The following day, Allina manages a tense, chaotic morning feeding session in the South Wing nursery. A feud between the sharp-tongued Berta and Rilla escalates to near-physical confrontation before Allina yells at them to stop. Relief arrives when Karl enters with Schwester Wendeline to take over the nursery shift.

Karl escorts Allina to the garden and reports the outcome of his meeting with Himmler. The Reichsführer has approved a rehabilitation experiment for 10 children. Karl’s team has three months to demonstrate improvement. The remaining impaired children will continue to be studied by Himmler’s scientists, which both Karl and Allina understand means experimentation and likely death. Allina agrees to select the 10 children most likely to show progress and prepare individual files on each.

Karl also informs Allina that their work will begin the next day at his private office outside Munich. Schwester Ziegler has been told Allina is on special assignment to the Reichsführer. When Allina mentions her father’s letters, which she has been unable to read in private at the home, Karl agrees to make time for them.

By noon, rumors of Allina’s reassignment have spread through Hochland Home. Berta corners her after dinner and pointedly asks about the files she handed Karl, revealing she has been watching them. That evening, Allina spends hours selecting which children to save and building their files—a heartbreaking task.

Karl collects Allina early the next morning and drives an hour to his family’s summer property near Starnberg. The chalet-style building is called Sonnenblumen Haus (the Sunflower House). Allina notices how much more relaxed Karl is without his uniform, and the smell of old books and paper reminds her of home.

Karl leaves Allina alone to read her father’s letters. They turn out to be brief and unremarkable—notes about his job, the day he met her mother, evenings at the theater—and she cries over their very ordinariness. When Karl returns, he reads a newspaper article, written by her father. They laugh together at the scathing satirical attack on Hitler. Karl offers to store her father’s writings safely at his house.

They spend the morning developing their rehabilitation curriculum, focusing on physical fitness, speech, and manners. Karl warns Allina that she must control her facial expressions, as Himmler will be scrutinizing the program closely. After a tentative first kiss, they are interrupted by the arrival of Ursula, Karl’s housekeeper, followed shortly by their three collaborators: brothers Hans and Alexander Schäfer and Dr. Josef Koch, a former Great War medic. The sudden proximity of three strangers triggers a brief panic attack in Allina, though she recovers. Karl surprises her by introducing her as the program’s director.

After the others leave, Ursula returns with two large boxes of valuables. Karl explains that Ursula is Jewish and that he is helping her family emigrate, sending collected jewelry and silver to his Aunt Adele in Switzerland, who sells it discreetly to fund emigration costs.

Karl then shares his most closely guarded secret: His grandmother was a Russian Jew who had fled persecution and hidden her faith, making Karl, like Allina, a “Mischling.” His records were replaced with forgeries arranged by his friend Markus, allowing him to join the SS. He and Markus turned against National Socialism a year later and began working against the Reich from within. The revelation leaves Allina feeling safe and no longer alone.

Later, a kiss between Allina and Karl deepens into passion, but Allina is suddenly overwhelmed by a severe trauma response rooted in the night she was attacked in Badensburg. Karl holds her until she falls asleep, then carries her to his bed and stays with her through the night, blaming himself for moving too fast.

The following morning, Allina wakes in Karl’s arms and, determined not to let fear govern her, initiates intimacy. Karl is patient and gentle, ensuring she is unafraid throughout. He drives her back to Hochland Home afterward, kissing her goodbye publicly in the courtyard, which sets the gossips buzzing.

That afternoon, Allina finds Rilla collapsed in her room in tears. Rilla’s boyfriend has ended their relationship in a letter, saying his parents have chosen another woman for him. With nowhere to return to and her infant son Tobias to care for, Rilla feels trapped. Allina impulsively invites her to help with the rehabilitation program and explains everything: the condition of the children on the third floor, the threat of experimentation, and their plan to protect 10 of them. Rilla agrees without hesitation.

Rilla turns out to be an invaluable assistant to Allina, Alexander, and Hans. Dr. Koch examines the children and is cautiously optimistic. During the second week, Allina struggles to teach the children to count by clapping. When Rilla begins singing and dancing the numbers instead, Otto immediately joins her, and by the end of the exercise five children are clapping and moving along. It is the program’s first real breakthrough. The next day, Allina brings a phonograph into the classroom.

Two days after Rilla’s breakthrough, Karl visits the classroom and tells Allina he has received new orders: he is being deployed to Prague in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to manage the forced “resettlement” of Jewish people. Covertly, he plans to use the assignment to smuggle Jewish children out of the city.

For the remaining month before his departure, Allina spends her days with the children and her evenings with Karl at Sonnenblumen Haus. In bed, he confides that his parents died of influenza when he was nine, and he moved to Switzerland to live with his Jewish grandmother Ekaterina and his Aunt Adele, though he did not learn of Ekaterina’s heritage until then. Back in Germany as an adult, he reconnected with Markus Klemperer, his father’s closest friend, who recruited him for the SS in 1934 and arranged the forgeries that erased Karl’s Jewish ancestry from official records. By 1936, both men had begun their clandestine work.

