When Mark told you he was marrying your clone, you said “congratulations” on autopilot, because that’s what you say when your friend tells you they’re getting married, and you had promised to stay friendly after the divorce.

You studied his face, his fingers crimping the pleats of his dress pants. That judgmental twist crept onto the corner of your lips without you quite realizing it. Mark—poor Mark—was out of place in the living room you’d once shared. Sunk down into the ratty secondhand sofa you must’ve bought when, in a fit of pettiness, you’d thrown out the old one. Sitting there in his suit, his salt-and-pepper hair slicked back in the dashing way you used to like, he could tell you thought him as awkward as a child in grown-up clothes.

“It’s all right if you need some time to process it,” Mark said.

You leaned lazily back against the counter, giving him a terse smile. You were every inch Helen of Troy, his old nickname for you—imperious, lovely, beating your shock into submission. “That’s okay,” you said—then, lamely, “I thought you were going to ask for a kidney or something.”

He saw the quick flicker of your gaze toward the end of a Band-aid sticking out from under his sleeve, covering up the tail of his reef shark tattoo. A crack in your uncaring façade. A glimpse into your psyche. Your matching one undulated up the inside of your wrist, an organic curve of stippled ink. You’d gotten them on your fifth anniversary, when he’d surprised you with a trip to Australia in an attempt to revitalize the sagging skin of your marriage.

You’d seen the shark that inspired the tats while on a guided scuba dive over a once-bleached expanse of the Great Barrier Reef. Advancements in marine regenerative tech had repopulated enough polyps that the coral was making a comeback, blooms of red and orange branching up through the water. Fish wove in and out of the recuperating ecosystem.

You both pushed a burst of air through your regulators when you saw the shark, its gray back rippling with sunlight as it swept through the ocean. You told him the shark was proof of concept that, as a species, you hadn’t fucked it up as royally as you’d thought.

What a memory: The shark. The fish. The reef.

“Just like our marriage,” he’d joked later in the cabana. “Coming back to life.”

That’s the kind of story you’d think his fiancée might be jealous of, though you wouldn’t know he’s already told her. Already bared your shared stories, your flaws, all to assuage her lingering doubts. He’s an honest man; honesty is attractive. You must’ve known that, once.

The Band-aid is a reminder. He already has an appointment to remove the tattoo next week, long before the wedding.

---

You sold the rights for your cloning the week after you were legally emancipated, freshly sixteen and flat broke. Just like you had done your research for the emancipation—found the forms, collected the evidence of neglect and verbal abuse, submitted the appropriate documentation to the courts—you had already identified the best site to put your genetic material up for sale.

It was called Angels in Advance. Profiles of people marched past, all ages—flattering pictures. (Some were tagged with yellow warning banners that the site generated when it suspected AI airbrushing, its detection software picking up signs of augmentation imperceptible to the human eye. To avoid liability for misleading images, Angels in Advance made it clear its visitors were responsible for verifying the accuracy of posted pictures before completing a purchase.) The profiles were accompanied by college admissions test scores, zodiac signs, favorite breakfast foods—whatever miscellanea people thought would get their picture chosen by discerning (and, hopefully, rich) future parents.

There used to be sites like AIA for buying eggs or sperm. This egg comes from a basketball star; this sperm is sourced from a Pulitzer finalist. Those sites were still popular with some—but they were also a risk. You didn’t know exactly what you were getting. The clay could fire in any form.

Angels in Advance gave you the pot, premade. You knew exactly what kind of kid you were getting.

Years later, when you were explaining all this to Mark, you told him it was your best shot. You knew you were pretty, on the good days when acne didn’t prickle your hairline; you were moderately athletic (after-school sports practices kept you out of the house); and, most importantly, you were smart. Perfect scores on the precollege tests you’d taken, and you were barely a junior.

You uploaded your scores and polished your profile on the site long before you turned sixteen. You’d taken your picture on your best friend Ronit’s phone against a blank school library wall, tucked among moldering editions of history textbooks and out-of-date science tomes. You captioned the photo simply, no last name as per Angels in Advance requirements: Helen. As soon as you aged into eligibility, you clicked the button to submit.

