The old man got up and gestured for her to follow suit. They started walking toward the exit, and in the heavy doorway, he put a hand on each of her shoulders so that they were standing face-to-face.

“The church is a place where many people come to find peace, Heloise. They come to seek comfort. But there are also some who come seeking absolution for their sins.”

Heloise didn’t say anything.

“I’ve seen you here in the church since you were a child, and it’s been a long time since you’ve looked happy.” He watched her intently. “What I’m trying to ask is, did you do something you need to be forgiven for? Because if that’s the case, I’m sure the pastor would love to talk with you. No matter what it is, you can trust him. You know that, don’t you?”

Heloise looked into his eyes. For a second she considered telling him everything, leaning into his fatherly embrace, sobbing. But the words burned in her mouth and wouldn’t come out.

Instead she said, “No, Bobo. Forgiveness isn’t what I need. It’s what I’m having a hard time giving.”

CHAPTER

28

HELOISE HADN’T EATEN anything since the couple of pieces of rye bread she’d had at Kenneth Vallø’s place earlier that afternoon. Now her stomach was rumbling, but even so she didn’t feel hungry. She just wanted to go home and go to bed, to close her eyes and for a few hours allow herself to sink into a world where everything was still possible. A world where men like Johannes Mossing didn’t exist, where people around her didn’t get murdered or hang themselves, and where the only mail she received was vacation postcards and Christmas cards and greetings from friends and family members.

Where everything was the way it had once been.

She walked down Bredgade and turned left on Fredericiagade, heading home toward Olfert Fischers Gade. The rosebushes flanking the front door of her building were still in bloom. She stopped and stuck her nose all the way down into one of the big, powder-pink blossoms. She inhaled deeply, and a couple of the delicate petals drifted down onto the ground. Then she stuck her key into the front door and started walking up the stairs to her apartment on the top floor of the building.

As she rounded the fourth floor, her phone beeped in her pocket.

A text from Karen Aagaard: Hey! Apparently, The Shovel decided to forgive you for your Skriver article and he’s recommending that we punish you only with a slap on the wrist. Rumor also has it that Mikkelsen simply didn’t want to lose you, no matter what. So, congratulations! In other news: Bøttger’s story about the secretary of commerce will break on Tuesday. Exciting!

Heloise smiled.

At least that was all resolved now.