48 pages • 1 hour read
Gillian McAllisterWrong Place Wrong Time
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Day Minus Four, 09:00”
Jen heads back to work and talks with her colleague and friend Rakesh. She calls his friend, Professor Andy Vettese, an accomplished physics professor who has spent his career studying the relationship between memory and time. They meet for coffee. To convince a hesitant Vettese that she is in a time loop, Jen tells him he will win a prestigious research prize later that week (Jen learned this when Googling his name).
Convinced, Andy explains that theoretically she is stuck in a “closed time loop” (96), and that her subconscious may be directing her to land in days significant to what she missed. Andy tells her to pay attention. To validate her time travel, Andy cuts her finger with a knife.
Certain that Clio is the key, Jen goes to the building her uncle owns and tries to talk with Clio. Clio refuses to talk—she and Todd broke up and have only recently gotten back together. She offers no explanation. As Jen leaves the building, she notices a passing cop car driven, she is sure, by the cop who arrested Todd.
That night she decides to talk to Todd and tell him about the time loop and his killing of Jones. Todd does not question the time loop, but vehemently denies that he could ever kill anyone.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Day Minus Eight, 08:00”
When Jen wakes up, the cut on her finger is gone. She has gone further back in time. She feels desperate, and when Todd leaves for school, she ransacks his room. She finds a small package in a drawer that contains a police badge issued to one Ryan Hiles, a poster about a kidnapped baby, and a cheap burner phone with three numbers in its directory: Ezra Michaels, Joseph Jones, and Nicola Williams, the only name she does not recognize. A message indicates Todd had agreed to meet Nicola and then later to “move in” on the 18th, “baby or no baby” (110).
She stops at the police station where Todd had been taken but can find no information about Ryan Hiles. She tells an officer she wants to report that her son is acting peculiarly and carrying a knife with him. The officer agrees to talk to Todd. She then asks about missing baby cases, but the officer declines to answer.
The thought of the missing baby triggers Jen’s remembrance of her own pregnancy. She and Kelly had to get married when she found out she was expecting. After Todd’s difficult birth, Jen experienced postpartum depression; she came to see how her law career would have to be put on hold.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Day Minus Eight, 19:30”
It’s Parent Teacher Night at Todd’s school. Much to Jen’s chagrin, all the teachers, save one, assure her Todd is doing fine. His geography teacher, Mr. Sampson, tells Jen that recently Todd has been acting withdrawn, “off the rails” (123).
Chapter 14 Summary: “Ryan”
It is the fifth day of Officer Ryan’s work as a police officer. Police work was hardly what he had hoped for. He finds it routine, boring. As he heads home, a superior officer stops him and asks whether he might be interested in working with the organized crime unit.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Day Minus Nine, 15:00”
Determined to talk with Mr. Sampson, Jen goes to Todd’s school. The teacher tells her that he overheard Todd talking to Connor about some baby. She wonders: Had he gotten a girl, maybe Clio, pregnant?
She pressures a client with connections in the police department to run the name Nicola Williams, find out anything she can about an officer named Ryan Hiles, and get her a list of any kidnapped babies. It is only then she remembers the night Todd was arrested: A woman named Nicola Williams had been knifed just two days earlier.
That night, Jen follows Todd to the office. When Ezra comes out, Jen decides to follow him. He drives to the docks. A Tesla drives up. The boy driving hands Ezra the keys and departs. Ezra directs a few dock workers to secure the Tesla onto one of the boats. Jen understands in a flash that the car was stolen and that Ezra was directing it to be loaded and taken out of the country.
Later she gets a text from her client. Nothing on Nicola Williams, but she did find out that Officer Ryan Hiles is dead.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Day Minus Twelve, 08:00”
When Jen awakens, she realizes this is the day that Todd is to meet Nicola. She is determined to follow him and make sure he stays safe. Before he gets out of school, she phones Andy. Jen tells him about his forthcoming surprise award, and Andy is convinced all over again that Jen is in a time loop. He tells Jen she might continue to leap backward until the mystery is solved.
Todd gets home, proud of a school paper he wrote on photosynthesis. He doesn’t leave the house.
Jen reads the essay and feels emotional. Todd can’t understand why his mother is suddenly interested in his schoolwork: “Todd blinks in surprise, and that blink—it cracks her heart open just a little. She’s tried so hard, but look at his shock” (143).
Jen is confused over how little she understands her son. Whatever he is involved in, she tells herself: “I’ll never not love you” (144).
Chapters 11-16 Analysis
The novel’s chapter titles ground the reader in time, telling them how far back Jen is from the night of the murder. With each chapter, she regresses further back, and this section explores why. Professor Vettese suggests her subconscious might be directing the time loop. The Power of Love, particularly maternal love, has propelled her back in time.
The geography teacher’s assessment of Todd’s behavior confirms to Jen that she’s on to something. For a mother who blames herself for being out of touch with her son, her maternal instinct was on the mark. Perhaps, the novel suggests, Jen’s commitment to her work didn’t completely usurp her role as a mother.
This section introduces Jen to the crime ring that will explain her husband’s 20-year deception and her son’s murder of Jones. In reliving these critical days, Jen opts to respond to events with more awareness, to be more involved in the activities around her, and to be a more loving mother. In following Ezra’s car to the docks and witnessing the transfer of a stolen vehicle, Jen learns that her son’s involvement with Clio has entangled him in an underground criminal enterprise.
Her discovery of three apparently unrelated pieces of potential evidence—the badge, the missing child poster, and the burner phone—extends Jen’s awareness. Her son’s decision to kill must somehow be related to the deceased cop Ryan Hiles, a missing baby named Eve, and a burner phone. As with a traditional police procedural, the discovery of these clues propels Jen’s investigation. They allow the novel, even as it moves backward, to move forward.
In reading Todd’s essay, Jen wonders if she hasn’t failed him as much as she had thought: “He’s so confident. She has done one thing right, at least (143).
This moment indicates that Jen may have misread herself to some extent. It also suggests that Jen’s time travels might not just be about saving Todd but forgiving and saving herself.
