The novel opens with the protagonist, Leda, driving. She suffers a sudden attack of pain and weakness that causes her to lose consciousness and drive off the road. In her altered state, Leda imagines herself on the beach. When she was a child, her mother always warned her against swimming when a red flag indicated dangerous waters. Even though she is an adult, Leda remembers the fear her mother instilled and feels too afraid to enter the water. When she awakes later in the hospital, unharmed except for an “inexplicable lesion” on her left side, she knows the accident wasn’t caused by drowsiness, as the doctor suggests. Instead, it was caused by something Leda did but didn’t understand.

Leda describes how her adult daughters, Bianca and Marta, moved to Toronto, Canada, to live near their father. Instead of feeling sad or lonely, Leda thrives in her daughters’ absence. Her “only obligation” is to call them daily. Otherwise, she is free to live her own life. She works and studies whenever she likes, eats at a trattoria near her house, and even finds her body looking more like that of her younger self.