Your first offer came two days later.

You didn’t take it, as much as your fingers itched for the cash. You only had one shot at this—legally speaking, you could sell the rights to yourself just once every two decades, an attempt to address concerns about overcloning and create generational distance. The offer was good, but you thought, if you left the profile up just a bit longer, you could do better. You were so sharp, even then, even young.

It was hard to wait. You were living in Ronit’s house, and while you liked her parents, you couldn’t shake the fear that they’d wake up one morning, decide they’d expended their stores of compassion for the foreseeable future, and shove you out the door.

Your third morning on the site, you woke up to three offers and an increased bid from the first couple. One of those offers, pending a brief interview, would put you through an associate’s degree if Ronit’s parents stayed kind, or get you a place to stay to ride out high school if they didn’t.

You didn’t press your luck. Just clicked Accept and signed yourself away.

---

Mark is the kind of man who laughs with abandon, who remembers the waiter’s name and tips generously, who goes to therapy once a year like some people check the brakes on their cars: just to make sure the machinery’s still running smoothly. He’s clean-cut and organized. His parents are supportive. He’s a catch.

You didn’t know these things about him when he first moved to your city. You’d talked yourself out of the associate’s degree before high school graduation, pragmatism trumping college dreams, and taken an apprenticeship as an electrician with a program specializing in bot tech. You were progressing well, nearing the end of your training. You liked unravelling tricky problems the best, diagnosing a malfunctioning bot like a doctor might a patient.

Kamal, one of your closest friends in the program, had an older sister who’d gone to college with Mark. When Mark moved to the area, that friend-of-a-friend connection was enough for him to end up as one of the few unfamiliar faces that sometimes cycled through your intermittent get-togethers. You barely noticed him at that first barbecue, one more forgettable laughing boy, his gaze light on yours as he offered to flip burgers.

But he noticed you. He watched you watching people, attentive, alert, interjecting with a well-timed joke or sardonic comment. You worked your way through the party like it was a test you could ace.

There were a few more events, ones you skipped or he did, where the skeins of your lives could’ve tangled but didn’t. He got your number off Kamal and made first contact. Asked you out for drinks.

You showed up to the rooftop bar before he did, and when he caught your eye from across the space, you were wiping sweaty palms on the fabric of your floral dress. Poking out from beneath it was a thick black walking boot.

“Sorry I’m late. Parking,” Mark said. He gestured to your cast. “Love the choice of footwear for the evening.”

You forced a laugh, or he drew a genuine one out—maybe something in between. “Right? Accident with a bot. Ungrateful hunk of metal broke my foot.”

“And here I thought you were just fashion forward.”

You wiggled your toes from out the end of the boot. “Not the best impression for a first date?”

“On the contrary.” Mark snagged a menu off an abandoned table. “I’m duly impressed by your toe mobility.”

Your next laugh was unburdened. Fully real.

He’d liked you before then, but that laugh caught his heart and kept it. You, though. You’d been on a slew of first dates in your life. You’d calculated carefully the masks that would carry you untouched through each one. You knew better than to trust a smooth repartee, a dashing face. You were the kind of paradoxical woman who, yearning for love, built seawalls to keep it out.

But Mark was persistent. An ebb and flow of gentle affection, from your first date to the second, third, fourth, until you stopped counting. Until he’d eroded away those walls. Until you finally let him in.

---

When Mark asked you to marry him, three years after his slow slide into courtship, you sat down on the grass in the middle of the park and started to cry. You could barely snuffle through the tears into a yes.

“You have to promise,” you finally got yourself to say, smiling, snot dribbling out of your nose. “You have to promise. This is it.”

A joyful response, and the bitter aftertaste of your manipulation. You probably didn’t mean it that way. You had been on your own for so long; it only makes sense that you’d cling to the first person to want you like you wanted them. A burr in a sock, a claw snagging fabric, a child refusing to let go. Still.

