"Right," Bella mutters. "Because that would be silly." It slips out before she can think better of it, and she doesn't much care.

He believes it. He's not lying, not on purpose. That much she can see for herself. And he's careful about information the way she is, working from fact to theory instead of the other way around like so many people do even when they think they're being careful.

Two days ago he said clone. Now he's saying ghost, or something like a ghost.

Renée believes in ghosts. Bella did when she was little, in the way children follow their parents' beliefs when they still think their parents must surely have created the world. She concluded some years later that the belief was erroneous. The scientific explanations rest on evidence of how the senses and the mind can be tricked. It's all very simple, she told Renée, once you get into the logic of it. Renée had laughed, not unkindly, and had not been swayed. Bella ascribed it to the passionately rose-colored way Renée views the world, something about her mother she would not change even if she could, and left it at that.

Now, looking at one of the most logical people she has ever met, she's a little less certain that Renée is wrong.