Brent and Jeremiah exchanged glances as the monitor went dark.

“That’s it?” Jeremiah asked. “Can’t we turn it back on? I want to see what happens.”

“No,” Brent told him. “There’s no way to do that. We’re just going to have to wait, I guess. What do you think was going to happen?”

“Well, I’d like to think she was about to explain where she was all this time. After all that and we don’t even get to see where she was?”

“Yeah, kind of a bummer,” Brent said through a yawn. “I’m exhausted. Let’s get these questions answered so we can have something to eat.”

“I’m not hungry,” Jeremiah told him.

“Oh, come on,” Brent said. “Watching them eat that pizza was torture. I’m starving. I’ll make that macaroni and cheese you said you liked.”

“I am too old to keep eating like this,” Jeremiah said. “But, yeah. I could go for that.”

“Displaced control issues” is the way Natalie Young described it during the next day’s session. Jeremiah disagreed.

“What control issues?” he asked. “I don’t have any control issues.”

“Not when you were actually in control, no, but right now, Jeremiah, you’re not really in control, are you?”

“Well, obviously,” he snapped.

“Are you feeling angry?”

“Yeah, you know what? I am feeling angry. I’m pissed off, but I think that’s pretty normal under the circumstances. I don’t think that amounts to ‘control issues’ or anything quite so dramatic as that. I get that this is in your job description and all, but everything doesn’t have to fit so neatly into your little psychobabble boxes.”

“Who are you angry with, Jeremiah? Are you angry at your wife for missing the dinner? Are you angry at the clone for not doing something about it?”

“Well, I’d just like to know what was so goddamn important she would miss the one thing she never allows anyone to skip! And she doesn’t get home until almost eleven? Where the hell was she all that time? She’s an aide in a lawyer’s office, for God’s sake. It’s a part-time job. She doesn’t do anything that crucial. And she never worked nights before. I feel like I’m out of the loop here!”

“And this frustrates you.”

“Yes, Natalie, it frustrates me!”

“Perhaps your clone discussed it with her after the monitoring was finished?”

“Well, if he did, I think I have the right to know what she said.”

“Do you feel your rights are being compromised, Jeremiah?”

“I feel like I don’t know where my wife was for half the night,” he said. “I mean, first she starts working more and never even bothers to tell me, and then she misses Thursday night and I don’t even get the satisfaction of knowing why? I want to know what’s going on.”

“Jeremiah,” she said as calmly as always, “I am not saying you’re wrong to feel this way. I am simply trying to help you to understand your feelings. That way I can help you to deal with them.”