“Of course, baby,” Mark said, so happy it was spilling out his edges. He took your bait; couldn’t help it. He knelt next to you, knees crumpling the grass, and slipped the ring onto your finger, wiping your tears away. “Of course, I promise. That’s why they call them vows, isn’t it? This is it, Helen. ’Til death do us part.”

---

Your wedding: A ceremony. Rings, vows, Kamal giving a speech. You loved Mark’s parents almost as much as the thought of fitting neatly, seamlessly into their family, a family of your own. It helped ease the burn of an audience bereft of your own relatives.

Your wedding: A fete. Reception, dancing, a honeymoon suite. You didn’t insist, but you gave him one of your looks, and he made the reservation without a thought to your budget. His parents’ budget.

Mark didn’t know what he was signing up for.

Your wedding: not worth lingering on.

---

You have always been a fanatic for the details—your nature, not nurture. When you and Mark were first dating, you prodded him for the intricacies of his relationships before you. He’d had a few, one stretching for a year before the boyfriend had a crisis and left polite society to join a zero-carbon commune.

You wheedled your way into descriptions of his first dates: those aborted starts, late-night conversations, the ways his exes had acted around him. Perhaps you wanted to see what had caused those potential futures to fizzle; more likely, you wanted him to calm your fears, pick at the facets and failures of those people for you, prove that they’d never been meant for him.

Perhaps it’s unkind to say that you were insecure or therapizing to presume it was the dregs of your childhood tainting the taste of new love. But you’d admit it to yourself. You were fiercely independent in every other part of your life, from your finances to the bots to the aikido you’d picked up when you were nineteen.

Mark was the only one who’d earned your reliance. He’d been admitted into your inner sanctum. Your vulnerability was a gift.

Cute in the early days. Just a part of the relationship during the engagement, the wedding, something he had come to accept: constant messages, calls, reassurances. Your anxiety bled through the marriage.

And slowly, slowly, it began to grate.

Mark—so kind, so open, so willing to learn—realized that he did not understand you.

It came slowly, like the love had to you. He worked in ad targeting—he liked to think he could tell what would reach a person, any person. But your small traumas, those he had long learned to work around and those that would arise unexpectedly, created a minefield of a marriage. He hadn’t minded, once, when he hadn’t yet become accustomed to your intelligence, to your flashes of laughter. When they hadn’t lost their shine.

Mark, who never worried what he’d do if there was suddenly no roof over his head. Mark, whose parents showered him with love, a net beneath the tightrope of his career if ever he should fall. Mark, who never had to sell his genome for the price of a better life.

The blame for the failure of your marriage can be shared. It was Mark who drew back, didn’t bring up habits of yours that had begun to chafe. He threw money and time at the problem instead of words, lavish vacations and long weekends paired with meaningless chatter.

Once or twice—maybe more—you asked him if something was wrong.

“It feels like . . . ” You picked at the wilting salad on your plate, pushing a few dreary leaves to the side—or possibly it was salmon, your favorite, already half-eaten. “Like we’re just missing each other, somehow. Not on the same page. Do you feel that?”

“No,” Mark said on instinct—and then, it would’ve been awkward to retract such a denial. He munched down on his burger instead. Too greasy, melted American cheese dripping morosely off the edges. He chewed, thinking of all the ways he could tell you things needed to change, but when he swallowed, what came out instead was: “Nothing’s wrong, Helen. Let’s get a takeout box. We’re going to miss the tour bus.”

These were difficult topics to broach. Forgive him; he didn’t know how.

---

You’d think you’d have wondered about your clone more often.

You didn’t. You knew, vaguely, that she was somewhere out there in the city—a big enough city that Angels in Advance didn’t exclude intracity matches. AIA had a strict no-contact policy, part of the extensive legal document you’d signed when you accepted your offer. A clone might reach out to their genetic donor once they reached the age of majority, but the reverse was strictly prohibited.

