After seven weeks devoted to searching for Candace, our supporters were slowly beginning to return to their own lives, often apologizing to us for needing to do so.

We understood completely. I, too, was longing to regain some measure of control over our lives. We had two other children who needed our attention—who still needed a mother and a father present in the everyday rhythms of life.

There comes a point—usually around six weeks—when the mind and heart can no longer live in suspension. At some point, we are forced to acknowledge what we cannot change. We all knew the truth: some children disappear and are never found.

That Monday, I had begun trying to let go of the search mentality—but I couldn’t. And that’s when I realized why. There was still one thing left to do. One stone remained unturned. There was one person the police had not questioned to my satisfaction.

They had questioned everyone else relentlessly. So I needed to voice my suspicions one final time—place them squarely in the hands of the police, make it their responsibility—and then, finally, I could let go and move forward with my life.

But how to do that?

The officers were no longer coming to our house every day, and I didn’t have the patience to stand in line and wait for hours. Eventually, I persuaded Cliff that we needed to go downtown to the police station—Thursday morning—file our report, and get it over with. We could do it over our noon hour, I reasoned, and our weekend would be free.
He finally agreed. I promised him it wouldn’t take long.

We even brought Syras with us. He had just turned three—a tiny little thing—watchful and attentive, never any trouble at all.

But the moment we stepped inside the station, a strange, heavy awkwardness settled over us.

The receptionist looked startled when we introduced ourselves. She stumbled over her words, then hurried away to alert a supervisor. Within minutes, the two sergeants assigned to Candace’s case appeared. They, too, seemed unusually tense—nervous, even.

Had we done something wrong?

Weren’t we supposed to come?

Wasn’t this a public building?

We tried to explain that we had something simple to report, that it would only take a few minutes of their time. They wouldn’t listen.

“It can wait,” one of them said quietly. “We have something much more important to tell you.”

Then they asked if I would stay with Syras in the reception area while they spoke with Cliff alone. I didn’t like the thought of being left out.

“It won’t take long,” Cliff whispered, giving my arm a quick squeeze before following them into a large office.

I had no choice but to sit down and try to keep both myself and Syras calm. He was sensing my mood—restless as I was—squirming in my lap, little whimpers escaping while I distracted him with whatever I could find.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the two officers returned. They asked the receptionist to look after Syras and guided me into the same room where Cliff was waiting.

Then they left.

I sat down. Cliff was perched on the edge of the desk, his face pale, his posture rigid. I knew instantly—something was dreadfully wrong.

He took a long breath, letting the silence stretch between us. I could see him choosing his words carefully, aware that whatever he said next would change everything.

“They’ve found Candace,” he said at last, his voice low and strained. “They’ve found her body.”

He paused, swallowing hard.

“She’s dead.”

“Dead?” I whispered. The word barely formed. I couldn’t believe it. Was this some kind of sick mistake? The timing—why now?

Cliff explained that the police had been looking for us, that they were as surprised as we were that we had come to the station. He had to repeat himself several times before his words began to register.

“Where did they find her?” I asked finally.

“In a shack near the Nairn overpass.”

“When did they find her?”

“This morning.”

“Who knows?”

“Everyone, it seems. The media were holding the story until we were notified.”

I forced myself to ask the next question.

“How… how did she die?”

“They’re not sure yet,” he said. “Her hands and feet were tied.” His voice wavered. “It looks like she froze to death.”
Oh, my darling little girl. My sweet, precious daughter.

The tears came before I could stop them, and I turned away. That last fragile sliver of hope—the tiny percentage I had clung to—dissolved completely.

I could feel Cliff close beside me, yet a strange distance held us apart. If we had embraced in that moment, we would both have collapsed—and we couldn’t afford that. We were in a very public place. The office had windows. We felt the weight of unseen eyes.

So instead, we went over the sparse details again and again, as though repetition might somehow make them clearer—more bearable.

Cliff waited quietly while I tried to absorb what could not be absorbed. Finally, he spoke, gently.

“They want me to identify her.”

“I’m going with you,” I said at once. “Can I go with you?”

He nodded.

When we opened the office door, the officers immediately offered to drive Syras and me home while Cliff went to identify Candace. They were kind but firm, explaining that a car was already waiting downstairs and that it would be no trouble at all.

