Lotto and Mathilde elope after two weeks of knowing each other. The pair enjoy their impromptu honeymoon in Maine. The young lovers find their pleasures in each other on the beach, despite the frigid temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean in May. It was Mathilde’s idea and Lotto relishes her purity.

During their consummation, Lotto imagines the joys of growing old with his new bride and can’t imagine ever tiring of her in the future. Yet the post-coital bliss is short-lived and the duo finds their love is not as simple as before they were married.

The love story of Lotto and Mathilde’s origins backtracks all the way to the love story of Lotto’s parents. His beautiful mother, Antoinette, follows her dreams of stardom to Florida, but soon settles for a failed love life as an aging aquarium mermaid. By luck, she meets a young runaway named Sallie who introduces Antoinette to her rich-though-aloof manufacturing brother, Gawain. Gawain is the founder of the Hamlin Springs water bottling empire and amasses a fortune. He and Antoinette fall into a convenient but honest love. Not ten months after they get married, their son, Lancelot, or Lotto, is born.

Lotto enjoys a carefree upbringing of wealth and support from his parents and aunt until witnessing the death of his father right before the birth of his baby sister, Rachel.