The psychotherapist Hans Sahlfeldt accuses himself of having killed and burned a man while in a mentally confused state. Even during the investigations, he checks himself into a psychiatric clinic for treatment. The therapeutic conversations there lead him back into the past. One evening, a mysterious woman appeared in Sahlfeldt's practice and asked for his help: her daughter Hanna has been silent since her eighth birthday. In the weeks following their first meeting, a cautious, possibly final love develops for him. He suspects that the daughter's silence is connected to the mother's life story, but she does not reveal her secret. One day, she disappears. She leaves Sahlfeldt letters that she had written to him but never sent - and from them, he learns the true story of the silent child, which is also intertwined with his own.