But we refused. We were capable of driving ourselves, and our car was parked just outside. Syras would stay with us. He clung to my hand, sensing the weight in the air even if he couldn’t understand it.

The officers told us we would be expected—that all we needed to do was walk through the front doors and someone would meet us.

Candace’s body was at Seven Oaks Hospital, northwest of our home.

Once at the hospital, we pushed through the heavy doors. A medical examiner was waiting and guided us into a private lounge. There, we were introduced to an officer from the homicide department.

“She doesn’t look pretty,” they warned us gently. “The blotches on her skin are from the cold. They aren’t bruises.”

They explained that the body would be allowed to thaw and that although she might have died the night she disappeared, her death certificate would record January 17, 1985, as the official date of death.

“How did she die?” I kept asking, as if repetition might somehow change the answer.

They handed us two Polaroid photographs.

“We thought the pictures might help prepare you,” the medical examiner said softly. “We can’t be sure until the autopsy. But her hands and feet were tied. Right now, it looks as though she may have frozen to death.”

I glanced at the photographs. They were ugly pictures of our beautiful child.

“This doesn’t make sense,” I whispered. “What motive would there be? Who would take her, tie her up, and leave her to die? She didn’t have enemies.”

“It could have been sexual,” he said slowly. “The tying… bondage… it can be sexual.”

Of course. I nodded, numb.

The men had been noticing her—that terrible, dangerous combination: a child in a woman’s body.

They led us down an endless corridor. As we entered a small white room, someone gently lifted Syras from my arms.
A tiny figure lay on a gurney, covered by a white sheet, on what looked like an operating table.

I forced myself to look.

Yes—it was Candace.

And yet—it wasn’t Candace.

Frozen, she looked almost like a grotesque, dust-covered mannequin, and I instinctively recoiled. I felt no connection to the still form before me. Candace without her personality—without movement, without presence—was heartbreakingly small, an empty shell.

They asked whether she looked the same as on the day she disappeared—her hair, her clothes. They needed to determine how long she had been in the shack.

Yes, the clothes were the same.

Yes, her hair was the same.

Everything we saw confirmed what we already feared: she had died that first night.

We left the room.

“Are you going to be all right?” the medical examiner asked gently. “When you get home…?” Her voice trailed off, inviting reassurance.

“We have friends,” I said quickly.

“Yes,” she replied. “I know. You have a wonderful community.”

All the way home, we swung wildly between a strange relief—we had found Candace—and a crushing grief at the realization that she was gone forever, that our family would never again be whole. The emotions came in violent succession, rising and falling so quickly there was no time to brace for the next wave.

We had barely stepped through the back door when the front doorbell rang.

It was a reporter.

We owed so much to the media, and we had never once declined an opportunity to tell our story—until now. Now I couldn’t. I had no voice left to offer, no face to turn toward a camera.

“Not today,” I said softly. “Please—give us a little time.”

She nodded, and I closed the door.

I had always imagined that when Candace was found, we would be the ones to call people—starting with the search committee—to tell them the news. But now I realized we wouldn’t need to. The media was already carrying the message for us.

What followed was a spontaneous open house.

Friends drifted in and out—red-nosed, hollow-eyed, disheveled—but none of that mattered. The kitchen began to fill with food again, and the women quietly organized it as if by instinct, creating order around our chaos.

There was one visitor that day who was particularly active—Percy, the stray cat Candace had loved so dearly.

During the search for Candace, Percy had noticed that our door was opening and closing constantly. With so many guests coming and going, the door became a kind of invitation. Every time it opened, Percy would leap onto the steps, slip expertly between legs, and make one wild dash through the house—up the stairs or down stairs. We didn’t care. She had full run of the place. I had even started buying food for her.

Most guests never noticed her at all. Those who did wore the strangest expressions as they felt a tiny thundercloud swirl between their legs and vanish into the house.

“What was that?” someone would ask, half amused, half alarmed.

Usually there were more pressing things to attend to than Percy, so we would just shrug. She was difficult to explain.
But that evening, I think she sensed something. She came slinking down the stairs and stopped conspicuously in the hallway, surveying the guests gathered in the living room. She seemed to be calculating—expertly—what was going on…Sensing the mood…..

