Plot summary

Page Clarke is a 40-year-old woman who is married and lives with her 44-year-old husband, Brad Clarke, her 15-year-old daughter, Allyson, and her 7-year-old son, Andrew. One night, Brad goes on an unexpected business trip to Cleveland. Allyson tells her parents that she will have dinner with her friend Chloe and Chloe's father, Trygve Thorensen. Instead, Allyson goes out with Chloe and two older boys named Jamie Applegate and Phillip Chapman. While crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, the teenagers collide with a woman who claims to be a senator's wife, Laura Hutchinson. Phillip is killed, Jamie survives with only a small cut, Chloe suffers injuries including a broken leg, a broken pelvis, and a shattered hip, and Allyson has severe head trauma.

Both girls are rushed to the hospital, while Trygve and Page arrive before the surgeries. Page cannot contact Brad until after the surgery has begun, and Brad is angry that she did not ask him first. She tells him that Allyson would have died at 6:00 p.m. if the surgery had not happened. One hour later, Brad arrives at the hospital and leaves for their house without Page. Later, Page asks Brad why he returned home early from his "trip," and he admits that he has been cheating on her. Soon after, Brad disappears multiple times. Eventually, Page's mother, Maribelle, and sister, Alexis, arrive in San Francisco and spend time relaxing at the house while Allyson remains in the hospital.

One night after dinner, Page argues with her mother, demanding to know why she pretended not to know that her father had molested her and her sister as children. Soon after, she forces Brad to move out and sends her mother and sister back to New York. By that time, Page and Trygve had shared their feelings for each other. For four months, Allyson remains in a coma, and Andrew, who tried to run away, is taken to see his sister. Soon, Trygve and his children, Nick, Bjorn, and Chloe, go to a lake for the weekend, and Allyson wakes up from her coma. When Page joins them at the lake, she tells Trygve that she is pregnant with his child, and they begin to plan their wedding.