The Christmas Box Miracle

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “Newark. I fly to Atlanta in a couple of hours.”

  “Call me from there.”

  “All right. I love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  I arrived in Atlanta late that afternoon. My first book signing was at a Waldenbooks in Duluth. The manager was bright and enthusiastic. She had not only read my book but had bought a half dozen copies for Christmas gifts. She did much to lift my spirits. I needed it.

  The next day, Saturday, ten minutes to one, I arrived at another bookstore, this one at a mall in Alpharetta, Georgia. The store was quiet and there was only one employee visible, a young, dishwater blond woman, standing behind a cash register at the front counter. There was no table for signing books and no signs announcing my book signing. Iapproached the woman. “Hi, I’m Richard Paul Evans. I’m here for my book signing.”

  She looked at me quizzically. “What signing?”

  “The one I came from Salt Lake City for,” I replied.

  “We don’t have a signing today,” she insisted.

  “Is your manager here?”

  “He just left. What book did you write?”

  “It’s calledThe Christmas Box.”

  “Never heard of it,” she said. “I don’t know if we sellit.”

  “May I use your phone?”

  “There’s one in the back room.”

  I went to the back of the store, plying my way between the stacked boxes and wondering if my book was buried beneath the cardboard mountains. I called Mike at the distributor’s.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “In Georgia. I just arrived for my signing. They say they don’t have a signing today.”

  “The manager said that?”

  “The manager’s not here.”

  “I’ll call the buyer,” he said. I gave him the store phone number and hung up. He called back about five minutes later.

  “Your signing was set,” Mike said. “The buyer thinks the manager screwed up. That’s probably why he’s not there. He’s hiding.”

  “Great.”

  “Sorry. It happens. How did the cable show go?”

  “Bad. They pretty much cut my segment.”

  “Figures. We didn’t see any increase in sales.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  He sighed. “You’re not having a real good week. Especially with what happened toPeoplemagazine.”

  My heart froze. “What happened toPeople?”

  “Oh,” he said, unaware that I didn’t know. “You didn’t hear. Your office was probably waiting for you to get back.Peoplecanceled your article.”

  “Canceled?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  “But why?”

  “They don’t believe it. Seems no one in New York has heard of you.”

  “Tell them to call the booksellers.”

  “They did. They confirmed your story, but I guess they’d already made up their minds.”

  I hung up the phone. I was numb. I walked back to the front counter. The woman was helping a customer. She turned toward me. “Hey, I found your books. They were under the counter. There’s only eleven of them.”

  “Want me to sign them?”

  “No,” she said, returning to her register. “You can just go.”

  I left the store. It had begun to rain. I walked out to myrented Pontiac Grand Prix, put the keys in the ignition, then just sat inside while the rain pounded on the roof and hood. I was filled with tremendous despair—despair that evolved into anger. “God,” I said bitterly, “you’ve given me just enough rope to hang myself.”

  What happened next I cannot adequately describe. Instantly a powerful, external force shaped words in my mind.

  Why did you write this book?it asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  Did you do it for the money?

  I thought for a moment. “I wrote the book for my daughters. I wasn’t even going to publish it. It was never about money. But now I’m broke.”

  Did you do it for your pride?

  This was more difficult to answer. “Not at first. I thought this book was helping people. But I don’t like looking like a fool.”

  Do you believe that this book was given to you?

  “Yes,” I replied.

  Then I will do with this book as I will.

  Reality sunk in. I realized my quest was really over and I had lost. I would pay dearly for dreaming. Yet some vestige of faith and trust in God, no doubt planted and nurtured by my parents in my youth, spoke back to that “voice” what might be the most difficult words in any language to speak: “Thy will be done.”

  As I flew home that night all I could think about was Keri. She had believed in me when I shut down my business and invested our savings. How could I tell her that we were going to have to start all over? The doctor had told her to avoid stress, and here I was the carrier of the darkest news of all. How could I tell her? HowwouldI tell her? The only thing I was certain of was that I would wait until morning.

  I arrived in Salt Lake City around 2A.M.It had snowed while I was gone and the airport parking lot was concealed beneath a blanket of snow. It took me a half hour to find my car and another ten minutes to unbury it. It was nearly three by the time I arrived home. As I opened our bedroom door I could hear Keri’s breathing. I undressed in the hallway and stepped inside with the lights off, hoping not to wake her.

  “Welcome home, honey,” she said sleepily.

  “Hi.”

  “You didn’t call. How’d it go in Atlanta?”

  I stood at the edge of the bed. “Not too good.”

  “What happened?”

  “The bookstore manager forgot I was coming.” I hesitated. “Honey, I got a call from Mike Hurst.Peoplemagazine canceled. We’re going to lose a lot of money.”

  The words hung in the quiet room and that short moment of silence seemed stretched into agonizing minutes.Then from the darkness came Keri’s soft voice. “But think of all the good you’ve done.”

  This was a moment I will cherish for the rest of my life. In that dark moment in the middle of the night I climbed into bed thinking,I’m a lucky man.

