Jeremiah remembered. She had been given the coat some years before, a gift from one of many admirers in her younger days. She loved it at first, and wore it everywhere, always commenting on how warm it was and how it was no wonder rabbits could stay outdoors all winter. She used to invite total strangers to run their hands over it. He didn’t know when, exactly, she had a change of heart about it, but knowing her, it likely involved a wild rabbit spied outside the kitchen window. When he was sixteen, she made a very big deal about needing some sort of atonement for the transgression of owning a coat made from another creature’s skin. She included Jeremiah in that endeavor, too, likely seeing an opportunity to instill something noble in her son.

She spent a great deal of time deciding how best to get rid of the now-offensive garment. In typical fashion, she wanted something symbolic and meaningful. At first, she looked into donating it to a homeless shelter, but quickly decided it wouldn’t do to simply pass the sin on to some other poor, unsuspecting soul. She spoke briefly to animal rights’ organizations, but they were too quick to chastise her for having the thing in the first place. Finally, she found a hippie priest woman or something, who presided over a complicated ritual that involved burning and burying the coat in an effort to return it to some animal spirit realm. He could still remember the smell and the oily black smoke rising up from the backyard. There was also chanting involved, he seemed to recall. Afterward, she wrote a sizable check to a local animal shelter and began leaving carrot sticks out in the garden in neat little piles—something she still did to this very day, even at the assisted living home.

On the monitor, his mother stopped and turned to look at the clone. Something in her expression looked lost for a minute, as though she might be remembering the exact same story, and then her lips straightened with a firm resolution.

“I know that,” she said, and then repeated it as though to convince herself. “I know that.”

“Why do you need a coat, anyway?” the clone asked, an uneasy smile curling the corners of his mouth.

“Well, I can’t very well go to the party without a coat,” she said. “It’s the middle of winter.”

“First of all, it’s April, Mom,” the clone said. “And what party? There isn’t a party.”

“Of course there’s a party. There’s always a party on Christmas Eve. Don’t be silly.”

“It’s April,” the clone told her again, quietly this time. “It’s not Christmas Eve, Mom.”

In the lab, Jeremiah put a hand to his forehead and said nothing. Brent shot him a concerned glance and then turned his attention back to the monitor.

“It’s April?” his mother asked. “It’s not. Are you sure it’s April?”

“I’m sure,” the clone told her. “Why don’t you come and sit down for a while, Mom. Or maybe we could go to the dining room and get something to eat. Have you had dinner?”