Content Warning: Pieces of Her includes a mass shooting (Chapter 1) as well as general violence and murder. It also uses offensive terms for Black people and gay men.

An unidentified narrator ruminates on the past love she felt for an unidentified man. She reveals that the relationship was tumultuous, the man himself charming but careless and selfish. His charm worked on her, and others, for a long time, but when it stopped working, everything began to fall apart. The mistakes he made resulted in a death, a death sentence, and nearly her own death. She admits that part of her still loves him, and wonders how this can be the case. Together, they had taken a moral stand against the system and its abuses, but she realizes now that he had been more interested in the thrill and potentially becoming famous. The narrator then shares a secret—that she led the pair to their downfall. She believes that to change the world, one must first destroy it.

It is Andy’s 31st birthday and she and her mother, Laura, are having breakfast at a diner; Andy has just finished her shift as a night shift police dispatcher. Laura apologizes for bringing Andy back home to Belle Isle, Georgia three years earlier.