  25

  •

  Even the most horrible of nightmares is laced with the promise of dawn.

  THELOCKET

  EVEN THOUGHIWAS WITHOUThope, I was still unwilling to give up without a fight. Or at least the semblance of one. I spent most of the morning sitting at my desk thinking, racking my brain for ideas.Was there any way to beat this? What had I missed?Around ten o’clock my secretary, Heather, paged me. “Rick, the reporter fromPeopleis on the line.”

  “What does she want?” I asked.

  “She didn’t say.”

  I lifted the phone.

  “Hi, Richard. This is Cathy. I just wanted to verify how many copies of your book you’ve shipped to date.”

  “What does it matter?” I said. “There’s no story.”

  “Well, there’s been a change. The editor decided last night to go with the piece after all. Your story will be in the next issue.”

  Early Sunday morning I drove to the nearest grocery store. The new week’s magazines had not been brought out yet and when I told a stock boy that I was supposed tobe inPeople,he went into the back and brought out a stack of magazines still bound together with a plastic band. He cut them open. I pawed through the magazine until I found it—a full-page article with a large picture of my two daughters and me riding a sled, all beneath the headlineACHRISTMAS TREASURE.I stared at the page in disbelief.

  “That’s you,” the stock boy said. “Hey,” he shouted to a guy standing behind a register, “this guy’s inPeoplemagazine.”

  •

  Monday morning the distributor was flooded with calls from around the country. I spoke that morning at a local middle school and as I left the school I turned my cell phone on. It rang almost immediately.“Rick, this is Heather,” she said frantically. “I??
?ve been trying to reach you. You need to go home right away.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She could barely restrain herself. “NBC just called. They’re flying you and the girls out to New York tonight. You’re going to be on theTodayshow tomorrow morning with Katie Couric!”

  I screamed. “Does Keri know?”

  “Are you kidding? She’s out shopping for new Christmas dresses for the girls.”

  “She’s out of bed?”

  “I don’t think chains could have kept her down.”

  Allyson, Jenna and I flew out at 5P.M.and arrived in New York around midnight. As I walked from the plane a uniformed driver stood near the Jetway exit. He held a sign that read,Richard Paul Evans.He saw me glance at the sign. “Are you Mr. Evans?”

  “Yes, I am,” I said, proud to be me for the first time in months.

  It was our first time in a stretch limousine. NBC put us up in a spacious suite across from New York’s Central Park. Our room was bigger than the upstairs of my home. At least it had more bathrooms. Three of them. I put the girls to bed, then set the alarm and did not fall asleep until past two. My mind would not stop.How did I get here?

  I slept only a few hours, got up early the next morning, woke the girls and got them dressed. I realized then that we hadn’t packed Jenna’s dress shoes. She would have to go on the show shoeless. She put on her sneakers with her dress. Then I did the best that I could with their hair, meaning that it was a disaster.

  “I hope there’s someone who can do hair,” I said to Jenna.

  “Me too,” Jenna agreed.

  We ordered one Continental breakfast. It was all I could justify paying for. “Four dollars for a glass of orange juice,” I said to the girls. “We’ll share.”

  We went down to the hotel lobby, where our limousinedriver was waiting. We were driven just a few blocks to the studio and taken to the greenroom.

  Considering my last greenroom experience I was more than a little anxious. On the couch opposite me was a young Asian woman dressed in what looked like a tinsoldier costume. The woman’s mother came over and talked to my girls, complimenting me on how pretty they were. It was not until we saw the young woman on the monitor that we realized it was Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi. She was ice-skating in the Rockefeller Center ice rink.

  “Dad!” Jenna said, “I have a poster of Kristi on my door and I didn’t even know it was her!”

  Thankfully there was food in the greenroom, a tray of fruit and pastries, and therewassomeone there who could do hair and makeup. My daughters charmed the NBC staff and everyone doted over them. As I was coming back from makeup, the elevator door at the end of the hallway opened.

  “Out of the hall,” someone shouted. Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel were returning to the studio after interviewing Kristi. With no place to go I stood up against the wall. Just then Bryant passed by me, followed by Katie. Starstruck, I watched them pass. Then Katie stopped and turned back toward me. “Are you Richard?” she asked.

  I nodded, astonished at how pretty she was in real life and even more astonished that she had acknowledged myexistence. She smiled. “Don’t worry about a thing, we’re going to have a good time. You have a great story. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  From the greenroom monitor we watched Katie introduce my segment. “When we come back we’ll meet a Salt Lake City man who wrote a book for his two daughters, and now it’s a bestseller.”

  Bryant said, “Is that the guy we almost ran over in the hall?”

  Katie laughed. “That’s Richard . . .”

  •

  A minute later I was escorted downstairs with my girls for the interview. The interview went well, but it was my girls who stole the show. Allyson, who was only five years old at the time, could see herself in the studio monitor and giggled every time the camera was on her. The cameramen loved it and played up to her with a lot of close-ups. I was later told that the NBC switchboards were flooded with calls from approving viewers.There was one near disaster. Allyson was inches away from picking her nose in front of millions of viewers. Katie saw it coming and diverted the action by asking her a question. Allyson’s hand dropped.