You didn’t care. Those sold stem cells were faint in your memory, your clone an exercise in the abstract. You’d needed money. The clone had been a way—much less invasive than donating half your liver or going to the plasma banks every few weekends—to procure it.

Somewhere in the city was another you, a different you, a younger you, but you knew your lives would never overlap.

---

Mark expected you to cry when he served you the divorce papers, or to ask him to wait just a little longer, or to beg him to reconsider.

Instead, you paged through the paperwork on your tablet with hands as sure and callused as one might expect from a master electrician. You allowed the tablet camera to scan your face, verifying your identity, as you reached the end of the document.

“Helen—” he said, but you just clicked Accept and signed your marriage away.

You turned to him. Your eyes were glistening, enough to notice, but that was the only sign it affected you. “It’s okay, Mark,” you said. “I think we both knew this was coming.” You spun your wedding ring with your thumb, the way you always did when you lied, then caught yourself. You pulled it off and set it gently on the tablet screen, on the counter.

(It’s a beautiful ring—his great-grandmother’s, pricked with authentic mined diamonds. Two delicate sapphires buttressing the larger gems. Gold. A perfect fit.)

“I’m sorry.” He scratched at the nape of his neck, made suddenly awkward by your compliance. “I . . . look, you . . . ”

“You don’t have to explain.” You smiled, a shield. “Let’s be cordial, if we can?”

“I’d like to stay friends,” he said, tentatively. “I’ll miss you.”

“Sure, sure.”

He could tell. Something had snapped; something had shifted.

You had your inner sanctum, and he was no longer a part of it.

---

It was about six months later that he downloaded one of those cheesy personality-match dating apps. He filled out the adaptive questionnaire and waited until the AI engine had sorted through all the other app users. It spat out a selection of ten profiles for his perusal.

He stared at profile number six, a sense of déjà vu washing over him. The woman in the picture was smiling, mouth open, one arm flung around a cropped-out friend. He could hear her laugh.

The picture read Elaine. The app informed him that they were ninety-seven percent compatible.

He reached out, expecting nothing. At first, he was going to bring up the coincidence—something to laugh about, a crazy story to tell. He wasn’t really thinking of another relationship. He didn’t want another you.

It’s just that, once he’d messaged the woman on the app, once they met, once he knew exactly what to say to spark chemistry between them . . .

Your ex-husband changed his mind.

---

Your clone is an adult, a recent graduate, doing very well for herself. After Mark told you about the engagement, you must’ve felt the wounds of that old relationship fresh again. He has moved on; you have not. You must’ve pulled out a tablet and searched up his social media, found her tagged, followed the breadcrumbs to her accounts. You must’ve found pictures of her partying with friends, pressing a kiss to his cheek, working from a favorite café for the remote internship she snagged fresh out of college.

Oh, Helen, you must’ve done all this, because you show up to that café two weeks later, the laurel of silver bells on the door handle jingling as you push it open, and I see you before you see me.

I freeze, my laptop flipped open in front of me to one of the boring articles all the interns have to edit before they let us get to the good stuff. You lift your chin to the smell of coffee, brushing back a strand of hair. I’ve seen pictures, some low-key cyberstalking of my own once Mark told me about you, but it’s nothing compared to you in person.

I’m not you. Am you. Your clone, your shadow, your genetic echo. You are me in another life. We are each other’s alternate universe.

You turn away from the door, late-spring rain beading your hair, and catch my eye.

The differences between us span sixteen years, but I can summarize them in a few words. Crow’s feet at the corners of your eyes. Lipstick, pixie cut, outfit, all as severe and unassailable as your bearing. Sharp eyes, intelligent eyes, my eyes. Helen of Troy, I think, Mark’s nickname for you coming easily.

I swallow, reminding myself of all the flaws we don’t share: your insecurity, your trauma, your age. I am the best of you, and I straighten as you approach, laying my hand on the café table so the ring is clearly visible. Diamonds, sapphires, gold. A perfect fit.

