Wrong Place Wrong Time

Jen finds herself pregnant. Kelly tells her he has an all-day conference. Jen follows him in a cab, and Kelly heads into Liverpool. He parks near the courthouse and changes into a suit at a nearby bar. He heads to the courthouse, passing the woman Jen recognizes as Nicola. The two talk briefly, and Jen overhears Nicola tell Kelly to call her if he ever wants to “come back.”

Jen follows Kelly into the courthouse where Jones is being tried for drug running and grand auto theft. She loses Kelly but heads into the courtroom. A prosecution witness, an undercover police officer, is called to identify Jones as the ringleader. As the witness testifies behind a curtain to protect his anonymity, Jen recognizes Kelly’s voice.

Jen listens, stunned, to Kelly’s testimony of his involvement with the crime ring. She calculates that by this time she and Kelly had been lovers for six months, but she never suspected he was anything but a self-employed contractor. She wonders how much of anything he told her was true.

Jen confronts Kelly after his testimony. She demands to know about his role as an undercover cop. He tells her his real name is Ryan Hiles and that he intends, for now, to live as Kelly Brotherhood, the name of his dead brother and his invented last name. Kelly tells her that he stayed Kelly because the two of them had met: “Ryan has truly become Kelly” (322). He was in love with her, and left the police force.

Jen asks what will happen if Jones gets out of prison and finds out Kelly was the cop who put him away? Kelly answers: “He’d come and kill me” (323).

Jen begins to understand what might have happened: Jones was released from prison, had sought to jumpstart the old gang, and had come looking for Kelly. If Kelly refused, Jones had enough to put him in prison. Kelly had no choice. He began working with Jones, but when he suspected that Jones might be on to him, he reached out to Nicola and got her nearly killed. Todd worked in the office that served as a front for the operation and was given the job by Clio, the niece of Jones’s partner. If Jones had come to kill Kelly, Todd acted to protect his father.

The police are about to move in on Jones based on the intel Ryan provided. But Ryan knows that Jones, once arrested, would never disclose where baby Eve is. His last chance is to go to the ringleader’s address, the Legal Eagles, an up-and-coming law firm in Liverpool. He goes into the building pretending to be a contractor looking for work. He is met by a trainee named Jen Eagles. Ryan insists he wants to talk to her boss, whom she identifies as her father.

It is March 2003. Jen recognizes the spring afternoon as the day after she first met Kelly. Before she goes to work, she wrestles with her vintage computer and types in “missing baby.” She finds an article about a kidnapped baby, Eve Green, missing now for two months after a carjacking.

She goes to work and meets Kelly for their lunch date. The lunch goes on for hours. They both reveal that they have the need to help others and want kids. In an off moment, Kelly tells her that he and her father have a mutual friend, Jones. Jen the time traveler is taken aback—her father knew Jones? The date ends awkwardly (unlike the first time when they ended up in bed). Jen knows now that nobody can help her.

Ryan awakes in Jen’s bedroom. They have spent three days (and nights) together. He knows he is in love and that he has only one choice, to quit the police force and stay Kelly. He knows what Jen does not, that her father is involved in the crime ring, providing lists of properties where cars could be boosted.

Before he quits the force, he visits Jen’s father. He tells him that Jones is about to be arrested and tells him to quit helping the crime ring to protect Jen. Jen’s father agrees. Ryan goes to the police station. He promises to give testimony against Jones in court in return for not pursuing the investigation any further. As he leaves, he takes only two things with him, his badge and a copy of the missing child poster. He knows he must stay Kelly Brotherhood, the name he gave himself when he went undercover. He has no regrets. It is the day “he became himself” (349).

It’s the day Jen and Kelly meet. She comes back from lunch early and, with a sinking heart, watches Kelly root about her desk. He is searching, she knows, for the property listings, evidence of her father “facilitating organized crime” (352).

Jen confronts her father, and he admits it all: Years ago the family needed money and now he is in too deep. She understands that Kelly did not tell her for all those years to protect her, because he loved her: “It is a kindness” (354).

Jen wakes up and realizes this is the day that Eve goes missing. She hurries to the police station and asks for Ryan or Kelly, and says she wants to report a crime that will happen that night. The cops are not interested.

On her own, she calls in an anonymous tip. That night she goes to the timeshare property—she has the address from her father’s papers. She watches as two boys pull up to the home to steal the car and police swarm in. She had stopped the theft and the kidnapping. She feels almost ready to return to 2022: “She’d lived her life once, and missed it all, but her wise mind, her subconscious, it knew things” (360).

She goes to the police station and meets Kelly. She says she called in the tip and just wants to make sure the burglars were arrested. Kelly asks how she knew about the robbery. She plays coy—she and Kelly have not yet met. Kelly tells her the main guy got away. Jen understands now that Jones never goes to prison, never comes to her house, and never gets knifed. The cop introduces himself: “I’m Ryan” (363). And with that Jen is gone.

It is 2022. Jen is back to Day 0 and is waiting for Todd to come home. The clocks have just clicked back the hour. She is now Jen Hiles. She is a lawyer; her husband, Ryan, is a police officer. Their son, Todd, comes in from his date. Jen asks about Clio. Todd is confused—he reminds her his new girlfriend is named Eve. Jen asks to see her photo. Todd shows her a photo on his phone. It is Clio, the kidnapped baby who was never kidnapped, who never became Clio, the adopted daughter of one of Jones’s relatives: “Clio. Ryan. Eve. Kelly. People whose names have changed but whose love has endured despite that” (367).

It is the morning of October 30. When Todd asks about their weird conversation the night before about someone named Clio, Jen has no idea who Clio is.

Jen’s friend Pauline wakes up in a panic. Her son Connor had been arrested the night before over his involvement in a neighborhood crime ring run by someone named Joseph Jones. As she rushes to call a lawyer, Connor comes out of her bedroom. He has no idea what she is talking about—only then does she notice the date, October 30. She wonders: “Wasn’t yesterday the thirtieth?” (370).