Primary school teacher Sabine Schuster suffers a sudden stroke during a theatre rehearsal with her pupils. Doctors are able to save her life in hospital, but the path back to everyday life is difficult and uncertain. For Sabine's husband Stefan, a forester, nothing is as it was either. While Sabine has to laboriously relearn things that are taken for granted, such as speaking or walking, in rehab, Stefan adapts the house in Ilmenau, Thuringia, to his wife's needs in the hope that the familiar surroundings will do her good. But Sabine is so disappointed by her condition that she initially resists everything that will help her recover. Out of shame, she avoids contact with her usual surroundings. She misses her work as a teacher and hiking. Seemingly lost in the mill of the care system, the new nurse Iryna, organized by Stefan, brings new hope with her very own, optimistic and demanding manner.
Hostage-taking in a maximum security prison. Three felons bring three friends with homemade bombs under their control. A police officer who happens to be on duty conducts the negotiation with the highly narcissistic head of the hostage-takers, who are ready for anything.
The body of old Theodor Reifenrath is found in Mammolshain in the Taunus. Accident or Murder? Because the safe is open and empty, inspectors Pia Sander and Oliver von Bodenstein start investigations. In the dog kennel in front of the house, they make a horrifying discovery. Alongside to a nearly starved dog, she finds human bones in the ground. Three women's bodies are recovered by the forensic experts. But who are the murdered women? The dead man and his deceased wife Rita had used the large house by the lake as a kind of children's home and had raised many foster children here over the years. However, the two were not loving foster parents. Rita has been missing for many years. Probably suicide, but her body was never found. The investigators are concentrating on the foster children, who are now all grown up and in the middle of life. The pattern of killings is striking: Apparently the perpetrator always kills on Mother's Day. And that day is near.
Stockholm ex-criminal inspector Erik Bäckström wants to retire in his northern Swedish homeland. However, his experience is soon needed in the remote province.