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“Nor should it, but I’ll explain why it’s important. I realized, like P.Diddy, that my best friend was a much more skilled artist. He could come up with incredible concepts and execute on those concepts way better than I could. But he couldn’t market his work to save his life. That’s where I came in. He ‘wrote the rhymes’ so to speak, in the form of his graffiti, which later became painting, and I ‘wrote the checks’, in the form of I became the businessman in our partnership.” He pauses. “Can you guess what his last name was?”
If I was in an illustrated kids’s book right now an imaginary light bulb would go off over my head. “And all this time I thought Sharp was just some sort of weird way of twisting the saying ‘sharp as steel.’”
“That’s what most everyone thinks these days, and there is some truth to it. But the truth is the creative genius behind SteeleSharp is Jack Sharp.”
“I don’t remember meeting him at the office.”
“Because you didn’t. Nobody that works there these days has met him or heard from him in ages.”
“My gut tells me nobody doesn’t include you.”
Silas’s eyes move from mine to the wall, admiring his best friend’s work. “Usually best to trust your gut instinct, right?”
Who was this caring man who could just have a ‘normal’ conversation all of a sudden? Where was the bossy company founder who preferred instilling discipline in his employees, or at least me, with a steel fist…no pun intended?
“Where is he?”
“Why, would you like to meet him?”
I nod.
“Good, because he’s been waiting all his life to meet you.”
11
Silas
“Is Jack on his way over?” Scarlett asks as I lead her out into the back garden of my property.
“He’s not on his way over because he was always here.”
“Jack,” I holler toward the guesthouse that sits behind a gazebo and duck pond.
“Not today,” a voice calls back, and Scarlett turns and looks at me with shock, her eyebrows skyward.
“Somebody lives there?”
I nod. “Not just somebody. Somebody very special…to both of us.”
“Come on out. I’ve got someone here I want you to meet.”
“Tomorrow,” he cries back, agitation in his voice.
I firm my voice. “Not tomorrow, Jack. Today.”
> I can hear him mumbling something under his breath and know he’s slipping into a robe and seconds later the door made of blown Mexican glass opens and he steps out into the day, clearly having been asleep up until this point.
But one look at Scarlett and he’s wide awake. His hands freeze, the string from his robe falling in the midst of tying it. Fortunately he’s wearing boxers and a T-shirt under it, but right now nothing else matters except the immediate look of recognition on his face.
“You…”
“Yeah, Jack. I found her.”
“After all these years.”
He stumbles forward, his arms extended like a zombie as he approaches us in a daze.
I look down at Scarlett and see every inch of skin on her body is covered in goosebumps. She should turn and run, it would be the logical answer, if it weren’t for the same recognition in her eyes as I can clearly see in Jack’s. It’s the same recognition I had when I first saw her enter my building. The eye color. The face structure. The same youthful exuberance, the same genius, I saw in Jack all those years ago.
