I stared at the message for a long time.
My father had never been a man of many words.
He signed enormous business deals with emails that were sometimes only three sentences long.
At my mother’s funeral, his entire eulogy lasted less than two minutes.
I typed:
Yes. We’re both healthy.
The typing dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Then appeared again.
Almost five minutes passed.
Finally:
Good.
Nothing else.
I put the phone down and looked at my daughter.
And I thought about the last time my father and I had been together in a hospital.
Then I forced myself to stop.
My name is Simone.
I was born Simone Caldwell.
If you’ve ever driven through Atlanta, you may have seen that last name before.
On trucks.
Warehouses near the airport.
A wing of a children’s hospital.
A forty-story building downtown with a white marble lobby.
My father is Malcolm Caldwell.