  Then it was over. Katie thanked me for coming, then walked back up to the set as I herded my girls to the side ofthe studio. Still shell-shocked from my last television appearance, I hesitantly asked our escort if we could watch the rest of the taping.

  “Of course,” she said, smiling.

  “Do you think I could get a picture of Katie and Bryant?”

  She smiled again. “Of course.”

  Katie and Bryant were taping I.D. tags for local television stations when Katie suddenly stood up. “Come on, Bryant, I’m tired of this. Let’s take pictures with Richard and his girls.”

  After a series of shots (including several that Katie took herself), Katie said, “Richard, have you taken your girls to FAO Schwarz?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Did you see the movieBigwith Tom Hanks?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s the toy store in the movie. It’s right on Fifth Avenue. Your daughters will love it.” Katie motioned to one of the assistants. “Would you please show Richard the way to FAO Schwarz, then arrange to have a car pick him and his girls up?”

  •

  People often ask me what Katie Couric isreallylike, as if I saw something off camera that might shed light on herrealpersonality. I think I did meet the real Katie Couric. I saw that she’s a skilled interviewer and a kind, genuine person. And though it was just another day at work for her, it was a day I’ll never forget.Nor will my daughters. We were on vacation a year later when Allyson asked if she could buy a postcard for her friend Katie. Only when she asked me to help her with the address did I realize that she was talking about Katie Couric.

  We said good-bye to Bryant and Katie, and our escort walked us over to Fifth Avenue, then up several blocks. “You’re just about there. Just keep walking straight, it’s four or five blocks ahead on the other side of the street. You’ll see it.”

  Back then I did not trust Manhattan. A few years earlier a young Utah man had been stabbed to death in the New York subway while protecting his mother from a gang robbery. Even though the family of the young man had thanked New Yorkers for their compassion and sympathy, it pretty much confirmed most Utahns’ perception of New York as a heartless, crime-ridden city.

  As we walked, I huddled my girls in close. We had walked only one block when a woman, shabbily dressed, glanced at me and began walking toward us. I avoided eye contact until it was clear that she was coming directly at me.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  I pulled my girls close. “I saw you and your little girls this morning on theTodayshow. I just wanted to tell you that I thought what you had to say was really beautiful. We need more people like you in this world.”

  Three other New Yorkers stopped us that morning with similar comments.

  Dear Mr. Evans,

  My name is Sharon Dalton. I am thirty-four years old and I have two-year-old girl triplets. On August 1 of last year, my husband passed away unexpectedly.

  This Christmas is very difficult for me because of the loss of my husband. I am writing this letter to you because I have just finished readingThe Christmas Boxand I want you to know what great comfort your book has given to me on this first Christmas my children and I will have without Dan. I thank God for my three angels. Your book has helped me to try to think of how blessed I am to have their love. I know that Christmastime will never feel the same for me but your book has helped me to view Christmas through the eyes of my three beautiful angels.

  To paraphrase your book, “Though the cold winds of life have put a frost on my heart, the love I have surrounding me will shelter my heart from life’s storms.”

  Thank you for writing.

  Merry Christmas,

  Sharon

  26

  •

  THE GIRLS ANDIFLEWhome that same da
y, arriving in Salt Lake City around 7P.M.My brother-in-law, Wally, who works for Delta Airlines, met us at the airport and took the girls home while I drove off to a speaking event I had promised to do for my publicist. I suppose I was a bit distracted by the day’s events, as it had snowed all day in Utah and the freeway looked more like tundra than asphalt. And I was driving as if I hadn’t noticed.

  Coming around a bend in the freeway I turned the wheel only to find that my car did not respond. I glanced down at the speedometer. I was traveling nearly sixty miles per hour, completely out of control. The car maintained for a few hundred feet, then it began to slide sideways off the road. My first thought was that I was glad the girls were not with me. Then I thought,How strange that I would have two surreal experiences in one day. ATodayshow appearance in the morning and death at night.

  My car went over the side of the highway, missing severallight posts and plowing into a high bank of snow, burying my car in the powder. I must have created a tremendous flume of white, as within moments another motorist pulled over to help me. I walked from the accident without a scratch, grateful to be safe, and angry at my carelessness. It was the first time I had missed a speaking engagement.

  •

  The next morning I called my distributor. Their phones and fax machine had not stopped since my television appearance, and by the time they arrived at work that morning a pile of fax orders had collected on the ground. The orders and reorders for my book were already in the tens of thousands, and that week Publishers Distribution Center shipped out an additional seventy thousand copies.I later learned from bookstore managers that the morning of ourTodayshow appearance, people lined up outside bookstores all across America to buy my book.

  As in the year before, demand forThe Christmas Boxcontinued to increase. My distributor had to hire extra employees to assist in shipping.