Theo crashes the family car into the oak tree outside the family home, killing Misty, who is not wearing a seatbelt.

Sarah tells her father and bystanders she was the one driving the car, taking the blame for Misty's death.

Ben meets Waldo at the oak tree late at night and Waldo uses his Star Walk app to identify and map the constellations.

Shenkman catches Waldo sneaking back inside after stargazing, confiscates his iPad, and grounds him.

Sarah receives a call informing her that her mother Mimi has escaped from her nursing home.

Waldo overhears his parents argue about him, retrieves his iPad, packs a backpack, and runs away into the night.

Mimi, disoriented and believing she is searching for her young children, finds Waldo at the mall and mistakes him for Theo.

Ben rushes next door and delivers Alice's baby on her kitchen floor when her labor progresses too quickly to reach the hospital.

Theo arrives in Avalon on his motorbike and joins Sarah in driving around the neighborhood searching for Mimi.

Waldo, confined at home during the pandemic, texts Ben asking if he can come visit despite the circumstances.

The Wilfs walk through the snow to the mall and find Mimi dead on the ground outside Play Heaven beside Waldo.

Shenkman, softened by nearly losing Waldo, tells his son the story of how Ben delivered him in the Shenkmans' kitchen.

Sarah attends an AA meeting and, moved by another member's confession, shares the truth about the night Misty died.

Waldo drives to California to reunite with Ben and tells him he still sees Mimi at every stage of her life.

Ben and Mimi move into their new Avalon home with toddler Sarah; Mimi is pregnant with Theo.

A late-night joyride ends in catastrophe when Theo crashes the family car and kills Misty, setting off decades of buried guilt for the Wilf family. Sarah's lie about being the driver locks both siblings into silence, shaping their troubled adult lives in different cities. Years later, Mimi's disappearance from her nursing home forces the family to reunite on a desperate overnight search. That same night, young Waldo Shenkman runs away from home and ends up entangled with the Wilfs in a way neither family could have predicted. The aftermath of loss slowly moves Sarah and Theo toward honesty and healing, each in their own way. The novel closes by looping back to the very beginning — the day Ben and Mimi first moved into the Avalon house full of hope.

The headline events that drive the story from tragedy to resolution.

Sarah convinces Theo to sneak out in their parents' car for a late-night drive, bringing Misty along to impress him.

Waldo shows Ben their location on the Star Walk app, where they appear as two bright green spots viewed from space.

Sarah arrives at her father's house past midnight and is unsettled by the sight of the oak tree in the driveway.

Theo receives Sarah's urgent phone call at his New York City restaurant and immediately arranges to travel to Avalon.

Theo surprises his sister Sarah by appearing unannounced at her Los Angeles home on New Year's Eve.

Theo accidentally sets off the house alarm while preparing a gourmet breakfast at Sarah's home, waking the whole family.

Mimi receives a phone call from Theo telling her he is in Los Angeles with Sarah; she is shocked and overjoyed.

Ben finds beer cans near the crashed car and realizes Sarah had been drinking and that Theo was actually the driver.

Shenkman wakes early, goes to check on Waldo, and finds his son's bedroom empty.

Sarah receives threatening text messages from her affair partner, who possesses photographs of her and demands her attention.

While driving through the night searching for Waldo, Alice suddenly declares to Shenkman that she wants a divorce.

Waldo uses the email app on his father's iPad to contact the last person his father messaged, asking for help.

Theo becomes a culinary figure in New York and names one of his two restaurants after his mother Mimi.

Waldo visits the magic tree and senses the energy of a girl whose life was lost there, though he knows nothing about Misty.

Shenkman and Waldo scatter Alice's ashes in the Hudson River, and Waldo tells his father that a star's matter returns to the universe.

The accident that kills Misty begins with Sarah's reckless encouragement, which draws a nervous Theo into a situation beyond his ability to handle. In the years that follow, the siblings' separate struggles play out through small but significant moments — a chance arrival on a doorstep, an alarm accidentally triggered, a threatening message from a secret lover. The search for Mimi and Waldo uncovers fractures inside the Shenkman family as well, with Alice's frustration boiling over into a devastating declaration. After the crisis passes, each character takes quiet steps toward rebuilding: Theo honors his mother through his work, Waldo honors his by scattering her ashes and carrying her lessons forward. These secondary moments fill in the texture of lives shaped by grief, avoidance, and the slow, imperfect work of love.

The supporting moments that reveal character and deepen the family drama.

Ben rushes outside to examine Misty after the crash and recognizes, as a doctor, that her injuries are fatal.

Waldo tearfully confides to Ben that his own father dismisses and ridicules his passion for studying the stars.

Waldo comforts the trembling Mimi outside the mall by opening his Star Walk app and showing her the constellations overhead.

Shenkman, waiting through Alice's labor, struggles to suppress his father's voice in his head and fears he will repeat his father's failures.

Ben returns from delivering Waldo visibly shaken, overwhelmed by how badly the unplanned home birth could have ended.

Theo spends three days watching Sarah's house from the street before finally summoning the courage to knock on her door.

Mimi lies awake beside Ben the night of the accident, too afraid to speak, and prays silently for her children's futures.

Theo, overwhelmed by guilt the night of the accident, turns to food to comfort himself, a pattern that will follow him into adulthood.

Ben makes coffee on the morning of his move, reflecting on his belief that time is a loop rather than a line.

Shenkman cries while telling Waldo he has decided to sell the family house and move to Florida, a reaction that startles Waldo.

The Shenkmans arrive at Play Heaven and Shenkman, panicked, wrongly accuses Theo of having kidnapped his son.

Alice, riding home after finding Waldo, silently takes back her divorce declaration and resolves to quit her job to get Waldo proper support.

Ben lies awake after the accident, tormented by his decision to move Misty's body when he rushed out to help her.

Ben, now living with Sarah in Los Angeles, reflects that the family's decades of silence about the accident is what truly scarred his children.

Theo and Sarah begin speaking more openly with each other about the accident that killed Misty during the pandemic years.

The night of the accident produces a cascade of private reckonings — Ben sees the fatal truth of Misty's injuries, Theo turns inward through food, and Mimi can only pray in silence, unable to speak what she knows. A flashback to New Year's Eve in 1999 reveals Shenkman's fear of becoming his own father, just as Ben is shaken by how narrowly a home birth could have gone wrong. The 2010 crisis forces further reckoning: Shenkman must confront what his anger has cost his son, while Alice sees her family and neighborhood with new eyes only when it is almost too late to act on what she sees. In quieter moments across the years, Ben and his children gradually process what silence has done to them, each inching toward honesty. By the time Theo and Sarah begin speaking openly about Misty, and Waldo carries his understanding of loss across the country to sit with Ben, the characters have come to a hard-won, imperfect peace with the past.

The pivotal decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that change each character forever.