One guest gasped when he spotted her.

“That has got to be the ugliest cat I have ever seen.”

With her arched back, long legs, stubby body, batlike face, and matted, scraggly fur, she was the ugliest cat. Silhouetted against a full moon, she would have made a perfect Halloween cat. Our guest wasn’t wrong, and I nodded in agreement.

But I looked away, hoping he wouldn’t see the pain in my eyes.

I realized then that I loved Percy. Somehow, impossibly, she had come to represent Candace to us.

*****
By ten o’clock that evening, the house began to empty. Dave, Fran, and Heidi had come from Camp Arnes the moment they heard, and everyone agreed it would be good for them to stay the night.

Then the doorbell rang.

I got up, assuming someone had returned for forgotten mittens or boots. But when I opened the door, a man stood there—dressed in black, or perhaps it only appeared that way in the darkness. He looked vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t place him.

I invited him inside.

He introduced himself.

“I’m the father of the girl who was murdered at the donut shop.”

My heart stopped. I felt the blood drain from my face. I remembered the case—the arrest, the charges, the trial that had surfaced in the news again and again over the past two years.

I stood frozen, horrified. He was the parent of a murdered child. And he had come to us because now we belonged to the same circle. This was our new people group.

I shuddered.

What a dreadful, unwanted identity.

I brought him into the kitchen and introduced him to the friends gathered around the table. Someone offered him a slice of cherry pie, and he accepted, sitting down among us as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

“I’ve come to tell you what to expect,” he said. “I know all about it.”

And he did.

His memory held every graphic detail of the past two years. He began with the moment he first heard the news of his daughter’s murder and moved steadily through the long history of the man accused. He was convinced of the man’s guilt and spoke with mounting frustration about the agony of being unable to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. He told us he still took meticulous notes at every court appearance.

We had all stopped eating. Forks lay idle on plates as he continued—delicately nibbling at his pie while describing the pain, the anguish, and the hopelessness that had overtaken his life.

He told us how the murder had shattered everything—his health, his work, his ability to concentrate. He listed the medications he was taking and even lined up a row of pill bottles on the table. I wondered how his body could endure them all. I glanced at Cliff and saw the same thought mirrored in his eyes: What if he has a heart attack right here at our kitchen table? He looked so pale. So worn.

“I’m telling you this so you’ll know what lies ahead,” he said again and again, like a prophet of doom.

Two hours later, well past midnight, he finally finished his piece of pie and took his leave.

We were exhausted.

We settled our friends as comfortably as we could in the downstairs room, and Heidi curled up to sleep in Odia’s bed.
Cliff and I climbed the stairs to our bedroom.

“Cliff… do you think we’re going to lose everything?” I whispered. The statistics about marriages collapsing after the death of a child pressed against the edges of my mind like an unwelcome prophecy. He tried to reassure me – but the dread did not go away;.

In the washroom, brushing my teeth, the same thought circled relentlessly When I stepped back into the bedroom, I stopped.

Cliff stood motionless beside the bed, staring.

And then I saw it too.

Something was on our bed.

A dark presence—dense, watching—like the embodiment of everything our late-night visitor had warned us about.
We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. We each saw something different, and yet we knew—without question—that we were seeing the same thing.

Later, Cliff would describe a reptilian shape. I saw a wolf-like dog—voracious, otherworldly, dragged up from the deepest well of my fear. Rationally, we knew it wasn’t real—only a hallucination born of shock and exhaustion.
And yet it was real enough to chill the room.

Real enough to make the air feel heavy, hostile.

Real enough to watch us.

The warning echoed in my mind: The impact of murder is more deadly than the murder itself.

And here it was—proof made visible.

We stood on opposite sides of the bed, united by a single, instinctive understanding.

We remembered the wisdom handed down through generations, perhaps best captured by Friedrich Nietzsche: He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

This--this—was the abyss.

“We will forgive…” Cliff and I said together.

We were speaking to each other.

To the fear.

To the room itself.

The presence recoiled.

It shrank.

Withered.

Then disappeared.

We waited—barely breathing—until we were certain it was gone. Only then did we climb into bed, utterly exhausted.
But it wasn’t over.

