“Have you eaten? I’ll make something, or I could pick something up if you want. I could probably smuggle in some more doughnuts.”

“No.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Look, I want to help.”

“You want to help? Then open the fucking door and let me out. Get me to my mother’s funeral. That’s how you can help.”

“You know I can’t do that. I wish I could. Believe me.”

“Then shut the fuck up and leave me alone. And I am not watching that fucking monitor today, either. I won’t do it.”

Brent sighed heavily and sat down on the edge of the coffee table, taking in the broken lamp and the books scattered across the floor.

“I know you’re upset,” he said. “You have every reason to be.”

“Fuck you,” Jeremiah told him quietly.

“Look, maybe we can arrange for you to at least view the funeral. That would be better than nothing, wouldn’t it? Maybe give you some closure.”

“I don’t want to watch my mother’s funeral on TV! I want to be there. It’s my mother!”

“I know, I know, but they aren’t going to let you go, Jeremiah. If it were up to me, I’d find a way. But at least this way you’d be able to see it.” It didn’t go unnoticed that Brent had attempted to distance himself from Scott and the rest of them, but Jeremiah wasn’t buying it. Not anymore.

“There’s so much I wish I’d said to her,” he admitted after a moment. He rubbed at his eyes vigorously with his hands. He stood up and walked into the kitchen. Infuriatingly, Brent followed him.

“I think it’s important that you watch the funeral,” Brent said. “I think you need to.”

“How would they do that?” he asked. “I don’t even know where it’s being held.”

“Yeah, but they certainly will. Believe me, Charles Scott keeps very close tabs on that clone. He knows where he is every minute of the day. Nothing escapes him.”

“Brent,” Jeremiah said, and then paused. He grabbed the blender and a handful of ice cubes and turned it on full blast. He couldn’t afford any other ears on what he was about to say. “What exactly did you write in your report to Scott that day we saw my mother with the clone?”

“The usual.” Brent’s voice rose over the din. “An overview of what we saw, your reactions.”

“But you wrote something about my mother not recognizing the clone, right?”

“Well, yeah. I had to.”

“And Scott saw that report?” Jeremiah hit the pulse button.

“Yeah. He sees them every day after the viewing, or the next morning.”

“And he must see the same things we see, right? I assume these viewings are recorded for him.”

“Maybe,” Brent said. “Probably. So what?”

“So, presumably, he also saw what that doctor said, that my mother didn’t have dementia, after all. The Meld showed no sign of it.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Brent looked at him sideways. Jeremiah got more ice for the blender.