Meeting Mr. Hopes

Just a few moments later Jack arrived at the seventh floor of the building, and easily found his way to Mr. Hopes expensive looking office, which was situated just a short way down the hallway to the right of the elevator. He still wasn't sure what to expect when he got there, but nearly dropped his jaw as he looked through the open door, and stared at the familiar man sitting on the other side of a large desk that was cluttered with piles of paper.

"Jack...?!" Mr. Hopes stared back at him, clearly as surprised as Jack himself, although his face turned pale like if he'd seen a ghost. Instead of greeting him, the man just sat there gawking for several moments, before finally opening his mouth to shakily ask him the first question coming to his mind. "Wh... What are you doing here...?"

"That's an odd way to say that you've missed me, Mike." Jack couldn't keep from smiling as he entered the room, and sat down in one of the spare chairs without asking for permission. Other than the shocked expression on his face, Michael Hopes looked almost exactly like he'd done some twenty years ago, when the two of them finished their studies together at school. Even his slick haircut was still the same, without a single white straw among the jet black others.

"I'm here for an interview, actually." Jack continued, while putting the cutout on top of his old friend's desk, and noted how the man just kept staring back at him suspiciously. Eventually he seemed to snap out of his initial state of surprise however, and took a deep breath as he leaned back in his tall, leather chair.

"You're here for the job...?" The man just nodded slowly, as if to ascertain that he'd heard him right, and looked like he was barely able to believe it. He managed a weak smile though, but it looked like it was plastered onto his lips by **** of will alone. "What a weird coincidence...?"

"That's my thought as well!" Jack grinned in return, while hoping it would help his old friend to calm his nerves, and spent a few moments looking around at the various paintings and expensive looking furniture that were lining the walls. Most of the interior went in a lush, reddish brown color, which inclined that most was made in rich mahogany, while the paintings too were framed by the same material. "Quite the office you've got here..."

"Yeah, I guess..." Michael nodded nervously, and looked like if he was trying to gauge if Jack was actually there for the job alone, like he said, or if he had something else on his mind entirely. He tried his best to answer the questions in a neutral voice, but shifted uneasily in his chair when Jack leaned closer to the picture sitting at the far end of his desk.

It was obviously depicting the man's family, consisting of himself, his wife, and two kids in their upper teens. While Jack didn't recognize the woman in the picture, he was a little surprised that their daughter looked a lot like someone he knew quite well. Still it took him a few more seconds, before he finally came to realize that this was one of the most obvious reasons to his old friend's strange behavior.

"So... How's Shirley?" Michael was just asking him, as if he was trying to draw Jack's attention away from the photograph, but it was only then that the last pieces of the puzzle were finally starting fall into place. Jack hadn't seen this man for over two decades, and still he somehow knew that him and Shirley had been married since a few years after the last time they met...?

And then there was the girl in the picture, with her wavy long black hair, who could easily have passed as the biological twin of Jack's own daughter, Catherine. Or at least her younger sister...

So, he hadn't been sent here for the job alone after all, and the more he looked at this particular photograph, the more certain he became that this was exactly what Samantha had supposed him to find there in the first place. It seemed like Michael had reached the same conclusion as well, as he shrunk even further back in his chair while Jack looked back to his eyes once more.

"So, that's how it is...?" Jack nodded slowly to himself, as he could see the truth written all over his old friend's face, but wasn't quite sure what to think about this sudden revelation just yet. Only two weeks earlier he'd probably wanted to smash the man's face in anger, but for some reason it currently felt like a huge weight had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders, and he found himself strangely at ease while the cogs kept spinning inside of his head.

It was clear to say that Michael wouldn't be able to answer all of his questions though, so he quickly decided that he would have to look somewhere else if he wished to hear all the facts. Thus he stood up to leave, without even bothering to explain anything further to the man at the other side of the desk, but couldn't keep from smiling as he noticed the baffled look on his old friend's face.

"Don't worry Mike, I'll get back to you later." He promised, before he was headed for the door, but then decided that he did have something else to ask of the man after all. "About that job by the way? I could really need one right now, but perhaps nothing all too close to your office...?"

"Oh...? Well... I'll see what I can do..." The man just nodded slowly, while looking like he had some questions he'd like to ask himself, but apparently felt like they could wait until the next time they met. Which would probably be much sooner than he'd be fully comfortable with...