I could always tell that Jason was a hell of a lot smarter than me, and I’m sure he got it from his mom. I know parents say this all the fucking time about their kids, but, no joke, this guy has probably got twice my vocabulary and he isn’t even in middle school yet.

I’m still drenched in stinking sweat when I pick him up from school. It’s over a hundred degrees, and the boys and I have been working at the Twinbrooks Avenue project all day. With any luck, we might be able to get the foundations set by the weekend.

As he hops into the passenger side of my pickup, Jason sees that I’ve still got my hardhat on, and he knows that I’ve gotta head back to work after I bring him home. I can tell he’s disappointed. He doesn’t like having to fix his own dinner, but he’s used it to. Still, I don’t feel too good about it, either.

“How’s school?” I ask as I turn the key. The twenty-year old engine complains and puffs for a second, but she starts up. I take care of my shit.

“Good,” he says. He wipes his glasses on his shirt and pulls out one of his comics from his backpack. “It was Miss Gee’s birthday today, so we had cake.”

“Cake, huh? What kind?” I notice that there’s a wad of dried mud on my fingers. As we drive down the road, I roll down the window, stick my hand out. Every once in a while, I’d rub my caked fingers, and the mud comes off, all blackened and powdered up, and it flies away into the wind.

“Dark chocolate, like mom used to make,” he said.

I peek over my shoulder at him. He’s flipping the page of his comic, and his eyes have got this faraway look in them. I think he’s thinking, but hell if I know half of what goes on in his head nowadays.

“Couldn’t have been [i]as[/i] good. Your mom made the best,” I say.

“Yeah, wasn’t as good,” he agrees. He flips another page, and his eyes go back and forth across drawings of super heroes with bullets whizzing past their perfectly styled hair.

The school’s a bit of a drive from home. It’s private, and I’m damn proud that Jason’s been doing great there. Costs a buck, but nothing that I can’t give up. Jessica wouldn’t have wanted him at a public school. She was always picky like that.

“Hey,” he says. “You ever hear about parallel universes?”

“Parallel what, now?” Like I said, my brain’s like a toaster. You could wrap your pinkie around it. “Sounds like a sort of parking to me.”

Jason doesn’t laugh. He usually laughs, even when my jokes are awful. I get a bit worried.

“Parallel universes, dad.” He puts his book away and looks out the window. “Like, a whole different world. A whole different universe. And there’s people there, but they’re like alternate versions of people here.”

I’m shaking my head at the idea. “So there might be a whole bunch of guys like me and you?”

“Yeah,” he says, “but they might be different. Something different could have happened to them a long time ago, and that makes them change who they are. There are [i]infinite[/i] parallel universes, so there could be versions of us who could be anything at all.”

“That’s crazy talk.” I scratch my beard. “You saying there could be a parallel sub-whatcha-call-it world where I’m president? Or the world’s smartest dad ‘stead of the dumbest?”

“Let’s not stretch things.”

I laugh.That little shit.

“What’s got you thinking about all this theoretical stuff, huh?” I ask. “Don’t think Miss Gee’s been teaching you this bull-malarkey.”

“Naw.” He drifts off again.

I can’t explain it, but when you’re a dad, sometimes you just [i]know[/i] when something’s wrong with your kid. I got that feeling real bad.

“Hey, eyes up!” I’m doing a bad impression of my own old man, but it works. “What’s on your mind, huh?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I was just thinking… maybe if I could go to parallel universes, I’d go to one where I could have mom’s chocolate cake again.”

And just like that, I’m thinking about my Jessica again. Her voice, her hair, her smell. Her laugh and her cooking, and her son.

“Yeah,” I say as I let some more powdered mud out the window. “I’d like that too.”