Maybe Next Time

Maybe Next Time Plot Summary

Introduction

Emma Jacobs wakes to the sound of a bicycle bell on a December morning that should be ordinary. Instead, she's trapped in a nightmare that defies logic—December 3rd, 2021, playing on endless repeat. Each day begins the same: her husband Dan beside her in bed, their children Miles and Poppy preparing for school, the familiar rhythm of a life she's taken for granted. But each night ends in devastating loss when Dan dies at exactly 10:17 PM. What begins as confusion transforms into desperate attempts to save him, then spirals into rage and despair as Emma realizes nothing she does can alter fate's cruel design. Caught in time's merciless loop, she must confront the bitter truth about her distracted existence—always rushing toward the next task, missing precious moments with those she loves most. As the same twenty-four hours repeat with clockwork precision, Emma faces the ultimate question: if you knew today was your last with someone, how would you choose to live it?

Chapter 1: The Distracted Life: Emma's World Before the Loop

Emma's morning begins with the jarring realization that she's forgotten their anniversary—again. Dan lies beside her, hopeful and patient as always, while notifications ping relentlessly from her phone. She rushes through breakfast preparation, barely registering Miles's dejected face or Poppy's secretive behavior. Her mind splits between work crises and domestic logistics: the Arthur Chumley scandal at her literary agency, committee meetings, client demands, and the endless stream of tasks that fragment her attention. Dan presents her with a cinnamon swirl, a small gesture that reminds her of early love and better days. But Emma's already calculating her commute time, mentally rehearsing the crucial meeting with Linda, her boss, and their most lucrative but problematic client. Her phone buzzes with messages from stressed authors, demanding editors, and overbearing committee members. She promises Dan they'll celebrate properly later, the same hollow promise she's made before. The day unfolds in familiar chaos. Emma navigates London's streets mechanically, her attention scattered across multiple screens and conversations. At work, she mediates between Arthur's offensive behavior and publishers threatening to drop him. Her colleague Jas watches with concern as Emma juggles crisis after crisis, each one seemingly urgent, none truly irreplaceable. Evening brings no respite. Emma rushes home to find her children locked in mysterious conflict, Dan cooking dinner alone, and herself too exhausted to fully engage with any of them. The weight of missed moments accumulates like debt—conversations half-heard, problems ignored, love expressed in hurried kisses and distracted nods. She doesn't yet know that time is about to present her with an impossible bill.

Chapter 2: Shattered Reality: The Night Everything Changed

The anniversary dinner unfolds with painful awkwardness. Dan has prepared Emma's favorite meal, arranged orange roses in their best crystal vase, and written another heartfelt letter—their annual tradition spanning fifteen years. But Emma has no letter to give in return, only a hastily scribbled note claiming she kept it in her bag all day. Dan's disappointment cuts deeper than anger ever could. Their argument erupts over this small betrayal, but it represents something larger—the gradual erosion of connection, the way urgent things crowd out important ones. Dan's voice breaks as he confronts the pattern that's been building for years: Emma's endless availability to everyone except her own family. She responds with defensive fury, blaming him for making a "big deal" about their anniversary while ignoring her own guilt. The fight wakes Miles, and their eight-year-old son appears at the top of the stairs clutching his stuffed tiger, frightened by his parents' raised voices. The sight of him forces a temporary ceasefire, but the damage lingers in the air like smoke. Dan storms out with Gus, their dog, needing space from the woman who once wrote him love letters and now can barely remember to write them at all. Emma stands in their kitchen surrounded by the debris of good intentions—untouched dinner, wilted flowers, an envelope containing words she'll never read. Outside, sleet begins to fall, and somewhere in the darkness of their quiet London street, metal meets flesh with a sound that will haunt her forever. The phone call comes at 10:17 PM precisely: Dan is dead, struck by a car while walking their dog. In one terrible instant, Emma's distracted life transforms into a focused nightmare of loss and regret.

Chapter 3: Denial and Desperation: Attempts to Change Fate

Emma wakes to the sound of a bicycle bell, and impossibly, it's December 3rd again. Dan breathes beside her, alive and warm, speaking the same words he spoke yesterday. Her mind reels as she recognizes every detail: the crack in the curtains, the shaft of sunlight, even the timing of her phone's notifications. Yesterday's tragedy feels viscerally real, yet here's Dan, preparing for what he believes is an ordinary Monday. Confusion gives way to desperate hope. If time has somehow rewound, Emma can prevent Dan's death. She memorizes his route with Gus, studies the weather patterns, even follows them secretly to identify the dangerous intersection. But her early attempts are clumsy—her frantic warnings sound like madness to Dan, and her erratic behavior alarms their children. Each time she tries to explain the impossible truth, she drives him away with her intensity. The loop's mechanics reveal themselves with cruel precision. No matter what Emma changes—keeping Dan inside, walking different routes, even calling the police—he dies at exactly 10:17 PM. Sometimes it's the original car accident. Sometimes it's a heart attack in their living room. Once, horrifically, it happens while he's brushing his teeth, and Emma finds him collapsed on their bathroom floor while she listens helplessly from the hallway. Her desperation escalates with each reset. She seeks medical help, convinced she's having a breakdown, but doctors find nothing wrong. She researches time loops, parallel dimensions, anything that might explain her situation. Meanwhile, Dan grows increasingly worried about his wife's mental state, and their children witness her erratic mood swings with growing fear. Emma realizes that her attempts to save Dan might be destroying her family in different ways, but she cannot stop trying. The alternative—accepting his death—remains unthinkable.

