Page Clark is a good mother, busy taking her seven-year-old son, Andy, to his baseball games and keeping careful watch over her fifteen-year-old daughter, Allyson. Page's husband Brad is busy, too, with meetings that often take him away from their suburban San Francisco home. But overall Page feels blessed with her happy family and comfortable marriage - until on Saturday night when everything falls apart. Brad has unexpectedly left on an out-of-town trip, and Allyson announces that she is going out with her best friend Chloe and Chloe's father, Trygve. But instead, Allyson and Chloe go out with two older high-school boys in a borrowed car, and in one terrifying instant their car collides head-on with another.
Page is alone, tormented by questions. Finding Trygve already at the hospital, she leans on his strength throughout the long hours of waiting, when she is forced to confront the fact that Allyson may not live, and if she does she may never be the same again.
