Free Mania by J. R. Johansson Page A

of his hands in frustration when he finally smiled and said, “There. I found it.”
    Standing, I came around the table. He showed me one corner of the wallet where the stitching didn’t quite match the rest of it.
    â€œI never would have seen that … ” The stitches were nearly identical. You almost had to be looking for the mismatch, or know what to look for. “How?”
    Jack gave me a tight smile. “It’s nothing. Just a trick Dad taught me a long time ago.”
    I waited as hope filled me like a giant bubble too hard to swallow or breathe around, but Jack didn’t go on. After a second, he turned back to the wallet and started picking at the stitching again.
    I pushed aside the pain of knowing just how much better this near-stranger knew our dad than I did. Clapping him on the back, only slightly harder than necessary, I grabbed him some scissors out of a drawer in the kitchen. As Jack carefully unstitched the mismatched section, Finn asked if anyone else wanted food. I didn’t respond, but Finn never really needed a consensus when it came to the prospect of food. A few beeps later, I heard the sound of popcorn popping.
    â€œJack?” I asked, forcing my voice not to sound tentative even though this felt like the millionth time I’d made this request. Finn stood silently behind me, and I could feel his support even though he didn’t move or say a word. “I have to know more … ”
    Jack kept picking at the stitches and for a second I wondered if he hadn’t heard, or didn’t understand what I meant.
    â€œMore about him—”
    â€œ I know. You’re going to have to keep waiting, Parker. This still isn’t the time.” Jack’s voice was sharp enough to slice without the aid of the scissors in his hands. He looked up at my eyes and then literally ducked away, turning his back on me. His voice was softer when he went on, but he’d already inflicted enough pain to leave me reeling. “I’m just not … there’s a lot going on. You have to learn to be patient.”
    It wasn’t the first time since I’d become one with Darkness again that I wished I still had the power to unleash my double at will. His anger was still my anger. And now I had a massive dose of hurt, frustration, guilt, and embarrassment to go with it. Was it wrong for me to want to know my dad? He was dead—I would never have the chance that Jack did. We were flip sides of the same coin, different choices one man had made in his life that now collided and kept ricocheting off one another. With each impact we only continued to pick up speed.
    And I didn’t know how to slow us down, let alone even begin to understand him.
    The worst part of it all was the pain. My own brother couldn’t look me in the eye. Was he ashamed of me? Did he think I was soft because I wasn’t a robot? Everyone was soft compared to him. Did he still hate or resent me because Dad left his mom for mine?
    Did he blame me for Dad’s death?
    Did I blame him?
    I hadn’t moved, but I could tell from the way Finn was shifting his weight that he was getting ready to jump to my defense, and I honestly couldn’t think of anything I wanted him to do less at the moment.
    â€œDad said to tell me everything,” I stated simply, hoping Dad’s words would give me the leverage I seemed to need.
    Jack raised his eyes and squinted at me. “He meant everything about our world , Parker. About what we’re facing, about our enemies—not what he was like to be around or what his favorite color was. Knowing those things won’t help you now … they never helped me, anyway.”
    And then his eyes and focus were back on the stitching, and there was very little left I could say.
    â€œRight … well, someday then,” I grunted, stepping over to the microwave to watch the rapidly expanding popcorn bag. Fighting to calm down, I