When we closed our eyes, we saw Candace’s tiny body on the gurney—her frozen face etched with the terrible final moments of her life, blotched with the hideous marks of that night’s cold.

Cliff lay very still beside me.

“Do you see her too?” I whispered. “…just lying there?”

“Yes,” he said softly.

We lay in silence, spent beyond words. Dawn was only hours away, and with it the funeral home. But our minds refused rest, circling endlessly around grief.

We had no sleeping pills in the house. I hadn’t taken drugs when my children were born; I had chosen natural childbirth. Now I realized I had made the same unconscious decision about death. I would experience this without anesthesia.

The physical pain of bringing Candace into the world had been nothing compared to the pain of losing her.
Then a thought surfaced.

“Let’s remember pictures of Candace when she was a baby,” I whispered. Maybe warmth could soften the bitter images.

“I remember her in a yellow snowsuit,” I began, “just learning to walk.”

“Candace in a dark navy pantsuit,” Cliff said, “playing in the autumn leaves.”

“The birthday picture—when she put the spoon in her mouth and wouldn’t take a bite because the movie camera was running.”

“The one with the black cats,” he added.

A slideshow unfurled between us—living moments filled with laughter, sunlight, small triumphs, innocence. The final image still hovered at the edges, but within this current of life it began to lose its paralyzing power.
“With Tracy and their bikes…” I murmured.

“As a flower girl…”

“Suntanning… swimming… playing with Syras… playing with Odia…”

Memory after memory glowed until our minds grew too tired to summon more. Slowly, deliberately, we filled the room with her warmth—still alive, still luminous.

Then I remembered that first night after she went missing—the sudden stillness of the wind, the sense of her presence, the voice I had heard saying, “Yes, Mom.” Reassuring me she was all right.

I had doubted myself then. But now, with the pieces finally fitting together, I understood.

Candace had likely died the first night—perhaps in the least painful way possible—slipping into sleep, into cold, into stillness. One passes through the shadow of death… but she had made it through to the other side. Her love had not stopped at the boundary of life.

I also understood something else.

I had already been grieving her for seven weeks. And I would grieve her for the rest of my life.

Throughout the search we had lived on ten percent hope—just enough to keep moving—but deep down we had known the truth. Finding her body was not the beginning of grief; it was confirmation. That early, intuitive knowing had allowed us—without realizing it—to begin the work of mourning long before the facts arrived.

There were still terrifying moments ahead: the press conference, the funeral, the long emotional journey. But we were so completely exhausted that, at last, our minds loosened their grip.

On that swaying train of our lives, we finally slept.

And we slept because forgiveness had already begun.
​
Our first forgiveness miracle.
.

Cliff had an idea. His first call that morning was to Dave Loewen, the director of Camp Arnes and his employer.
Cliff briefly explained what had been happening. Dave asked a few questions—much like the police had—but his tone was different. There was steadiness in his voice, a weight of genuine concern behind every word.

Then Cliff told him that Candace was expecting Heidi to come for the weekend—and that we believed nothing would have kept Candace from coming home.

The line went quiet for a moment. And then we felt it—Dave’s concern rising to meet ours.

Of course he understood. He had witnessed their friendship himself: the way those two teens moved through the summer like a pair of bright birds, inseparable. For two months at camp they had played and laughed, attended wigwam together each evening—two hearts wide open to the world.

Candace had always worn her heart on her sleeve.

Dave finally spoke, his voice firm and immediate.

“You need a search party. You need a lawyer. I’ll make some calls.”

We didn’t know the full scope of what he intended to do, but it didn’t matter. He believed us. Someone—finally—was taking this seriously. Something was being set in motion.

“Anything you can do would be appreciated,” Cliff said, though even as he spoke, I knew it was the understatement of the year.

I watched him as he hung up the phone. His shoulders lifted slightly, the grey heaviness around him easing. For the first time since the night before, I could see it.

Cliff’s mood had shifted.

Hope—faint, fragile, but unmistakable—had re-entered the room.

Dave Teigrob checked in that morning, expecting Candace to be home—or at the very least, to have called.

People we had reached out to the night before were now calling us back, each voice carrying the same hopeful question, each one bracing for good news. But there was none. Instead, a current of urgency began to ripple outward. Things were moving quickly now, though not in any direction we wanted.