A week before his departure, Karl asks whether Allina would like to attend a Shabbat service with Ursula, thinking it might help her feel closer to her late mother. They attend the service in the cellar of a cobblestone house, where Rabbi Guttmann welcomes them warmly. His sermon focuses on praying for sinners to repent rather than for their destruction, drawing on a Talmudic story about Rabbi Meir and his wife Beruriah, and he publicly alludes to friends—clearly meaning Karl—who have transported children to safety. The service gives Allina a peace she has not felt since her uncle’s death.

By spring 1939, nearly three months into the rehabilitation program and roughly a month after Karl has left for Prague, the 10 children are making measurable progress. Allina documents every improvement carefully, though private doubts about whether their success will be deemed sufficient continue to trouble her.

Schwester Ziegler has taken to making unannounced visits to the classroom, and Himmler has sent a congratulatory memo. Rilla arrives with a delivery of sports equipment and shares a flirtatious exchange with Alexander. Allina notes that Hans has already departed for his new posting and Alexander will leave at the end of April, leaving Rilla as the program’s most essential staff member.

In the break room, Allina rereads Karl’s latest letter and decodes it: his mention of six sunflowers is their agreed signal that 60 Jewish children have been safely transported to England. The letter’s tone is strained, and a reference to serving the Führer signals he is miserable.

Schwester Ziegler finds Allina in tears and, with unexpected gentleness, notes she looks unwell. The exchange opens into a rare moment of honesty between them. Allina explains her intentions were never to undermine Ziegler’s authority and proposes sharing resources and eventually training the other nurses in their methods. Ziegler remains skeptical about scale but agrees to meet and discuss it.

During lunch, the smell of the food turns Allina’s stomach. She grows dizzy and nearly falls. Schwester Ziegler ushers her outside, then quietly asks when her last menstrual period was. Allina realizes she is pregnant. Ziegler tells her she must write to Karl immediately.

In Prague, Karl receives Allina’s letter at breakfast and announces aloud that she is pregnant. His fellow officers cheer the news, but privately Karl is shaken, aware that Allina has no intention of raising their child at Hochland Home. Markus pulls him aside and argues that Karl must marry her at once—the forged documentation is in order, and marriage is the best legal protection he can offer. Karl hesitates, fearing he cannot keep them safe and suspecting Allina still mourns Albert.

Markus also warns that the Gestapo are pushing further into Prague’s operations. Karl reflects on the weight of his covert work in the city: By day he conducts neighborhood surveys, and by night he and Markus move Jewish children to safety in England. Markus instructs him to write to both Allina and Himmler and take leave.

At Sonnenblumen Haus, Karl bungles his proposal by framing it as a practical matter of protection, and Allina, hurt by the comparison to her previous engagement, turns away. He admits he assumed she still loves Albert. She clarifies that she will always love Albert but is no longer in love with him. Karl drops to one knee and proposes with his grandmother’s pearl and ruby ring, which she accepts.

That night, Karl tells Allina about Prague—the fear visible in residents’ faces, the impossible choices in selecting which children can be saved, and an encounter with a young mother who pushed her child into his arms and begged him to find a way out. Allina shares her own despair about how few children that they have helped. Karl holds her and insists that life, even imperfect life, means hope.

On Allina’s wedding day, Rilla wakes her with a lavish breakfast tray. The previous week has been exhausting: Getting the marriage application through the RuSHA office required days of paperwork, forged ancestry documents, and a registrar interview that ultimately proved anticlimactic. A memorandum from Himmler exempts Allina from the mandatory six-week Reich Bride School. Karl commissioned a new dress—a pale lavender silk velvet gown—despite Allina’s protests.

Rilla styles Allina’s hair into a braided crown threaded with small white rosebuds. Schwester Ziegler arrives unexpectedly and presents Allina with her own lace veil and gloves from her marriage to her late husband. She releases Allina and her team from duties for the rest of the day and wishing her genuine happiness before leaving.

Karl arrives carrying white roses, visibly nervous, with Alexander accompanying him. The four of them drive to Munich, Allina reassuring Karl that a simple ceremony is exactly right.

At the RuSHA registrar’s office, the five-minute ceremony is performed by the same registrar who processed their paperwork. Karl’s eyes hold Allina’s throughout, and his hands tremble as he places the gold band on her finger. Rilla and Alexander witness the signing, and the four return to Sonnenblumen Haus for their wedding dinner.

The narrative shifts to June 2006 in Englewood, New Jersey. Allina has just finished describing her wedding day to her daughter, Katrine. Katrine is deeply unsettled to learn that her father was an SS officer, though she recognizes her own features in a photograph of Karl. Allina urges her to understand that Karl spent his life trying to atone for his early choices and risked everything to help others.

Katrine begins to understand why her mother kept their Jewish heritage secret and never spoke about her past, and reflects on Allina’s fierce self-sufficiency throughout her life as a response to the weight of those secrets. She feels grief both for what her mother endured and for the shared history lost for nearly 70 years. She tells Allina she needs to know everything—about her father, the children they tried to save, and how it all ended.