“I guess he didn’t want to make those kinds of sacrifices,” he said. “He left my mother to do it on her own. So, I suppose, yeah, I’m one up on him.”

“You’ve told me she was a good mother to you.”

“She was,” he said. “She did a good job with a bad situation. But yeah, she was always a good mother. She is a good mother.”

“And what about Diana?” she asked at last. “Has she been a good mother to Parker? Has she had to make sacrifices, too?”

“Of course she has,” he said. “She was going to go to law school. She wanted to travel. We’ve both had to make sacrifices. That’s what you do.”

“What else have you sacrificed?”

“Well, for one thing, I gave up a career in journalism to work for ViMed. For God’s sake, I just had myself cloned! I’d call that a sacrifice.”

“So, you did this for your family, then?”

“In a way, I suppose so. The money they’re paying me for this will solve a lot of problems.”

“I wasn’t aware you had financial troubles.”

“We don’t. That’s not what I mean.” He tried not to raise his voice, but it was getting more difficult. It seemed like she took everything he said and turned it around to imply something else. He hated talking to her.

“What sort of problems will the money solve?”

“A lot of things. We can travel now. If Diana wants to go to Europe we can just go. We can take Parker with us as soon as he graduates. If that can make her happy, we can do it now.”

“So, she’s unhappy?”

He could feel his face getting hot. How much had Natalie Young learned from him when they took the Meld? She seemed to be dancing around the edges of Diana’s affair, trying to move him toward the topic. That was off-limits. He didn’t have the strength to discuss it with his own wife. He certainly wouldn’t drag it into this experiment. It had nothing to do with anything, as far as he was concerned. So, whether she knew about it or not, he wouldn’t discuss it with Natalie Young.

“I never said my wife is unhappy,” he told her with what he hoped was some level of finality.

“Are you happy, Jeremiah?”

“Yes,” he said flatly. “Perfectly happy.”

“Okay, then,” she said after a pensive moment. “Why don’t we leave off for now. I’ll see you in a couple of days in my office.”

“I’m counting the minutes,” he told her.

Chapter 4

Just before one o’clock that afternoon, Brent Higgins let himself into Jeremiah’s living room with an almost simultaneous knock. Jeremiah began to wonder why they’d equipped him with a door at all. Everyone seemed to waltz in exactly as they pleased.

Brent was nothing like what Jeremiah had expected. He looked to be about twenty-five years old, half the age of anyone else on the team, and was dressed casually, in jeans and sneakers. His red hair was in need of cutting and he sported a close-cropped beard, a shade darker, that was an oddly complicated thing: a sizable bare spot smack on the ball of his chin gave the impression of a pair of sideburns that had migrated down his face in an attempt to sneak away. Brent flashed an easy smile at Jeremiah and held his hand out by way of introduction.