After breakfast, the same police officers who had visited the night before returned. We all sat around the dining room table. Candace’s pictures were still scattered across it, exactly where we had left them in our frantic sorting.

Together we went over every detail again.

Nothing had changed—not the facts, and certainly not their opinion. If anything, they seemed even more convinced that Candace had run away.

“There are over fifty runaways reported every weekend,” they reminded us.

“What makes your case different?”

But something in us had changed.

We were still desperate, yes—but the raw edge of panic was no longer guiding our words. When the officers dismissed our fears, we didn’t crumble the way we had before. As I listened, I realized quietly—and with a faint sense of betrayal—that our loyalties had shifted.

We were cooperating with the police.

But our hope—our trust—had already moved elsewhere.

It rested with Dave Loewen, the one person who had believed us without hesitation.

The officers asked for a list of Candace’s friends and then left.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Cliff said he wanted to walk the route again.

I checked the thermometer outside the kitchen window. It hovered around minus twenty degrees Celsius—minus four Fahrenheit—and was still dropping.

We began calling family—one set in British Columbia, the other in Saskatchewan. And as we spoke the words out loud--Candace is missing—the weight of the morning settled in around us, making everything even more real.

Then the back doorbell rang.

Who would use the back door?

I ran through a mental list of every possible person it could be, and even before I reached the door, I knew. We had forgotten to call Heidi—Candace’s friend. I had planned to phone her first thing that morning, but I’d decided to wait until a more reasonable hour. Then, with the police arriving and everything unraveling, it had slipped completely from my mind.

I opened the door.

There she stood—impatient, bright-eyed, full of anticipation. It should have been a beautiful moment: the beginning of a long-awaited weekend between two inseparable friends. She looked past me immediately, searching for Candace, not understanding why she hadn’t been the one to answer.

Behind her, I saw her father sitting in the car. I waved him in. He looked puzzled, gestured that he would park first, and stepped out slowly.

“Heidi, come in,” I said quietly. “I’m so sorry I didn’t call. Candace isn’t home.”

“Isn’t home?” she repeated, her voice tightening. “What do you mean, she isn’t home?”

I groped for the right words. I should have prepared—should have thought about how to tell her gently.

“Candace didn’t come home from school yesterday,” I said. “We don’t know where she is.”

They both stared at me, stunned, disbelief registering instantly.

“She knew I was coming,” Heidi said, her voice suddenly flat. For a moment, I could see what she was thinking—that Candace was avoiding her. That she had been rejected.

“Heidi,” I said softly, “I don’t think she had a choice. She was looking forward to your visit so much. Nothing would have kept her from coming home. That’s why we believe something terrible must have happened on the way from school. But the police…” I hesitated. “They think she ran away. We’re struggling to convince them otherwise. You know she wouldn’t do that.”

“Candace wouldn’t run away,” Heidi whispered. “I just know she wouldn’t.”

Then her voice broke. “We were going to have so much fun…”

She collapsed into sobs—frantic, disbelieving, undone.

They didn’t stay long.

And the way Heidi walked back to the car—shoulders slumped, head bowed—tore at me. I stood in the doorway and understood, with painful clarity, that Candace’s absence was no longer ours Her loss had begun to spread.

The telephone rang.

This time it was Dave Loewen. His voice carried a new kind of energy—firm, organized, purposeful. He told us that he had assembled a search party. People would be meeting at Candace’s school at one o’clock, in the band room.

Dave had already contacted the president of the Camp Arnes board, Dave DeFehr, a member of the well-known DeFehr family of Palliser Furniture. DeFehr had immediately offered his help. From there, Dave reached out to two lawyers, seeking legal advice and clarifying the boundaries for a private search. He had even contacted the police to request their cooperation and ask that they brief the volunteers. Remarkably, they agreed.

He didn’t stop there. Dave called the rest of the Camp Arnes board, teachers at MBCI, and anyone else he thought might be able to help. He asked Cliff to come and to bring as many photographs of Candace as possible.
Cliff didn’t hesitate. He needed to be doing something.

Fortunately, we had plenty of photos. Candace’s sixth-grade pictures had been retaken, but her package had arrived too late for school picture trading, so we still had every copy.

