Did she know?

Chapter 19

Day 102

On the night of their wedding anniversary, the ViMed cameras caught the clone and Diana upstairs in the midst of getting ready to go out. Diana was wearing a green top and black satin pants Jeremiah had never seen before. At the moment, she was shoeless, and the hems of the pants were getting caught under her feet as she walked back and forth between the mirror and her jewelry box. He wondered if they were going to the new restaurant in the shipyard that she had wanted to try. That he didn’t know these details annoyed him more than he thought it should.

“Did you give Parker money for a pizza?” the clone asked her.

“Yes.”

“And you checked the reservation today?”

“Honestly, Jeremiah,” she said. “It’s a Wednesday night at eight o’clock. I doubt there’s going to be any problems. Quit worrying.”

“Okay,” the clone said, “just checking.”

Jeremiah could understand the clone’s concern. They hardly went out at all anymore. He was out of practice at the art of securing a table anywhere nicer than a pizza place.

“Your wife is pretty when she wants to be,” Brent said.

“Even when she doesn’t want to be,” Jeremiah told him. She was. That much had never changed.

On the wall, the clone straightened his tie in the mirror and Jeremiah vaguely wondered whether he’d even bothered to comment on how Diana looked. He doubted it. He wouldn’t have thought of it himself if Brent hadn’t brought it up.

Diana checked her lipstick in the mirror, grabbed her purse and a black sweater and headed out to the hallway.

“I’ll meet you downstairs,” she said. “I just want to make sure Louie gets out to pee before we go.”

Ordinarily, it would have been him taking Louie out before they left. Jeremiah figured nothing had changed with the dog’s distrust of the clone, even with the medicine they were giving him.

The clone stopped at Parker’s closed door, knocked once and opened it before he went downstairs.

“We’re leaving,” he said. “We’ll be home around ten.”

“Yup,” Parker said without looking up from his computer monitor. “Have fun.”

“Is the homework done?”

“Yup.”

“Okay. Don’t forget to order that pizza before it gets too late. And keep an eye on Louie.”

“Yup, I will.”

The clone closed the door and headed downstairs and to the garage, where ViMed cameras followed him seamlessly. Jeremiah wondered for the hundredth time exactly how many cameras Scott had hidden around his house. By his best estimate, there must have been at least a dozen. His double hit the switch on the wall to raise the garage bay door and then the button on his key chain to unlock the car. Diana came into the garage holding Louie by the leash, her arm outstretched to keep him away from her clothes. The dog took a wide arc around the clone as he went to the door to be let back in. The clone glanced down at him with something Jeremiah recognized as unhappy resignation, and for the first time, he understood that Louie’s sudden aversion toward him must be hard on the clone. Jeremiah sincerely loved that dog so, presumably, the clone loved him, too. It must be awful. He’d never thought of that before.