A Slow Fire Burning

Laura goes to the laundromat where she used to work and becomes angry when no one will speak to her. Miriam is passing by; noticing Laura’s agitation, Miriam approaches her. Miriam speaks kindly to Laura, implying that the two of them are alike because they have both been misunderstood and mistreated. Laura ends up inviting Miriam back to her apartment, where she confides that her outbursts relate back to her trauma of being hit by a car and her mother subsequently marrying the man who was driving the car.

The narrative flashes back to the scene of Laura’s accident; Janine rushes to Laura’s side. The car that struck Laura does not stop, but police are able to identify it from nearby camera footage. When they reach out to the owner of the car, a man named Richard, Richard claims that the car was stolen from him the previous night. However, Richard quickly incriminates himself, revealing that he was the one driving the car that hit Laura.

Laura’s accident was so severe that it took her a long time to regain any memories, and when she first began to remember things about the accident, her mother convinced her that she was misremembering.