I expect an attack.

Instead, you smile. There’s a gap between your front teeth—one I used to have, before middle school braces took care of it. “Hi,” you say. “Elaine? Mind if I sit down?”

I gesture toward the empty chair at the other side of my table, keeping my laptop up. “Please.” I don’t like the way you carry yourself, that easy confidence. It wars with the way Mark has described you, the twitches in your countenance, fault lines of your flaws.

“You’re betrothed to Mark Brandt, is that right? It’s nice to meet you. I’m Helen. Though I think you already knew that.”

“Mark told me.”

“I thought he might’ve.” You lean back, crossing your legs. “He would’ve told me, if I’d asked. And of course I would’ve asked.”

A few words, laying me bare. Of course I would’ve asked, mirroring the way that I did, that I have. All those late nights with Mark, when I pushed to know more about you—the two of you. Even those questions that salted my own jealous wounds: your first date, your wedding, your honeymoon. I still asked, and Mark answered. Some details supplied by him, others by my imagination, coalescing to shape your story.

I know every intricacy of you.

“You’re not allowed to contact me,” I say. “I’m your—” clone cloys in my mouth.

“You’re certainly old enough,” you say. “And as far as I’m aware, this is a strange coincidence. I haven’t messaged you or harassed you.” You shrug. “I’m just . . . here. I want to talk. Is that so bad?”

“You want to talk about Mark.”

“No,” you say, “I want to talk about you. Elaine.” You rummage in your purse for a moment and pull out two flavored chocolates wrapped in green foil—my favorite kind of mint. You offer me one.

“No thanks. I don’t take candy from strangers.”

You unwrap both and pop them in your mouth. “I never forgot you, you know. I thought about you all the time. Wondered where you were, what you were doing. Who you were becoming.”

“I don’t believe you.” I should’ve known you’d start this conversation off with a lie. “Mark told me you never brought me up. Not once, except at the very beginning, when you told him I existed.”

“I didn’t tell Mark everything I thought, all of the time.” You crinkle up the candy foil into a glinting ball and set it on the table. “It was a sensitive subject, for me. I didn’t have another choice when I sold my . . . when I sold the rights to AIA. But knowing you were somewhere out there felt like . . . like a book I’d begun but never finished. A loose thread.” Your gaze darts up to mine, and for the first time, I see hesitation in it. Concern. “I never dreamed he’d reach out to you.”

I have a moment, there in the café, sitting across from a version of myself in sixteen years, where certainty coalesces.

Without quite realizing it, I’ve been mirroring your body language. Picking up the cues in the rhythm of your breathing, the movement of your fingers, the way you offered me the mints and the way you ate them yourself. Our lives, our experiences, may have split us in twain, but I can read you as easily as myself.

You are telling the truth.

I close my laptop.

“I thought about you, too.” My hands, on the table, are quivering, just slightly. I still them. “You’re not on any of the socials. I looked.”

“No, I’m not. I . . . the situation with my biological parents was complicated. That was one of the reasons I wondered. I wanted to know if you were—”

“Loved?” we say, a harmony of two.

I draw my coffee mug toward me and wrap my hands around it, even though it’s empty—to steady myself, I suppose. I’m embarrassed, for a moment, at the untidiness of my small café table; a few napkins lie haphazardly strewn by half a lox bagel, uneaten on its plate. I reach out and straighten them with one hand. “I’m sorry.” I laugh—you can probably tell it’s fake. “It’s not fair, I guess. You not knowing me. Me knowing you.”

“You knowing about me,” you correct. Through Mark lingers unsaid.

“Is there a difference?”

“Hmm.” You reach out and tap the edge of my plate, indicating the lox bagel. “Salmon?”

“Yeah,” I say, emboldened. “Our favorite.”

You crinkle your nose, the way I do when I’m about to contradict someone. “Your favorite, maybe. I got food poisoning from expired salmon once. Put me off it ever since.” You give the plate a little push toward me and lean back. “You’re right, though, that I don’t know you at all. I never even met your parents in person—we just had a short video call through AIA.”

