish I hadn’t. I know him well enough to know what he’s thinking.

She’s dangerous, his eyes say.

Believe me, I know, my eyes say in return.

---