The Execution of Noa P. Singleton Read Online Free

entertain your curiosity about my participation in your clemency petition as I will discuss the details of my daughter’s funeral with you.” She finally looked up to me. “Is that clear?” She was the first visitor outside Ollie S. not to offer me candy or refreshments from the vending machines.
    “Sure,” I sighed. “I don’t get it, though. What can your coming here even do?”
    “Oliver should have explained this to you,” she said, without turning her head a quarter of an inch to her right where he was still sitting motionless. “I explicitly told him to tell you about this. Besides, haven’t we already gone through this?”
    “He did, he did,” I said, forcing an empathetic smile toward Oliver. “And yes, we sort of went through this. Still, I don’t understand the sudden change of heart.”
    “It’s not a change of heart, Noa,” she said, staring directly through the partition. “It’s owning up to the one I’ve always had.”
    I had never known Marlene to possess even a quarter of a heart, let alone a full one.
    “What? Now you’re speechless,” she half-laughed. “That’s never been your problem, Noa.”
    “I’m sorry, Marlene. I don’t mean to offend.”
    “You didn’t offend me, Noa,” she said. “You just still haven’t grown up. After all these years. You’ve bled through all of your appeals at the state and federal level without so much as lifting a finger to help your attorneys. And yet,” she stalled. “And yet …”
    She never finished her sentence. Not then. Not over the next six months.
    “I suppose I deserved that,” I said, looking over to Oliver. He quickly turned away.
    “Look, I want to help you, Noa,” she said, her voice slipping. “I want to talk to the governor about you. But if I’m going to use my influence to speak with the governor and tell him that, as the victim’s mother, I cannot live with this execution, I need something—anything—from you that tells me that you have changed. That you are a good person now. That you never meant to do what you did. That you are a worthwhile asset to this earth. So just talk to me, prove it to me.” Her lips were dry. She wet them with her tongue before continuing. “Life is not my choice or the state’s choice to end. I believe that wholeheartedly now. But with even greater urgency, on a personal level, I want to believe it to be true with you.” She patted the sagging skin under her eyes with a single index finger. “Does any of this make sense to you?”
    “You have changed, but I don’t think that there is anything I can tell you that will make you change your mind about me.”
    “Do not insult me,” she commanded, and with that tone, I couldtell just exactly how she’d become so successful. Before the trial and, even more so, after. “Do
not
waste my time, Noa.” It was still monotonous and shiveringly potent, but now so calm. Calm like the eye of a tornado calm. Calm like a millionaire who walks by a street bum calm. Just confident calm, you know? So with that, my muzzle finally unclipped, and without her suave coercion, I was finally able to say it.
    “I’m … I’m sorry.”
    It wasn’t even that hard. That was the most surprising part about all of it. I couldn’t say those words for the duration of the trial, and here, they slipped out, like extra change falling through a hole in your pocket.
    She exhaled and her flattened chest puffed outward.
    “I just want to know you. I want to understand.”
    Oliver and I shared a glance when she stopped speaking.
    “Why did your parents call you Noa?” she asked. “What is your favorite food? What colors do you like? Do you,” she paused. “Excuse me, did you listen to any specific types of music?”
    No acknowledgment to my apology. But again, I played along.
    “Okay,” I said. “I used to like sushi, really, before it became so popular. I have a thing for show tunes, Broadway musicals, especially
Cabaret
,
Carousel
,
Chicago
—the