A Day by Chance

Architect Melanie Parker, the divorced mother of six-year-old Sammy, feels the need to take control of everything in her life as no one, including her mother, Rita, housewife sister, Liza, or musician ex-husband, Eddie, seems to provide any meaningful support, especially when she or Sammy need it. New York Daily News investigative reporter Jack Taylor, the divorced father of six-year-old Maggie, Sammy's classmate at a Montessori school, and whose ex-wife, Kristen, lives in the same building as the Parkers - has a seemingly cavalier attitude toward life and parenting. He needs to take unexpected one week custody of Maggie as Kristen's childcare plans during her and her new husband's honeymoon fall through at the last minute. It is in their roles as parents in making Sammy and Maggie miss their school field trip on a Circle Line harbor cruise that Melanie and Jack meet, their differing personalities, especially in relation to their kids missing the trip, which is an initial and immediate source of animosity between them. Without any other seeming option on their respective busy work days - Melanie, who has an important meeting with her very particular boss, Smith Leland, and some lucrative clients on a final pitch, and Jack, who has to deal with a possible libel suit against the paper when one of his sources in a story about mayoral corruption and the mob reneges on earlier statements, the crux of the story itself - they reluctantly enter into an agreement to share childcare responsibilities for Sammy and Maggie for the day, Melanie for the time outside of her meeting, and Jack outside of a press conference at City Hall later in the day. As they get into one mishap after another, both of a professional and personal nature, much of those with Sammy and Maggie just doing what six-year-olds do, Melanie and Jack can only admit to themselves that they can't get the other off of their minds in a romantic sense, anything happening from those thoughts if they can both get over their differences and admit to the other what they are feeling.