Between twenty-five and thirty people gathered at the school that afternoon. A police representative briefed them first. The instructions were precise: volunteers could search back alleys and inspect trash cans—public property—but they were to be extremely cautious around private homes. Permission was required to enter any yard. If an abandoned shed or garage needed to be checked, the owner had to accompany them. Under no circumstances were they to wander onto private property or peer through windows. Anything suspicious was to be written down and reported directly to the police.

The volunteers were divided into small teams of two or three. Each team received a map, a photograph of Candace, and a specific area to search, along with a time to return and report.

What struck us most—what humbled me to the core—was that they believed us.

No one questioned our certainty that Candace had not run away. Between the firsthand knowledge of her relationship with Heidi and their understanding of who Candace was, they trusted our instincts completely.

That belief steadied us in a way nothing else had. For the first time since the nightmare began, we were surrounded—not by doubt, but by people willing to search for our daughter simply because they cared.

At the end of the day, Dave called again. He told us they had also contacted churches across the city, asking them to pray—some even dedicating an entire Sunday to Candace. And they had notified one of the city’s news outlets.
Candace’s disappearance was no longer private.

The city was beginning to listen.

The next morning, the minute the Sunday church services ended, our phone began to ring.

News was sweeping through the community like wind through dry leaves, scattering faster than we could gather it. I no longer knew where people were hearing things. Candace’s picture had appeared in The Winnipeg Sun that morning—some callers mentioned it in hushed, trembling voices. Others said her name had been spoken in church, lifted aloud as a prayer.

It was impossible to tell which current was stronger that day: the ancient, intimate network of the church community, or the wide, impersonal reach of the media.

By mid-afternoon, Dave Loewen phoned again, his voice steady, purposeful—something solid to hold on to. He told us he knew a constable in the juvenile division, a man with four days off who wanted to spend them helping search for Candace. Dave also urged us to contact Crime Stoppers, that persistent voice over the airwaves calling the public to attention.

People around him, he said, were encouraging the formation of a citizens’ search committee—a group that could organize the community effort and, perhaps, stand between us and the police in a way we could not. Already it was clear that the police spoke more freely with Dave than with us.

He envisioned another coordinated search, one that stretched far beyond our own frantic footsteps. Students from MBCI could comb the outskirts of the city—the weary railway tracks, the shadowed back alleys, the riverbanks where the light thinned, the empty fields that seemed to breathe loneliness. All of it, of course, would require police approval.

What did we think?

We could hardly find words for the gratitude rising in us.

Later that day, two city newspapers called, each wanting more details, more pieces of Candace. Beneath their questions I heard the real ones: Who are you? Who is this girl? What kind of light did she carry? I answered as best I could.

Again and again, in a thousand small ways, we were being asked to name ourselves—to define ourselves—and to define our daughter.

Describing us was easy; we had lived long enough to know who we were.

But introducing Candace to the world—that was the part that caught in my throat.

Mom and Dad arrived Sunday evening. They felt our panic—our aloneness—and they came simply to be with us.

Once Odia and Syras were finally asleep, we sat down together and began, for the first time, to truly process what was happening. I noticed my parents kept asking questions about Candace—tentative questions, almost as if she were a stranger to them.

“What was she like?”

“What was she interested in?”

Finally, I stopped the conversation.

“Mom—why all these questions? You know Candace. She stayed with you for almost two months. Of all our children, you know her the best.”

“Yes,” Mom said softly. “We knew Candace as a child. But she must have grown so much in these last years. Children change—especially between ten and thirteen. I don’t feel I know Candace as a young lady.”

I understood. And I tried to describe her. But my words were the words of a mother—too close, too tender, too full. How could I possibly describe Candace?

I had been reaching for that answer for two days, and I hadn’t found it. What I needed was something recent. Something she did every day. Something she loved without thinking. Something that would reveal her heart.
I went upstairs to look.

Since she shared her room with Odia, the room itself wouldn’t say much. The decorations scattered through every corner spoke of her creativity, but not of her essence—not her quiet philosophy of life, her way of being in the world.
Then it came to me.

Of course.

Her music.

Her love of music.

Her choice of music.

