Leigh Fisher (Trish McGee) is a psychology professor who experiences vivid Past-Life Memories of being a cook in the 1800s named Erin Murphy. Leigh is contacted by a wealthy woman named Katie Watson (Mary Avgerinos), asking for help with her autistic teenage daughter Claire (Caroline Kearns), who talks to people who aren't there. When Claire insists on calling Leigh "Erin," Leigh thinks that Claire could be the key to finding out what happened in her previous life, especially since Claire calls the gardener Alan (Rich Henkels) "Joshua," the name of Erin's boyfriend.
In Your Afterglow contains examples of:
- Cardboard Box of Unemployment: When the university fires Leigh due to her unconventional beliefs, she piles her books and papers into a large cardboard box.
- Character Tics:
- When Claire's hands aren't occupied by anything, she wrings them and rubs them together.
- Leigh rubs her wrists, which her previous incarnation slashed.
- Flowers of Romance: Joshua gives Erin pink roses and says, "Be careful, they have thorns." In the present day, Alan gives Leigh white roses and says the same line.
- Interrupted Suicide: After Joshua was killed in the Civil War, Erin cut her wrists. Her employers' children saw her bleeding out on the kitchen floor and pressed on the wounds with cloth, saving her.
- I See Dead People: Claire talks to the ghosts of George and Anne James, who owned her family's mansion long ago. She hates it and wishes the ghosts would leave her alone. In the end the ghosts leave once Leigh discovers Erin's diary, but she tells Claire that she has a gift and warns her that she'll likely meet other ghosts in her life.
- Sensory Overload: During a lecture on autism, Leigh plays unpleasant screeching noises to show the audience what it's like to be overwhelmed by noises you can't block out.
- Title Drop: Erin writes in her diary, "When fate swooped in and snatched you away, I thought surely she'd come for me too. But she didn't. And I'm still here, living in your afterglow."
- Voiceover Letter: Several characters keep journals, and they all mentally read their entries aloud.
