The Millers' camper swerves off a snowy mountain road and tumbles down a steep ridge after Jack brakes for a deer.

Finn realizes she has died and observes her own body at the front of the damaged camper.

Ann discovers Finn's body at the front of the camper and gasps at what she sees.

Chloe and Vance defy their parents and leave the camper at night to search for help in the blizzard.

Ann strips Finn's warm clothing and gives Finn's boots to Mo instead of Natalie.

Bob tricks Oz into surrendering his gloves and wandering into the wilderness to search for Ann.

Ann and Kyle team up and begin climbing the mountainside together to find the road.

Kyle loses his footing and slides over a ledge, and Ann lets go of his hand in fear.

Ann and Kyle reach the road, and Ann uses her phone to call for emergency help.

Rescue workers airlift Jack to a hospital and transport Mo and the Golds by helicopter to a different facility.

Searchers find Chloe sheltering beneath a pine tree and bring her to the hospital for severe frostbite.

The search for Oz is permanently called off as storms intensify, and the surviving Millers and Mo return to Laguna Beach.

Jack wakes and learns Ann left Oz behind when she went for help, and his face fills with rage.

Mo meets with Captain Burns and reveals that Bob traded crackers for Oz's gloves, leading to Bob's arrest.

Kyle asks Ann to dance at Aubrey's wedding reception, and Finn's final tether to the living world breaks.

The novel opens with the Miller family's camper plunging off a snowy mountain road, killing Finn instantly and leaving the survivors—including a critically injured Jack—fighting for their lives. As Finn observes from beyond death, the group makes desperate choices: Ann gives Finn's warm clothing to Mo, Bob secretly sends disabled Oz into the wilderness alone, and Ann and Kyle brave the mountain together to call for rescue. After emergency services arrive and the search for Oz is abandoned, the survivors return to Laguna Beach carrying grief and guilt in equal measure. Jack erupts in rage when he discovers Ann left Oz behind, and the couple's already fractured marriage is pushed to its breaking point. The slow unraveling of Bob's deception climaxes when Mo presents her evidence to Captain Burns, leading to Bob's arrest for negligent homicide. Finn's journey ends at Aubrey's wedding reception, where Kyle asks Ann to dance, granting Ann the forgiveness she needs and finally releasing Finn into the afterlife.

The headline moments that define Finn's death and her family's survival and reckoning.

Finn drives Ann's brand-new Mercedes and rear-ends the car ahead after her phone vibrates at a stoplight.

Mo grabs Finn's phone and sends Finn's pre-written text to Charlie McCoy, asking him to formal.

Jack spots a stranded teenager named Kyle beside a broken-down car on the snowy mountain road and offers him a ride.

Mo cuts herself free from her seatbelt and rushes to Finn's body in the wrecked camper, holding her dead friend's hand.

Vance abandons Chloe in the blizzard, and Chloe collapses and crawls to the base of a pine tree to rest.

Ann pulls Mo aside at dawn and asks her to care for Jack and Oz while Ann leaves for help.

Mo uses a book and lighter to build a small fire and melts snow in a broken sunglasses case for drinking water.

Oz lunges for the water case, strikes Karen across the face, and takes it for himself.

Ann loses control when rescuers suspend the search due to a new storm and paramedics sedate her.

Mrs. Kaminski bursts into Mo's hospital room and sings her a lullaby until Mo falls asleep.

Mrs. Kaminski confronts Karen in the hospital hallway about why Mo has severe frostbite while Natalie has none.

Finn attends her own funeral and sits beside Charlie McCoy on the balcony while Mo and Aubrey speak about her.

Chloe speaks to Ann for the first time since the accident when the family discovers Jack is missing from the house.

Ann and Chloe attend the symphony together and afterward each toss a penny into a fountain.

Chloe delivers the surviving kittens to an animal shelter and meets Eric, who offers her a volunteer position.

Before the accident, everyday moments—a fender bender in Ann's new car and Mo secretly sending Finn's hopeful text to Charlie—hint at the ordinary teenage life Finn is about to lose. The crash sequence reveals the survivors' immediate instincts, with Mo rushing to her dying friend's side while Vance ultimately abandons Chloe alone in the freezing dark. During the rescue window, Ann privately delegates care of Jack and Oz to Mo before slipping away, and Mo's fierce resourcefulness—a small fire and carefully melted snow—keeps the group alive until help arrives. After the rescue, Mrs. Kaminski's quiet strength becomes a powerful counterpoint to Karen's defensiveness, as Mo's mother both comforts her daughter in the hospital and directly confronts Karen about the stark inequality in each girl's injuries. Back in Laguna Beach, healing comes in small gestures: Chloe's first words to Ann since the accident, a shared evening at the symphony, and the fragile new beginning Chloe finds when she volunteers at an animal shelter and meets Eric.

The smaller but vital moments shaping each survivor's journey before, during, and after the crash.

The group arrives at the cabin as heavy snow falls, but Jack insists everyone pile back into the camper to drive to dinner.

Mo proposes using game boards and sticks as a frame to pack snow into the open windshield and block the cold.

Oz finds Finn's body lying in the snow beside the camper, gently covers her face, and whispers goodnight.

Bob returns to the camper alone after sending Oz into the wilderness, and Mo senses something has gone terribly wrong.

A rescue helicopter arrives at the crash site and workers discover that Oz is missing from the group.

Bob lies to Captain Burns and the press, falsely claiming Oz voluntarily walked away and providing a wrong direction.

Jack is woken from a medically induced coma and immediately calls out for Finn and Chloe.

Ann removes all of Finn's belongings from the bedroom the sisters shared and dumps them in garbage bags outside.

Jack travels to Vance's duplex and beats him with a crutch, blaming Vance for abandoning Chloe in the storm.

Natalie confesses to Mo that her father Bob traded crackers for Oz's gloves before sending Oz into the wilderness.

Mo arrives at Chloe's door with a box of four tiny helpless kittens, pulling Chloe back from her plan to die.

Ann confronts Bob with a photo of Natalie wearing Oz's gloves and breaks a wine bottle over his arm.

Mo visits Kyle at his ski resort job, and the two kiss, snapping Finn's tether to her best friend.

Ann drives to the mountain cabin and confesses to Jack that she knew Oz was not safe with Bob when she left.

Jack donates all of Finn's and Oz's belongings to a thrift store, and Finn feels her tether to her father break.

The tragedy begins with a seemingly small choice—Jack overriding Ann's concern about the storm to drive to dinner—that sets the fatal sequence in motion. Survival decisions inside the wreck reveal character: Mo's quick thinking with the windshield snow contrasts sharply with Bob's cold calculation in sending Oz away, and the moment Bob returns to the camper alone marks the novel's darkest betrayal. The cover-up deepens as Bob lies to Burns and the media, but the truth surfaces gradually through Natalie's confession to Mo and a damning photograph of Oz's gloves. Each survivor's private reckoning then drives the novel's second half: Jack violently confronting Vance, Ann stripping her daughter's room bare as if Finn never existed, and Mo's surprise intervention with a box of kittens saving Chloe's life. The final breakthroughs—Ann confessing her impossible choice to Jack at the cabin, Jack donating Finn's belongings, and Mo and Kyle's first kiss—each snap a tether binding Finn to the living world and push the story toward its quiet resolution.

The decisions, cover-ups, and breakthroughs that drive the story's moral reckoning.

Suzanne Redfearn

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