The Lost Daughter

When the rain begins to slow, Leda gets in her car. She drives with no clear destination, and more memories come to her. She remembers visiting another beach with her husband and another couple. The woman, Lucilla, took a liking to Marta and Bianca. She was completely focused on “seducing” them with games and attention while never attempting to build a relationship with their mother. Because Lucilla bore no responsibility for the children, she was allowed to play the role of the “good mother,” letting them behave as they pleased. Afterward, Leda was left to discipline, reinstate her daughters’ routines, and play the “bad mother.” Just the thought of this old injustice makes Leda angry.

She thinks about how Lucilla was sometimes left out of Marta and Bianca’s games, which gratified Leda. However, excluded, Lucilla would begin to enumerate the girls’ faults, which caused Leda to “suffer again.” She remembers a specific incident when Marta started crying while Bianca and Lucilla played together. Fed up, Leda insisted that her husband deal with the child, and soon both daughters were playing happily with their father and Lucilla. Leda was the one excluded. Realizing she had lost an earring, she broke up the happy group by demanding her husband help her look for it.