“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?”

“Fine,” the clone said. “Doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“That’s good.” She rinsed her coffee mug and left it in the sink. “I’ve got to go. I’m late.”

The clone poured the last of his coffee into the sink and followed her to the door leading to the garage. Louie took a tentative step after him, but then seemed to think better of it and walked back to his dog bed in the corner of the kitchen and lay down.

“I think Louie might be sick,” the clone said. In the lab, Jeremiah cringed, hoping Brent wouldn’t pick up on all the talk about the dog.

Diana stopped and turned toward Louie with a hint of confusion on her face.

“Really?” she asked. “He seems fine to me. He ate his breakfast. Was he okay on his walk this morning?”

“He wouldn’t come on the walk with me,” the clone told her. “That’s what I mean. He just didn’t want to go. Dug his heels in. I just let him out in the yard on his own. He was acting strange last night, too.”

Diana’s brow wrinkled. “I’ll make an appointment for him later this week,” she said, and walked into the garage.

The clone followed and closed the door behind him. Another camera, situated somewhere above the garage bay doors, immediately picked him up from another angle in an almost seamless cut.

Diana got into her red Subaru and waved at the clone as she closed the door. Jeremiah saw with some unease that she hardly looked at him as she did so. He’d never noticed while he was actually there with her, but she hardly looked at him at all anymore. There’s guilt in her, he thought. The clone waved back, and Jeremiah noticed that his gaze lingered for just a moment longer than it should have. The realization that he knew exactly what was going through its mind in that moment was slightly disturbing to him. It was definitely someone at her office she was having an affair with. He had never met anyone from the law firm, knew them only from her sporadic mentions of them: four lawyers, three of them men, two other legal secretaries, one of them a much younger man, and two receptionists, both female. He should have done something. He should have confronted her. He didn’t know why he never had. It wasn’t as though he needed any more proof. He had been sure of it for a while, several months at least. And, he realized now, the clone shared that certainty. He found himself wondering if his double would somehow muster the resolve to do something other than wait and pretend. He wondered if he even could.