The Mirror Man, стр. 83
She pursed her lips and said nothing.
“You know what, though?” He moved closer to her but remained standing, enjoying the feeling of looking down on her. “I’m glad you’re here. I think maybe we could use some closure. But not the kind you’re thinking of. There are things you need to hear.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “I’m listening.”
“Do you even realize there’s blood on your hands?”
“Jeremiah...”
“My mother? My wife? Their deaths are on you, Natalie! You, and that godforsaken Meld.”
He saw her swallow hard and avert her gaze for a moment, but he moved himself back into her line of vision and continued. She would face this.
“The things you thought you saw when we took that drug, that wasn’t the truth, was it? They never knew anything. They never knew.”
“I know that now,” she said. “Meld isn’t perfect. Perceptions can be imprecise. But I had to report what I thought I saw. Even unfocused, vague implications had to be reported.” She looked at him with a pleading expression that sat uncomfortably on her face. “You have to believe me, Jeremiah. I had no idea they would... I didn’t know what they’d do.”
He was quiet for a moment and turned away from her. “Meld should be banned,” he said, and then turned back to her to get his next point across. “That drug is dangerous. Maybe people were never meant to peer into each other’s minds and make assumptions. Maybe we were never meant to see into our own minds that way, to see that kind of ugliness. Meld crosses a line we should never have crossed. It’s dangerous, Natalie. You need to know that.”
“I know I saw something,” she said, flustered. “I’m sure I saw something when we took the drug. Someone knew something. I’m certain of it.”
“Maybe you did,” he said. “But it wasn’t them. They were innocent.”
The tears that wet her cheeks surprised him for a moment but didn’t soften him.
“If I could take it back,” she said, “I would. I wish I could make it right somehow. All I can do is tell you I’m sorry. I know that’s not enough.”
“No,” he told her. “It’s not.”
He left her there and went into the kitchen without another word. A minute later he heard her get up and walk out the door.
Charles Scott came in before nine the next morning, exactly on schedule, with a suit and tie on a hanger. “I thought it best,” he said, “if your son sees you dressed for work as he would expect. Best not to make this any more confusing for him than it already is.”
Jeremiah had hardly slept the night before and had already been up for hours. He had no idea what he was going to say to Parker once he saw him. How could he explain this? How would he make Parker believe any of it? Jeremiah went to change and shave in the bathroom. Scott paced nervously back and forth, grappling, Jeremiah assumed, with his own issues of making this work.
Jeremiah scanned his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He looked more or less exactly as he had six months before, exactly as his clone looked when he’d left for work that morning, down to the same bandaged left hand. It felt odd to look so much like his old self and feel like someone completely different. He never could have imagined, when all of this began, that so much could change in a matter of months. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. Breaking out of the lab, confronting the clone, cutting off his finger—all of it felt easy compared to the prospect of facing his own son.
Scott knocked on the bathroom door. “Let’s go,” he said. “The car is waiting.”
They had secured an exact replica of Jeremiah’s car, right down to the coffee stains on the front carpet and the dent on the bumper. He’d be picking Parker up in that. Scott would follow close behind. “Just to be safe,” Scott said, which Jeremiah understood to be a precaution against any sudden decision he might make to flee. He had no such plans, though. They were holding his money, just as he was holding on to the package. They’d agreed to make the swap at the last possible moment. “Just to be safe,” Jeremiah had said.
Since he’d last been to Parker’s high school, a locked-door policy had been implemented. Jeremiah had to press an intercom button and tell a receptionist his business there before the door would be unlocked.
“Jeremiah Adams,” he said into the speaker. “I’m here to pick up my son. He has a doctor’s appointment.” The door buzzed open and he went inside and through to the front office.
Waiting by the front desk, Jeremiah was preoccupied with trying to act normal. He didn’t know why. He’d never seen this receptionist before. She didn’t know who he was. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d somehow give something away, ruin everything in the final moment. He stood there imagining an intricate scenario that involved her pressing some secret button under her desk and alerting the police that there was an imposter posing as a parent.
When Parker walked into the office, Jeremiah almost didn’t recognize him. The height he’d noticed the day before was more jarring up close. Parker was nearly as tall as he was now. He was dressed in torn jeans, a flannel shirt open over a light blue T-shirt and the ever-present earbuds around his neck. His reddish hair had grown shaggy, and Jeremiah noticed, maybe for the first time, that it was the exact same shade as Diana’s hair had been. To his dismay, there was the first hint of a mustache over Parker’s lip. He tried not to stare, but it wasn’t easy. Parker shrugged his shoulders and looked at Jeremiah with some agitation.
“What’s going on?” he asked sullenly. “I don’t have a doctor’s appointment today.”
“Yeah, it’s just