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A PERFECT DAY (Dutton)
by Richard Paul Evans
When aspiring novelist Robert Harlan loses his job as a sales rep for a radio station, his wife helps him pursue his dream of becoming a published author. The result, a novel titled A Perfect Day, catapults him to the top of the bestseller charts and into a nightmare of cold ambition. Only a miracle can bring Harlan back to his senses—a miracle with a sense of humor. A magical tale of love and awakening by the author of The Last Promise. “Those who enjoyed The Christmas Box are in for another treat.”—Publishers Weekly
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Excerpt from Select Editions’ A Perfect Day
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Tonight, from my seventh-story window, I see a man in a parka and a bellman’s cap shoveling the walk in front of the hotel’s entrance. The snow returns nearly as fast as he clears it. Salt Lake’s own Sisyphus.
It’s a night to be home. A night to be gathered with loved ones. It is a night to bathe in the pleasant aftermath of the season’s joy. So why am I alone in a hotel, when my wife, Allyson, and my daughter, Carson, are just minutes away?
I see a car below. It moves slowly up Main Street, its headlights cutting through the darkness. The car slides helplessly from side to side, its wipers blurring, its wheels spinning. I imagine the driver of that car, blinded, afraid to stop, just as fearful to proceed. I empathize. Behind the wheel of my life, I feel like that driver.
I couldn’t tell you my first wrong step. My mind is a queue of questions. Most of them are about the stranger. Why did the stranger come to me? Why did he speak of hope when my future, or what’s left of it, looks as barren as the winter landscape? Some might think that my story began with the stranger. But in truth, it began long before I met him, back on a balmy June day eight years ago, when Allyson, not yet my wife, went home to Oregon to see her father. This is strangely ironic to me, because it all began on a perfect day. And here it ends on the worst of days.
I should say begins to end. Because if the stranger is right—and I’ve learned that he’s always right—I have just six more days to live. Six days that I will live out alone, not because I want to, but because it’s the right thing to do. Perhaps my loneliness is my penance. I hope God will see it that way, because there is not enough time to heal two hearts. There is not enough time to make right one broken promise. There is only time to remember what once was and should still be.
My thoughts wander, first to the stranger, then further back—back eight years to when Allyson went home to her father. Back to the beginning of my story. Back to a perfect day....
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