Jake: If you had shown up yesterday or the day before, or a week ago, I would have said no and sent you on your way. But here you are, today of all days, and somehow it seems like the right time for me to finally tell this story. It begins many years ago. I was eighteen and the worst thing that could happen to a young man happened to me. My father died. We were very close, my father and I, partly because we'd lost my mother several years earlier.