Snuggled up, they had savored their view of Copenhagen. At times the city had been covered in snow, at other times bathed in sunshine, but mostly it had just been gray and windswept. Her father had pointed out historical buildings and told her long, spellbinding tales about the country’s old kings and queens. She had sat there listening, gazing at him with an expression that revealed that in her eyes, he was the nicest and wisest man in the whole wide world.

On every visit, he had taught her three new words she was to practice before their next meeting.

“Right, let me see,” he had said as he moistened the tip of his finger and pretended to be leafing through an invisible dictionary.

“Aha! Today’s words are braggart, baroque, and … opulent.”

Then he had explained their meaning and given examples of amusing contexts they could be used in, and Heloise had lapped it all up. She had loved the times the two of them spent together at the top of the church, and it was there, cuddled up safely against his big belly, that her love of storytelling had been born.

In the first apartment she had moved into as an adult, she’d had an unobstructed view of the dome from her bedroom window, and over time it had become her lucky mascot: a memento of a safe and meaningful childhood. Whenever she traveled, she missed the dome more than anything.

It was, however, rare for her to be standing as she was now, looking toward the church on an early Monday afternoon. Normally she would be at an editorial meeting at the newspaper where she worked, discussing this week’s main issues and planning her research.

But not today.

Today’s papers lay spread out in front of her on the kitchen table. The Skriver story was on the front page of every single one of them.

She opened page two of Demokratisk Dagblad, her workplace for the past five years, and read the editorial. The editor in chief was apologizing for a story published a few days earlier about the fashion mogul Jan Skriver’s investment in an environmental disaster of a textile factory in Bangalore that used child labor. The paper had “acted naïvely in its search for the truth,” he wrote. The piece was filled with pathos and well-choreographed hand-wringing, and its sole purpose was to make the paper appear honest, neutral, and—this was the crucial bit—to dodge any management responsibility.

Fair enough. It wasn’t the editor in chief’s fault. It was hers. She had written the story, she had trusted her source, and she had allowed something resembling trust to trump due diligence.

How the hell could she have been so stupid? Why hadn’t she checked and double-checked her facts? Why had she trusted him?