Chapter 4: The Darkness Within: Emma's Descent into Anger

Months pass in the space of a single repeating day, and Emma's sanity begins to fracture. The psychological weight of watching Dan die night after night while pretending each day is new pushes her toward a darkness she's never known. She stops trying to save him and starts using the consequence-free loop for revenge and release. At work, she unleashes years of suppressed fury on Arthur Chumley, the misogynistic author whose success has forced her to compromise her principles. She calls him exactly what he is—a waste of space whose continued publication embarrasses everyone involved. She quits spectacularly, taking pleasure in Linda's shocked face and Arthur's indignant spluttering. On social media, she wages war against everyone who's ever slighted her professionally, burning bridges with gleeful abandon. Her anger extends to personal relationships. She finally tells her emotionally distant parents exactly what their neglect has cost her, screaming decades of hurt through a video call that leaves them speechless. She attacks the petty tyrants on her volunteer committees, the demanding neighbors, the passive-aggressive school parents—anyone who has ever treated her time as less valuable than their own convenience. Some days, Emma simply stops participating in life altogether. She binges television shows, eats nothing but junk food, or roams London spending money she doesn't have on things she doesn't need. She has sex with Dan in the morning, then ignores him completely until he dies, cycling through every possible combination of kindness and cruelty the day allows. The loop becomes both prison and playground, a space where actions have no consequences but emotions still carry their full weight. Emma discovers that causing pain doesn't diminish her own suffering—it only adds guilt to her already unbearable load. Yet she cannot stop, trapped in patterns of destruction that mirror her inability to break free from time itself.

Chapter 5: Revelation and Forgiveness: Understanding Hattie's Truth

The revelation comes when Emma finally witnesses the crash instead of hiding from it. She watches the car lose control on black ice, sees the driver's desperate attempt to avoid hitting Gus, and recognizes the face behind the deflating airbag. The woman who killed Dan is Hattie—his beloved sister, Emma's dearest friend, the person they both trust most in the world. This knowledge initially fuels Emma's rage to new heights. She confronts Hattie at the crash site, screaming accusations while neighbors try to restrain her. The betrayal feels complete—not only has she lost Dan, but the loss came at the hands of someone they loved unconditionally. Emma's anger finds its perfect target in Hattie's tear-streaked face and broken apologies. But as the loops continue, Emma begins to piece together the full story. She notices details she'd missed before: Hattie's haunted expression, her pajamas and bare feet, the desperate way she'd been driving to their house in the middle of the night. Through careful observation and patient conversation, Emma learns about Hattie's miscarriage, her abusive marriage to Ed, and the cruel words that finally drove her to flee. Understanding doesn't immediately bring forgiveness, but it begins to shift Emma's perspective. She realizes that Hattie wasn't reckless—she was broken, seeking refuge with the only family she had left after her husband's psychological cruelty. The accident was truly that: a desperate woman on icy roads, making a split-second choice to save their dog rather than hit him directly. Emma's anger begins to transform into something more complex. She sees that Dan dies regardless of whether Hattie is involved—heart attacks, strokes, accidents that seem to bend reality to ensure his death at precisely 10:17 PM. Hattie didn't create this situation; she's as much a victim of it as everyone else. In rescuing Hattie from her marriage and bringing her home safely each night, Emma discovers that saving someone else might be part of saving herself.

