Hanneke flirts with a Nazi soldier to distract him from the illegal goods hidden in her bicycle basket.

Mrs. Janssen reveals she has been hiding a Jewish girl named Mirjam Roodveldt, who has mysteriously disappeared.

Hanneke visits the Jewish Lyceum hoping to find a photograph of Mirjam and is stopped by a secretary.

Ollie Van de Kamp, Bas's older brother, appears at Hanneke's home and invites her to a gathering.

Hanneke arrives at what she believes is a dinner party but discovers it is an active resistance meeting.

Hanneke enters the Schouwburg Theater deportation center and is overwhelmed by its horrifying conditions.

Mina demonstrates her resistance work by handing off a Jewish infant to an adoptive family at a tram station.

Ollie intercepts Hanneke on the road and tells her Mirjam has been captured and brought to the theater.

Hanneke discovers that Mrs. de Vries is secretly hiding her Jewish neighbors and is not a Nazi sympathizer.

The group views Mina's photographic slides and spots a girl in a blue coat in the corner of one image.

Hanneke breaks into Elsbeth's house and steals her husband's Gestapo uniform for the planned rescue.

Ollie, disguised as a Gestapo officer, stops a deportation transport while Hanneke searches the crowd for Mirjam.

A girl in a blue coat runs away from Hanneke during the rescue attempt and is shot dead by soldiers.

Hanneke cries for the first time in two years, overwhelmed by grief over the girl she believes is Mirjam.

Mirjam reveals that Amalia accidentally betrayed her family's location, and Hanneke finally makes peace with her own guilt.

Hanneke Bakker is a black-market trader in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam who reluctantly agrees to help widow Mrs. Janssen find a missing Jewish girl named Mirjam Roodveldt. While investigating, Hanneke is drawn into an active resistance network led by Bas's older brother Ollie, and she learns that Mirjam has been captured and brought to the Schouwburg Theater deportation center. Hanneke and Ollie mount a dangerous rescue operation, but a girl in a blue coat runs from Hanneke and is shot dead by soldiers, sending Hanneke into grief for the first time since Bas's death. The dead girl turns out not to be Mirjam, and a chain of discoveries leads Hanneke to the real Mirjam, who is alive and hiding in Kijkduin. When Mirjam reveals that her friend Amalia accidentally betrayed her family's location, Hanneke finally finds the compassion and perspective to let go of her own guilt. The novel ends with Hanneke imperfectly healed, ready to move forward.

The headline events of Hanneke's search for the missing Jewish girl.

Hanneke delivers a lipstick to Miss Akkermann and deflects her invitation to stay for lunch.

Mrs. Janssen explains that her husband secretly built a hidden room for the Roodveldt family without telling her.

Hanneke watches from the street as Nazi soldiers arrive and arrest her neighbor Mr. Bierman.

Hanneke looks through a scrapbook of Bas's love notes and resolves to return to Mrs. Janssen's and help.

Hanneke searches Mirjam's abandoned hidden room and finds only a copy of the resistance newspaper Het Parool.

At the resistance meeting, Judith hands Hanneke the contents of Mirjam's school desk to use as clues.

Hanneke finds a note folded into a star in Mirjam's belongings, written between two girls about a boy called 'T.'

Mina reveals that 'Margaret' and 'Elizabeth' are the nicknames Mirjam and her best friend Amalia used for each other.

Mina reveals to Hanneke that she has been secretly photographing the Nazi occupation, a fact hidden even from Judith.

Hanneke figures out that Mirjam could have latched Mrs. Janssen's back door behind her using a garden stake.

Hanneke impulsively asks Christoffel to have his father deliver a letter to Amalia in Den Haag.

Hanneke and Willem scout the road between the theater and train station and witness a live deportation transport.

Hanneke dresses the dead girl's body and discovers a note in her pocket expressing regret about ever knowing 'T.'

Hanneke crashes her bicycle on ice and suddenly recalls that Mirjam had a scar on her knees from a fence accident.

Tessa Koster arrives with Roodveldt family photographs, and Hanneke finds a picture showing Mirjam and Amalia side by side.

Running alongside the main search for Mirjam, Hanneke navigates the daily pressures of life under occupation, delivering black-market goods and gathering small pieces of information about the missing girl. She learns the brutal backstory of the Roodveldt family's discovery, finds cryptic love notes among Mirjam's belongings, and uncovers the secret friendship between Mirjam and Amalia through coded nicknames. Through the young resistance worker Mina, Hanneke sees firsthand how Jewish children are being smuggled to safety and how the occupation is being secretly documented on film. After the failed rescue attempt, a bicycle accident triggers a crucial memory about Mirjam's scarred knees, setting off a new thread of investigation. Photographs delivered by a stranger finally reveal that the girl Hanneke buried was Amalia, not Mirjam, proving the two friends had secretly swapped their identities.

The supporting moments and clues that fill in Hanneke's investigation.

Hanneke reveals that her best friend Elsbeth is not dead but has married a German soldier and chosen his side.

Ollie asks Hanneke whether she is a member of the NSB or the resistance, and she tells him the truth about Mirjam.

Nazi soldiers stop Ollie and Hanneke on the street and demand they kiss to prove they are a couple.

Hanneke confesses that when Bas came to say goodbye with a final letter, she tore it up and threw it away.

Hanneke explicitly blames herself for Bas's death, believing her encouragement caused him to enlist in the navy.

Judith arrives late to a resistance gathering with news that members of the Jewish Council are now being rounded up.

Hanneke finds a Het Parool classified ad reading that 'Elizabeth' is glad to be vacationing in Kijkduin and races out.

The resistance group learns that Mina's hidden camera was left behind in the baby carriage at the theater nursery.

Ollie scolds Hanneke for her single-minded focus on one girl while the entire resistance network is placed at risk.

Hanneke tells her parents she is the one who provides for the family, then leaves to help plan the rescue.

Sheltering before the rescue, Ollie reads Bas's final letter aloud to Hanneke and confesses he is gay and in love with Willem.

Hanneke realizes the buried girl's knees have no scars, proving she found and buried the wrong person all along.

Hanneke views Mina's slide again with a projector and notices the girl in the blue coat is staring away from the crowd.

Christoffel confesses he is 'Tof,' Mirjam's first love, and explains how he helped Amalia and Mirjam secretly swap their identity papers.

Hanneke travels to Kijkduin and finds the real Mirjam alive and hiding safely with Amalia's aunt.

Beneath the surface of the investigation, a series of private confessions and sudden discoveries force Hanneke to confront what she has been hiding from herself. She admits that her best friend Elsbeth chose to marry a German soldier, and she confesses the secret that has haunted her most: she destroyed Bas's final letter rather than read it. As Hanneke is drawn deeper into the resistance, she clashes with Ollie over her self-centered approach and is forced to tell her parents the hard truth about her role in the family. A crucial conversation before the rescue brings Bas's real final words to light along with Ollie's confession that he is gay and in love with Willem. After the burial, the absence of knee scars on the corpse reveals that Hanneke has been chasing the wrong girl all along, and Christoffel's confession unlocks the full story of how Mirjam and Amalia secretly swapped identities. Traveling to Kijkduin, Hanneke finally finds the real Mirjam alive, and the truth Mirjam shares allows Hanneke to forgive herself and others at last.