“Well, my mom and dad are still together,” I say. “They didn’t talk about you at all when I was growing up. But that’s not weird. I have an older brother, also from AIA, and they paid the same for his genetics as mine because they didn’t want either of us to feel different. More or less wanted. Anyways, they didn’t tell him anything, either. About his . . . um . . . original.” The corner of your mouth twitches up.

“I don’t blame them,” I hasten to add. “They just wanted us to know they considered themselves our parents, full stop. And yeah, to answer your question, I was loved. I am loved.”

“Good,” you say, smiling. A real smile. “I’m glad.”

I don’t know if I should tell you more. About how Mom and Dad fell in love at the tennis court and still go out and play sometimes, even though he’s having trouble with his hip and her knees aren’t what they used to be. How my older brother David is in law school, and I’m trying to make it as a journalist, and my dad doesn’t get it, but he still buys me annual magazine subscriptions for my birthday. How my mom reads my freelance articles and brainstorms with me when I’m feeling stuck.

Did you want this for me? Any of it?

I fiddle with the corner of a napkin. “I don’t . . . I’m sorry. If this isn’t what you want to hear.” You’re probably comparing your family to mine even now. I’m probably opening old wounds.

“No,” you say, sweeping out a hand—an inviting gesture. “Please. Tell me who you are, Elaine.”

“Oh. Um. Okay.” My breath flutters in my chest. For some reason, I feel the need to impress you. “I don’t know where to start. One of my friends likes to do wallet tours, where you share stories about all the stuff in your purse or your wallet—a way to get to know someone. Or, I mean, I could tell you about my scars.” I point to the thin line where my hair parts differently, the ghost of an old injury weaving from my temple along my scalp. “I got this one when I was six, from falling down the stairs. Busted my head open. Bled a ton. Mom rode with me in the ambulance.”

You cock your head, listening, absorbing. I hurtle onward. I’m trying not to think, just letting myself spill out.

“Or I could talk about tennis. It was a huge part of my life for a long time—I played tennis just like my parents in high school, placed second in state my junior year, kept going through college until I strained my LCL on senior night. I did all that and kept my grades up, too, though you could’ve guessed that. We’re both sharp, aren’t we, Helen? I’d say I get that from you, but maybe we both get it from your parents—your bio parents, that is.” I almost expect this to be a misstep, but your expression doesn’t change. Are your distant parents now a distant era of your life?

I realize I’m trying to work my way to the point—the person—that links us. You and me. So next: “Or I could tell you about my exes. My first crush in high school—I was her witness in Mock Trial. It was an unrequited thing. She was nice about it, and eventually the feelings faded. And then the guy I dated from junior year until we left for college, and we tried long-distance for the first semester, but it petered out.” That ex had written a breakup song about me—he’d called the end of our relationship “The last sputter of charge in a dead battery.” I hated that the lyric was kind of accurate. “Anyways, it was flings for a long time until Mark.”

Your expression catches on hurt, despite how quickly you try to hide it, and I hold fast to my course of honesty. I feel like I’m running downhill, too much momentum to stop. “And at first, Helen, with Mark, I thought he was a loser. My friends did, too. He’s old for me. I know that. But he was . . . charming, on the app, and I let him talk me into a date. There was chemistry. You’d know.

“I was still going to ghost him, until he messaged that he had a confession to make. And he told me about you.”

I look down at my laptop and swallow, smoothing a hand over its silver surface. “I’ve never said this part out loud before. But . . . I didn’t say yes to seeing him again because of him. I said it because of you. I . . . wanted to know. And the more he told me, the more I learned about you, the more I got it. Why he loved you. Why he could love me.”

“You’re the better version,” you say, soft. “You’re me without baggage.”

“We all have baggage,” I say. “I think he’s just more comfortable with mine.”

You laugh at that, surprising both of us—and, after a moment, I laugh alongside you. Twin voices, interwoven.

