The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth L. Silver Page A

contemplating his next string of words. “I guess for me it was my time in prison.”
    My chest tightened. I don’t know why I was surprised. I don’t know why I was even upset. It wasn’t like I had fantasized about meeting him or idealized him into a corporate CEO or famous painter or doctor even. His story wasn’t even original, for Christ’s sake: absent father, alcoholic, no doubt, if his water habit was any indication.
    “I’m gonna be straight with you. I owe you that. I made a lot of mistakes in my life. A lot. And they didn’t even start with you, if I’m really gonna be honest.”
    “Fair enough,” I said, feeling like I’d read this before, seen it somewhere—on-screen, in self-help books on my mother’s shelf. “I don’t need to know everything.”
    “All that matters now is that I’ve changed,” he said, as if he weretrying to remember my name. “I’ve changed my life, Noa. I’m a different person now, and I want you to be a part of it.”
    The door to the bar opened and closed, losing a handful of patrons. He looked over, a bit melancholic, as if losing them were somehow as painful as losing me.
    “Do you know the owner?” I asked. “We’re practically the only ones here. Did you plan it that way?”
    He grinned with undulating pride. “You’re looking at him. And of course not.”
    “Okay.”
    Nothing else came out, despite his necessitous expectations. Nothing else was planned. He was the one who called this little meeting. My life’s goal up until that point was far from tracking down a missing parent. It’s not like I walked around blaming the world for my problems merely because a one-night stand with my mother twenty-three years earlier resulted in my sitting at this wooden booth in North Philadelphia across from a man with a water bottle on his side like a colostomy bag, clearly on his Twelfth Step toward making sure that water bottle remained a water bottle. Still, he needed some sort of recognition for his evolution. That ridiculous scar over his lip was starting to dance into a pitiful expression of desperation and didn’t seem to stop no matter how many expressions of acknowledged understanding I tossed his way.
    “Well done, then, Caleb,” I said. “Is that the proper response? You turned your life around … then what? You called me? Congratulations. You did it. You’re, what, a businessman now or just an alcoholic who owns a bar? Because that’s an effective strategy for reform.”
    His brows swam together, constructing a moat of protective lines. Sarcasm clearly hadn’t made its way down the evolutionary track just yet in Dive Bar, Bar Dive. I wanted to say I was sorry, but I wasn’t.
    “I just want to know you,” he said. “That’s why I called. That’s all. I want to know my daughter. I made a lot of mistakes, and now I want to fix them. It’s not a unique story. It’s just mine.”
    “You’ve had twenty-three years to know me.”
    “I fucked up all twenty-three of those, I know,” he pleaded. “But maybe the next twenty-three can be better? The next fifty, even.”
    I swallowed the nerves at the base of my throat to make a clear pathway. “Fuck you.”
    “I deserve that,” he said, almost hinting for salvation.
    “Yes, you do.”
    I sort of felt better after it came out, like it was waiting for the right time to arrive. Profanity can be that way—either gratuitous or magical. For me, at that moment, it was probably a combination of both, and I know my father felt the same way.
    “Good,” he replied. “Now that that’s over, can we just spend time together? Get to know each other.”
    I didn’t reply. I didn’t stay still, but I didn’t stand, either, trying to contemplate my next step, when he leaned forward in submission, chest first, his two hands placed together in prayer.
    “Thank you, Noa.”
    I squinted my eyes. “I’m sorry?”
    He smiled and again softened his voice. “Thank you.”
    “For—?”
    “For coming