“Before the first genetic clone of Thomas Jefferson turned thirteen, he would puzzle out the steps that had led to his conception, beginning with his mother Marissa’s debt. To creditors the bipolar and unmedicated Marissa Barton owed fifty thousand dollars; to the drug dealers of Southwest Missouri, a smaller, more pressing sum.”
“Sure you want to go out in that?” he asks from his side of the counter, and in her frustration with his slowness to hand over the keys she says only, “I’m sure.” He says, “Because it’s really coming down,” and she says, “My father is dying,” immediately sorry to have marketed as explanation this truth no one should be able to bear, not her, not this stranger whose answer comes after a pause: "I’m sorry.”
“Perry and Baby Girl were in the car they’d stolen not half an hour before.”