“I imagined this moment,” I admit. “Meeting you. It’s why I never reached out. I thought . . . I thought it’d be like a dog looking at its reflection. That we’d be too similar, and it would scare me, and I’d spend the whole time barking at you, and you’d never forgive me.”

You smile, crow’s feet at the corners of your eyes crinkling. “Are you done barking?”

You are a mystery resolved. Mists dispersing. You’re not some mythical figure, imposing your will on my destiny. If you ever had that power, it was only insofar as I gave it to you. Helen of Troy, looming large in my imagination. An image bolstered by Mark—undercut by him, too, as he magnified the ways you fell short.

The small, comfortable noises of the café eddy around us. You run a hand through your hair, tucking a stray strand behind your ear—not one of my mannerisms, like some of your others. Helen, I think, trying to recategorize you in my head—to overlay this version of you atop Mark’s. You’re similar enough to understand me; different enough to be your own self, and leave me mine.

“I’m done barking,” I say. “I . . . I have a lot to think about. But thank you. For coming, I mean. And listening.”

You reach out to lay your hand across mine. A strange mirroring, the first time we’ve touched. Your palm is callused just like I imagined, and your skin is more wrinkled than mine, but the size, the shape of the fingers, the nails? A perfect match.

Our eyes meet. “Thank you, Elaine,” you say, and you squeeze my hand once, lightly, before drawing back. Do I imagine it, or do you hesitate before letting go? “It was good to hear your story.”

---

In the weeks after meeting you, I notice a change.

I start leaving Mark’s messages unread for hours, then days. I shirk wedding planning. I dodge his affections, ducking under his chin when he tries to kiss me. I don’t know how to tell him it doesn’t feel right anymore; that whatever was between us has dissolved like cotton candy on my tongue.

He doesn’t confront me. I knew he wouldn’t—after all, it took him years to work himself up to the divorce—so it’s up to me to ask him to meet me at Giovanni’s. A public place, a restaurant with no memories of first dates or proposals: neutral ground.

“I’m sorry, Mark,” I say at the end of the meal, and I give him back his great-grandmother’s ring. Diamonds, sapphires, gold. It’s started to feel a little tight.

“Elaine—”

“It’s okay, Mark,” I say. “I think we both knew this was coming.”

I haven’t talked to you since the café. But I think I get it now. Mark—charming, honest, handsome Mark—was my connection to you. I convinced myself it was more than that. As long as you were an enigma, I was drawn to Mark and his stories of you. As if I could know myself through them, get a glimpse at my own potential downfall, my strengths, my joys. A spell wound up in the mantra: Helen of Troy.

Meeting you broke that spell.

This story isn’t about Mark.

It never was.

---

Here’s how I picture it, Helen:

You’re working hard on a bot when your tablet chimes. You get to your feet, wincing—your back is starting to ache. You really should stretch more. You lift the tablet and look down at a message routed through the Angels in Advance contact service.

Your clone is inviting you to connect! It’s an official invitation; just by offering, I’ve freed you from your last contractual obligations to AIA. You can accept or deny my request—even block me. You don’t have to say yes. Maybe you sated your curiosity when you confirmed for yourself that I had a good childhood, have a good family.

In making first contact, I’ve offered not an olive branch—there is no enmity between us—but an open hand.

I’ve been wondering if there’s another reason you thought about me in the years since the donation. If you tried to convince yourself not to hope for me to reach out, because alongside that hope would come another. For a long time, my existence was the closest thing to family you had in the world.

I don’t think you’d put that onto me. You wouldn’t expect that the bonds between us mean more than double helices and your face reflected in mine. But what happened in that café left the door open to curiosity. To possibility.

Here’s how I picture it, Helen: Your finger hovers over your tablet. You shift on your feet; your old broken bone twinges. You make your choice.

You click Deny, and that’s it. You have your closure. I become a story for Ronit or Kamal or whatever other friends of yours Mark never told me about.

Or you click Accept, one more time, and sign yourself up for some kind of beginning.