Synopsis

The book is about Clare and Henry. Henry suffers from a rare genetic condition called Chrono-Displacement Disorder which makes him unwillingly travel in time which causes a lot of trouble for their relationship.

Clare met Henry for the first time when she was six years old 1977 when he time traveled to her. Henry though had met Clare before. He met her for the first when he was 28 and she was 20, 1991 in Chicago. When Henry first met Clare she already knew him since he traveled a lot to her when she was young and became very good friends. Henry had also already told Clare that when he was from, they were married.

But when Henry met her in Chicago 1991 for the first time he couldn’t remember all of those times he had traveled to her and all of that time he has spent with her, since he hadn’t lived it yet, which was heartbreaking for Clare since she had fell in love with him, but despite that, after spending more time with Henry, he started to fall for her “again” and they became a couple and later got married, just like Henry had told her when she was young.

Before Henry met Clare he was a selfish, drank a lot and lived in a small untidy apartment, but when he started spending more time with Clare he had to shape up and slowly matured and became the Henry that Clare had got to know as a child.

The main part of the novel is from the part where Clare and Henry have gotten married. They move in together, buy a house and get into their routines. About a year later Clare tells Henry that she wants a baby. The problem is that whenever Henry has time traveled he has never seen him and Clare with a baby and Clare is just getting miscarriage after miscarriage and it is tearing her apart inside out, but she still kept on trying. Henry couldn’t stand the pain and the sadness Clare had to go through, so he had a vasectomy to prevent further pregnancies.

That didn’t stop Clare though, because one day she met a younger version of Henry who had time traveled to her time and got pregnant with him instead. Technically that wasn’t cheating, so Henry had nothing to be angry about. Anyways, for some reason that baby survived the pregnancy and became the family DeTamble’s first and only child.

The child was a baby-girl which they name Alba, but Henry actually got to meet her even before her birth when he time-traveled to 2011 when Alba had turned 10. There he got to know that Alba also was a time traveler and had got the same genetic condition as Henry, the only difference was that Alba had a bit more control over it. He also got to know that he was going to die at the age of 43, when Alba was only going to be five.

…And just like Alba had told him, five years later, he traveled to the wrong place at the wrong time and accidentally got shot by Clare’s brother.

Clare got devastated and even though Henry had told her not to wait for him. Even though Henry was dead, parts of him somewhere out there in time where still alive, but Henry still didn’t want Clare to wait for a dead man to visit her and instead asked her to move on, but she couldn’t.

The novel ended with 82 year old Clare, sitting down, drinking her tea and still waiting.