Chapter 6: Present in Every Moment: Rediscovering What Matters

Emma's breakthrough comes through exhaustion rather than revelation. After months of rage and desperation, she simply has no energy left for fighting fate. Instead, she begins to listen—really listen—to what her colleague Jas suggests: perhaps this endless day isn't a curse but a gift, an opportunity to live fully in the present with the people she loves most. She starts small, rediscovering the pleasures that her distracted life had obscured. She has proper conversations with Jurek, the café owner she'd bought coffee from for years without learning his name. She brings audiobooks for his vision-impaired mother, performs small acts of kindness that cost nothing but attention. She helps Jas advance her career, supports her struggling author Lou, and finally quits the job that has been slowly poisoning her professional integrity. At home, Emma learns to truly see her children. She discovers that Miles feels friendless and insecure, that Poppy is being cyberbullied and has been secretly making TikTok videos that her classmates mock. Instead of rushing to fix their problems, Emma practices patience, learning to listen first and judge never. She plays board games with them, takes them ice skating, creates space for laughter and connection. Most importantly, Emma rediscovers Dan. She writes him different love letters each morning, drawing from their fifteen years of shared memories. She plans surprise lunches, initiates more physical intimacy, and most crucially, puts her phone aside to give him her full attention. They have conversations instead of logistics meetings, share jokes instead of just responsibilities. The day begins to feel less like a prison and more like a perfect snow globe—contained but beautiful, repetitive but precious. Emma realizes that most people would kill for just one more day with someone they love, and she has infinite days with her entire family. The loop hasn't trapped her; it's freed her from the tyranny of tomorrow's urgent demands.

Chapter 7: Acceptance: Making Peace with the Inevitable

The final transformation comes when Emma stops trying to change Dan's death and starts helping him face it. On their last loop, she tells him everything—about the endless repetition, about his nightly death, about the months of anguish she's endured. To her surprise, Dan believes her completely and accepts the news with heartbreaking grace. Together, they craft their perfect final day. Ice skating with the children and Hattie, dinner by candlelight, bedtime stories that stretch long into the evening. Dan writes his own goodbye letter while Emma sleeps, a final expression of love that encompasses their entire relationship and his hopes for her future. He thanks her for the gift of their time together and makes her promise to live fully after he's gone. Dan's acceptance transforms Emma's understanding of their situation. He reveals that he should have died years earlier, during a fall from a balcony at exactly 10:17 PM. He's been living on borrowed time ever since, and perhaps now that debt has come due. His gratitude for their years together, rather than bitterness about their end, shows Emma how to honor love rather than mourn its loss. On their final night, Emma holds Dan as he dies peacefully in their bed, her hand over his heart as it beats its last. There's no violence this time, no sudden tragedy—just the quiet end of a life fully lived and deeply cherished. Emma doesn't wake to the bicycle bell again, but to sirens and grey clouds, and the terrible but necessary work of continuing to live. The loop has ended, but its lessons remain. Emma has learned to live in the present moment, to prioritize connection over productivity, to see the extraordinary grace hidden in ordinary days. She faces her future without Dan, but enriched by the gift of truly knowing him, their children, and herself. The clockwork of time moves forward again, but Emma's heart keeps its own rhythm now—one that beats in harmony with love rather than obligation.

Summary

In the end, Emma's supernatural ordeal becomes a profound meditation on presence, love, and the tyranny of modern distraction. The time loop forces her to confront an uncomfortable truth: she had been slowly abandoning her own life, one missed moment at a time. Through the repetition of a single day, she discovers that the quantity of time means nothing without quality of attention. The story's genius lies in its recognition that we all live in loops of our own making—habits and obligations that prevent us from seeing the magic in our mundane days. Emma's liberation comes not from escaping the loop, but from learning to inhabit it fully. She transforms from someone who treated life as a series of tasks to be completed into someone who understands that life is a series of moments to be savored. Dan's death becomes not an ending but a beginning—the start of Emma's commitment to live each remaining day as if it might be her last with everyone she loves. The clockwork of love keeps different time than the clockwork of obligation. It doesn't measure minutes but memories, not efficiency but connection. Emma's story suggests that perhaps we all need our own time loops—opportunities to step out of the relentless forward momentum of modern life and remember what makes our hearts beat in the first place. The most radical act might not be changing the world, but paying attention to the one we already have.

About Author

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Cesca Major

Major connects historical events with psychological depth, crafting novels that explore the interplay between personal and collective experiences. Her academic background in history from Bristol University and her subsequent careers as a television presenter and history teacher inform her writing style, which weaves factual historical research with rich emotional narratives. This dual focus on historical accuracy and psychological insight allows Major to delve into themes of love, loss, and the impact of war, as seen in her works like "The Silent Hours", a time-slip novel set in post-war Devon.\n\nFor readers, Major’s books offer not just engaging stories but also a deeper understanding of human resilience and transformation during tumultuous times. Her historical novels, including "The Last Night", are infused with a sense of authenticity and empathy, providing a window into the lives of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances. Meanwhile, her psychological thrillers under the pseudonym C.D. Major, such as "A Thin Place", push the boundaries of emotional and psychological exploration, appealing to those who seek complexity in character development and narrative.\n\nThough Major has not received major literary prizes, her recognition by Reese Witherspoon's Book Club for "Maybe Next Time" and its development into a film underscore her commercial success and the broad appeal of her storytelling. Therefore, her work is particularly suited to readers interested in the emotional nuances of historical fiction and the intricate dynamics of psychological thrillers. This short bio encapsulates Major's ability to balance historical integrity with compelling narratives, ensuring her place as a significant contemporary author.

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