“You don’t know them. Kids from school.”
“What were you doing?”
“Nothing much, just hanging out.”
Parker turned to head upstairs, eager, no doubt, to begin his usual hour of gaming before dinner. But the clone stopped him.
“Hey, do me a favor and take Louie out for a walk. He’s acting strange. I hope he’s not sick or something.”
At that moment, the cameras stopped and the monitor on the wall blinked off just as abruptly as it had switched on four hours before.
Brent stood up from his place on the couch with a slow stretch. Jeremiah was still staring at the blank wall in front of him.
“That was,” he began, shaking his head to find the right word, “absolutely bizarre.”
“I bet,” Brent said. “It certainly looks like an exact copy. So, down to my questions and then we can kick back for a while, have some dinner.” He didn’t seem genuinely fazed by what they’d just seen.
“Yeah, sure. Go ahead.”
Brent sat back down and pulled his laptop closer. When he spoke, his voice had assumed a more solemn, businesslike manner.
“During the viewing did you note any actions of the clone to be unexpected, atypical or otherwise out of the ordinary?”
“The whole thing was a bit out of the ordinary from where I’m standing,” he said. “But no. I suppose he acted just the way I would have under the same circumstances.”
Brent typed and then looked up at Jeremiah.
“At any point during the viewing did you note an instance where you would have acted in a manner different from the clone?”
Jeremiah honestly tried to settle on something he might have done differently. But the clone had done everything exactly as he would have done—from the things he’d said to Parker to the way he’d fluffed the pillows behind himself, stacking them at an angle to support his shoulders and upper back. It was almost spooky.
“No,” he said at last.
“Finally, did the people interacting with the clone display any indication that they recognized the clone as an imposter?”
“No,” he said. The question had referred to people, after all, so technically, Jeremiah reasoned, he wasn’t lying when he failed to mention Louie’s reaction. He felt justified in his answer. And in terms of Parker’s interaction with the clone, it was definitely the truth.
He’d been struck, in fact, by the way Parker hardly seemed to look at the clone when he talked to him. Parker acknowledged his father only as much as he needed to and nothing more. It hadn’t always been like that.
Jeremiah’s mind turned to a camping trip they’d taken together when Parker was about ten years old. Jeremiah had never been camping in his life and never had any desire to try, but at the first mention of the idea from his son, he’d rushed out and spent a small fortune on anything he thought they might need: a top-of-the-line tent, subzero sleeping bags, a book of campfire stories, several cans of bug spray and a portable stove. They ended up at a campground in central Maine, slightly off-season, with a persistent light rain that stayed with them the entire weekend. He wasn’t surprised they’d had the place almost exclusively to themselves.
The trip wasn’t the idyllic adventure Jeremiah had imagined it would be. It took him three tries to get the tent up and even then it ended up lopsided when one of the poles wouldn’t stay put. They couldn’t get a fire started until the owner of the place felt sorry for them and finally helped to put up tarps in the trees above their campsite. But Jeremiah had never felt closer to Parker than he did during those damp, chilly two days in the middle of the woods.
“It’s a good thing it’s just me and you, Dad,” Parker had said while they listened to the rhythm of the rain on the tent. “I don’t think Mom would be able to handle this like we can.”
“Yeah. She’s not much for roughing it,” he agreed. “She’d need her pillows and a place to plug in her coffeepot.”
“And her makeup,” Parker added, “and her TV.”
“And her shower,” Jeremiah said.
“And her clothes dryer!”
“And about six pairs of shoes!”
“And basically the whole house!”
They’d fallen asleep that night laughing, and as Jeremiah pulled the sleeping bag up under his chin against the cold, he couldn’t remember ever feeling more completely content and comfortable.
The tent and all that expensive gear never made its way out of the attic a second time.
After watching the strained exchange between his clone and his son, Jeremiah felt the full force of regret like a weight around his neck.
“No,” he said again to Brent. “Parker treated the clone just the way he should have.”
Chapter 5
Day 2
The next morning, Brent came to the lab early, only a few minutes before the day’s viewing was scheduled to begin. Groggy and still half-asleep, Jeremiah dragged himself to the living room couch and looked at the wall just as the clone was pouring himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. The typical commotion and rush of his family’s weekday morning routine played out in front of Jeremiah and had an almost immediate effect. He could feel his own adrenaline kick in as he watched them hurrying to beat traffic and make the school bus. Diana, a blue sweater slung over one arm, was digging in her purse for Parker’s lunch money and Louie was leaning up against her knees in a futile attempt to get her attention.
“Have you checked on the car?” Diana asked the clone without looking at him. She handed Parker three crumpled dollar bills.
“I’ll call today,” he said. “It’s at the shop near my office.”
“I have to stay after school for a makeup quiz in English,” Parker said, slinging his backpack over one shoulder. “Can I get a ride?”
“I won’t be home until after four today,” Diana said. “Can you get a ride from someone else?”
“Yeah, probably. I guess so.”
Parker heaved his shoulders to settle his mammoth backpack behind him and stuck the buds of his headphones in his ears before bolting out the door and down the street to catch the bus. Diana downed the last of her coffee and struggled her sweater on.
“You’ve been taking on a lot of extra hours lately,” the clone said to her. “You worked late yesterday, too.”
“Well, there’s a big case and they need me,” she told him. “It’s mainly just a lot of research. It won’t be for too much longer. How’s your head?”