“You take care of him,” she said. “I’ll get this one in the car and then I’m leaving.”

“Did it work?” Jeremiah asked. “Is it all done?”

She shook her head slightly. “I hope so. I did my best. But you should both be prepared for some overlap in memory. Some gaps. You’ll just have to work with it.”

She started slowly down the stairs with her burden and turned when Jeremiah spoke again.

“Natalie. You should know that I have evidence about all of this. I plan to turn it in. If I were you, I’d get far away before this all comes out. You may still have a chance.”

She nodded.

“Good luck, Jeremiah,” she said. “Both of you.”

Jeremiah and his clone went into the bedroom where they found Parker’s clone limp in a chair, his head lolling uncomfortably to one side. Together, they lifted him up and laid him carefully onto the bed, each of them pulling off one shoe and positioning a leg.

They stood there, sharing a long, silent exchange, and Jeremiah held out his hand to his double. It felt strange to shake his hand, but appropriate somehow.

“I don’t know if I can leave you out of this when the truth comes out,” he said. “I can try, but you need to be prepared for it. People may come looking for you.”

“If everything you’ve told me is true, then they’ll have no reason to believe I’m not who I say I am. And you won’t be here to dispute it. Where will you go now?”

“I don’t know. A fresh start. Somewhere new.”

Jeremiah started out of the room, leaving his clone to pick up the pieces of the shattered life he was walking away from. He turned back then, a final question occurring to him.

“Will you ever tell him?” He nodded toward Parker’s clone on the bed.

The clone hesitated for a moment and then looked back at the boy with a thoughtful expression.

“No,” he said finally. “I don’t think I will. I really don’t see the point.”

At the car, Parker was in the back seat now, looking slightly dazed. His head leaned heavily against the window and Louie’s head lay contentedly in the boy’s lap. Jeremiah breathed a sigh of real relief at the sight.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Let’s just go, Dad. I’m okay.”

Jeremiah nodded, turned the key and adjusted the rearview mirror. Before he drove away toward a future that held as much hope now as it did uncertainty, he took a moment to peer into his own eyes. It seemed to him that it was the first time he ever really understood what he was looking at; all at once, he saw the man he’d been, the man he had become and, more importantly, the man he was going to be. He actually smiled.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Acknowledgments

Writing a novel is a task done mainly all alone. Bringing it from a wisp of an idea to a solid thing you can hold in your hand, however, takes a small army. There are many I have to thank: