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.

Richard Paul Evans is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Christmas Box and The Last Promise. His bestselling novels have been translated into more than seventeen languages and adapted into award-winning television movies. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.