After reading this, I am compelled to comment that this is how you write a Lifetime plot.
That might just be me, of course.

(And did Rebecca’s life last a full hour after getting that contract?)

I’m very very glad you enjoyed this! (Looks like all those hours spent unwillingly watching those crappy movies starring Meredith Baxter paid off here…)
And yeah, I suppose she DID live for another hour. All her life, Rebecca lived in “movie time,” where the usual passages of time got reduced to jump cuts, abridgements and handy title cards. However, that extra hour of her life wasn’t put to screen until 7 years after the first film, and that was the point in which they had to use Benjamin Button technology to de-age Meredith Baxter enough so that she could star in it again…
=P