Billy rescues Sally from drowning at the town pool and performs CPR to revive her.

Susan invites Billy to dinner as thanks, and Kathy and Billy officially become a couple that summer.

Sally withholds her State of the Union notes, forcing Kathy to let her ride to school in Billy's car.

Kathy shows Billy a note in the car, he looks away from the road, and a deer causes the fatal crash.

A doctor at the town morgue presents Kathy's gold hoop earrings for identification and Susan collapses.

Sally secretly logs onto Kathy's computer account and begins an online correspondence with Billy.

Priscilla informs Sally that Billy attempted suicide by overdosing on painkillers while recovering from his injuries.

The Barnes family visits the Holt house, Billy presents a whiteboard apology, and Richard permanently forbids all further contact.

Sally skips her prom and unexpectedly runs into Billy at the mall, noticing a large vine tattoo on his neck.

Sally and Billy drive to Watch Hill and spend the afternoon on the beach sharing their recurring dreams about Kathy.

Sally breaks up with Peter at a motel on graduation night and confesses she has always been in love with Billy.

Billy reveals to Sally that he is entering a seminary to become a friar as his path to atonement.

Sally and Billy spend their last night together and have sex for the first time in his childhood bedroom.

Sally drives to Bill's Tree and Garden and asks Billy to come help remove the dangerous maple trees before the hurricane.

Sally and Billy meet outside in the eye of Hurricane Kathy, confess their love, and kiss.

Sally and Kathy's close sisterhood is shattered when Sally's demand for a car ride leads to the crash that kills Kathy and leaves Billy severely injured. In the immediate aftermath, Sally secretly bonds with Billy online as both struggle with guilt and grief their families refuse to share. Billy's suicide attempt and the formal apology visit mark the end of permitted contact, pushing Sally and Billy's connection underground. Years later, a chance reunion with Billy on prom day reignites their forbidden bond, leading to a summer that ends when Billy announces he is entering the seminary to atone for Kathy's death. Over a decade passes before Hurricane Kathy forces Sally home, where she asks Billy for help with the dying trees, and their long-suppressed love finally breaks through the storm.

The core love story, loss, and reunion spanning nearly two decades.

Kathy is paired with Billy for a school Thanksgiving dance and develops a lasting crush after he compliments her hair.

Billy jumps off the school roof on a dare, breaks his leg, and is knocked unconscious.

Sally asks a question about a talk show topic at a school health assembly and becomes the target of widespread ridicule.

Richard inspects storm damage after a hurricane and declares the ancient maple tree outside the sisters' window is not a survivor.

A boy named Rick Stevenson and his friends hold Sally down on the school bus and attempt to lift her shirt.

Sally hides in her mother's van in a failed attempt to run away, and Susan impulsively orders a white couch at the mall.

Sally refuses to speak at Kathy's funeral and interrupts guests blaming Billy by claiming Kathy had begged him to speed.

Sally discovers Billy operating a carnival ride at the local fair and meets his new girlfriend, Karen.

At the carnival, Sally drinks rum and kisses a boy in a Sprite T-shirt but finds the experience underwhelming.

Susan undergoes electroconvulsive therapy during Sally's college years, resulting in severe memory loss and a permanent personality change.

Sally encounters Billy in a liquor store wearing the white robes of a novice friar after his father's death.

Susan calls Sally repeatedly during a therapy session until Sally cuts the session short and returns her mother's call.

Richard attempts to fell one of the dying maple trees himself, but the trunk falls and crushes the family's old swing set.

Ray drives from New York City to the Holt family home unexpectedly and meets Billy for the first time at dinner.

Rick Stevenson, now working as a television weatherman, reports that Hurricane Kathy has weakened and is moving north.

Billy's childhood recklessness and Kathy's long-developing crush establish the social world before the crash, while Sally's public humiliation at school quietly shapes her into an isolated observer. The family's grief is foreshadowed by dying trees and strained household dynamics even before the accident changes everything. In the aftermath, Sally navigates carnivals, small rebellions, and peer cruelty that mark her grief-stricken adolescence in a town that still blames Billy. As Sally leaves for college, her mother's descent into electroconvulsive therapy and a ghostly encounter with Billy dressed as a novice friar mark the long years of silence between them. The story closes as Richard's failed attempt to fell a tree destroys the old swing set, Ray appears at the door, and a now-grown Rick Stevenson reports the weakening storm from a television weather desk.

The supporting moments that shaped the characters' world from childhood to the hurricane's end.

The sisters take a personality quiz that labels Kathy a spontaneous Green Person and Sally a structured Red Person.

Kathy sings the National Anthem at a basketball game, and Billy later confides he fell in love with her in that moment.

Sally writes the phrase 'MOM WANTS TO FUCK THE PRESIDENT' in Kathy's history notebook the night before the crash.

Leaving the morgue, Richard runs a red light and threatens to kill Billy if he survives his injuries.

Overwhelmed by grief, Sally removes the glow-in-the-dark stars spelling Kathy's name from their shared bedroom ceiling one by one.

Richard discovers Sally secretly talking on the phone with Billy and threatens legal action against the Barnes family.

Sally spots Billy with a new girlfriend named Karen at a gas station mini-mart and becomes so sick with jealousy she vomits.

Richard buys a red leather armchair and begins sleeping in it alone, withdrawing entirely from the family's shared spaces.

Susan reveals at a dentist appointment that she gave up an art school scholarship in Paris because she was pregnant with Kathy.

Sally and Billy help a real estate agent dismember and bag a dead seal on the Watch Hill beach.

Sally checks the family Rolodex at home and discovers that Jan the psychic's address matches the Watch Hill beach house.

Sally forces her way into Jan's house in Watch Hill, demands to see her dead sister, and smashes a blue vase.

Susan calls Sally to reveal that Billy never became a friar and instead now runs his family's tree and garden business.

Driving together to a store, Billy tells Sally he saw her years ago at the liquor store and decided not to take his final vows.

Ray confronts Sally about her feelings for Billy, and Sally admits that she and Billy were in love after Kathy's death.

From the childhood quiz that defined the sisters as opposites to the careless note Sally scrawled in a history notebook, small choices accumulate into catastrophe. The crash's immediate aftermath exposes each family member's breaking point, from Richard's rage at a red light to Sally's solitary removal of Kathy's name from the bedroom ceiling one star at a time. Jealousy, withdrawal, and a buried family secret—Susan's sacrificed Paris scholarship—reveal the full cost of grief across the years of Sally's adolescence. On the day Sally skips prom, a dead seal on a Watch Hill beach and a quiet check of the family Rolodex expose Jan the psychic's real identity, while Sally's vase-smashing confrontation at Jan's door marks the peak of her unresolved anguish. In 2013, revelation follows revelation as Susan discloses Billy's true fate, Billy confesses why he never took his final vows, and Ray finally forces Sally to speak the truth about the love she has never let go.

The hidden decisions, painful confessions, and shocking discoveries that redirected every life.