“Bring me one with sprinkles tomorrow.”

When the monitor came on, Jeremiah and Brent saw the clone and Diana at the kitchen table. He was doing a crossword puzzle. She was drinking iced coffee and flipping through the pages of a home decorating magazine, her eyes scanning the glossy photos with quick, critical precision.

“We should do the kitchen over,” she said without looking up.

“Again?”

“That was ten years ago,” she told him, as though this would serve as both explanation and final argument.

“Diana,” the clone said, “I’ve got to figure out my mother’s situation. It’s going to cost me a lot more and they want me to move on it. Let’s get through that first.”

“There’s always something more important,” she said. She got up from the table and began loading the dishwasher, still, Jeremiah noted, without even glancing at the clone.

“Last I heard,” the clone said, turning now to fully face her back, “you were looking for a new house. We don’t need a new kitchen and a new house, do we?”

“Well, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in that, either,” she told him. “I can’t get you to even talk about it seriously. Forget it.”

“You’re never home to talk about anything seriously,” the clone told her, and Jeremiah leaned slightly forward, paying careful attention to how this would play out. He was glad to see his double taking some initiative, even where he had been unable or unwilling to do so. But the clone was not confrontational, he was tiptoeing around the real question, just like he would have done himself.

She changed the subject.

“Louie has another appointment at the vet this afternoon. They might need to adjust his medication. Do you want to take him, or should I?”

“I think you better do it,” the clone told her. “I can’t get him to go in the car with me. Not even with a treat. I think that stuff is messing with him. He’s not acting right.”

Jeremiah shot a sideways glance at Brent. Every time someone started talking about Louie he got worried that there might be questions. But Brent wasn’t typing anything into his notes. He just continued to stare at the screen. The comment had gone right over his head.

“It’s probably just the new car,” Diana said. “It smells different. Dogs can sense when something has changed. They don’t like it. I’m going to take him for a walk.” She closed the dishwasher and wiped her hands on a towel. “I’ll be back in an hour.”