Jeremiah didn’t feel like talking. There was nothing to say. And if there were, he didn’t want to say it to her.

“It might help you to remember that your clone is grieving every bit as much as you are,” she said. Jeremiah wanted to swear at her but refrained and was silent.

“Tell me what you’re feeling, Jeremiah.”

“You know what?” he asked harshly, “Why don’t you tell me how I’m feeling. My mother is dead and I can’t even bury her. So, how do you think I’m feeling? How would you feel, Natalie, if it were your mother? She doesn’t have anyone else, you know. I’m the only one.”

“I understand you’re angry. It may help to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Mr. Higgins came to see me. He seems to feel that you might benefit from viewing the funeral,” she said. “I agree. I will suggest to Dr. Scott that he arrange it. And then maybe you can take a day or two off from the viewings after that. But soon, Jeremiah, I’d like to take the Meld with you again. It’s almost time for it, anyway, but I think it’s even more important now, under the circumstances. I can’t have you holding back your feelings from me. This is all part of the experiment, you know. I have a job to do.”

He looked away from her and clenched his fists to keep from speaking. He didn’t trust the Meld. He didn’t trust what would come out of his mind. He couldn’t risk her seeing what he knew.

Two days later he watched on the wall monitor in the laboratory apartment as his mother was laid to rest.

He recognized instantly the Church of Saint Paul in the small New Hampshire town he’d lived in for a brief time as a child, the only Catholic church in which he’d ever attended an actual service. He remembered staring up at the stained-glass windows, trying to decipher their images, making up little stories about them in his head while the priest talked in a way he couldn’t follow. Neither he nor his mother were members of this church, but she’d taken him here a few times. Although she had been raised a Catholic and had raised him with a quirky sort of spiritual foundation, they were not formal members of any particular church—or of any faith, for that matter. He’d never been baptized. She took him to churches of different denominations sporadically, for what she termed “soul visits.” Every now and then they’d just show up at a different church “to hear what they have to say.” It had made him uncomfortable as a child. He always felt conspicuous sitting in a place he didn’t belong, surrounded by people for whom the service was a sacred weekly ritual. The thought of it now, though, made him smile. She had always felt right at home, no matter where they were, so confident and comfortable. They’d been to Lutheran, Methodist, Unitarian and Latter-Day Saints. She even took him to a synagogue once, but they couldn’t understand half of what was said in the orthodox service. Afterward they tried to imitate the words and burst into fits of laughter at how badly they managed. But his mother said the sound was beautiful, even if they didn’t know what the words meant.