The Final Summit

Chapter 1

pg 1

Absently, the man rested his forearm on a piece of steel railing that, when he allowed himself to think about it, was the only thing separating him from life and—well, what came next. Curious that I would think about it that way, he thought. I know what comes next. With his thumb and forefinger, he played with a coffee bean he’d picked up in the kitchen. Cracking it with his thumbnail, he brought it to his nose.

His wife had loved the smell of coffee. With his eyes closed, he inhaled slowly. The pleasant aroma drifted through his imagination as it gained traction and took him to Peter Island in the Caribbean. He remembered their honeymoon, the sand on the beach, and the heavy fragrance of the Blue Mountain coffee that permeated every room in the resort.

They had gone back to the British Virgin Islands many times through the years. And they always stayed at the same place—Peter Island Resort. Even when they could have bought the resort, Ellen insisted they stay in one of the less expensive rooms, one like they had enjoyed so many years ago.

Years ago. How many years ago? David Ponder flicked the pieces of the coffee bean out into the night sky and turned to go back inside. Fifty-five stories. He was more than seven hundred feet up in the rarefied air of a warm Dallas night. Moving toward his front door, David started to go inside, but he stopped instead and sat down in a rocking chair on the porch.

“Seventy-four,” David said aloud. “I am seventy-four years old. How . . . ?” David drew his hands up as if to use them for emphasis. But there was nothing to emphasize and no one to talk to, in any case, so he folded his hands back in his lap and closed his eyes.

David had been moderately successful as a young man, struggling early in his career with a new wife and a child. At one point, as an executive in his midforties, just when things seemed to be going well, he was laid off. The firing had been done in a cruel manner, and things seemed to go from bad to worse. But then, there had been an odd, singular event in David’s life that had changed everything. It was what close friends and

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About the Author
Andy Andrews has quietly become one of the most influential people in America. A professional noticer, a powerful communicator, a teacher, and a serious fisherman, Andrews is the best-selling author, of The Traveler’s Gift, with millions of books in print.