I remembered the first time she had played that particular song for me. She had put the tape on, and the melody drifted through the room. I had tried to catch the words. Most escaped me, but the theme was unmistakable—friendship.

I knew that if Mom heard it, she would know Candace too.

The tape still sat beside Candace’s bed, tucked into my old battered tape recorder—the one she had claimed as her own. I carried it downstairs and introduced the song to my family.

When the familiar beat began, it felt as if Candace herself had stepped into the room—swaying gently, a dreamy smile on her lips, that faraway, peaceful look in her eyes, completely absorbed in the music she loved.

The words floated out around us.

The pain was so sharp I thought it might tear Cliff and me apart.

I had never truly listened to the lyrics—not like this.

Now it was as though she were singing them directly to us.

Packing up the dreams God planted
In the fertile soil of you
Can't believe the hopes He's granted
Means a chapter in your life is through
But we'll keep you close as always
It won't even seem you've gone
'Cause our hearts in big and small ways
Will keep the love that keeps us strong
 
It was a good-bye song!  She had chosen a good-bye song!  Had she known?  Had she in some way chosen this song for us because she knew she was going?
 
Then the chorus:
And friends are friends forever
If the Lord's the Lord of them
And a friend will not say "never"
'Cause the welcome will not end
Thought it's hard to let you know
In the Father's hands we know
That a lifetime's not too long to live as friends

We sat stunned, the tears streaming down our faces.

Mom broke the silence.

“She listened to those words every night?”

“Yes,” I answered quietly.

Mom nodded, and I knew I had found the right way to portray Candace to them. They understood the importance of music. They understood the power of words. They knew that a person’s choice of music often reveals the inner workings of the soul.

They had just become reacquainted with Candace.

I also realized then that the song had been Candace’s parting gift to us—her final message. And I knew I would never be able to listen to it again without being torn apart. It would both comfort us and destroy us.

At eleven o’clock that night, two detectives came by. They told us there was nothing new. They would call again in the morning—Monday—and a new team would meet with us then. They asked us to inform the staff at MBCI that they would be at the school early. They were still confident that Candace would show up there.

I could see they genuinely believed it.

I wished I could share their confidence. It would have been so much easier to sleep holding onto their hope rather than the knowledge I carried inside me.

With that, they left.

As on the day before, they had been our first visitors in the morning and our last visitors at night. Our days were beginning to take shape inside the parentheses of police visits. It felt foreign to everything we were—our values, our rhythms, our quiet life.

I felt sorry that my parents had been pulled into this strange new world with us. And yet, I was deeply grateful for their presence. In the swirl of fear, disbelief, and grief, they remained a steady reminder of the tradition we came from—honesty, truth, steadfastness. If we could hold onto those values, perhaps we could survive what lay ahead.

Winnipeg is a city of about 650,000 people, set squarely in the middle of Canada. It is known for its extremes—hot, dry summers and frigid winters. At the time of Candace’s disappearance, there were nineteen thousand Mennonites worshipping in forty-seven churches across the city.

Ordinarily, that would have been an irrelevant statistic.

But now—now that our daughter was missing—we were searching instinctively for the largest support base we could find.

As I looked around at the growing search committee, I began to understand what was forming around us. At least one Mennonite conference had mobilized. We had representatives from the largest camp in Manitoba, the largest private school, a powerful Winnipeg church, the Mennonite paper, and one of Western Canada’s major furniture businesses.
This was not a small or insignificant group.

And for the first time since Candace disappeared, I understood that we were no longer standing alone.

On Monday afternoon, the police finally conducted an aerial search of the area—at last convinced. I suppose we could have claimed a kind of victory. Public pressure seemed to be pushing the police to act on our case.

The radio stations had picked up the story. Calls were coming in. More food arrived. The kitchen began to overflow with dainties.

The Search Committee had another idea: to distribute posters throughout the entire city, rather than only in the area where Candace had disappeared. They realized that by now she could be anywhere. Because the photos on the first set of posters had been taken in sixth grade—and Candace had changed so much in just one year—the committee contacted the company that had taken this year’s school pictures and asked them to rush the order and double it.

The police delivered the photographs at noon on Thursday for our approval. We kept one picture and gave the rest back to the police and the committee to distribute all over Winnipeg.

Once the picture was released, the school organized another search. This time, almost the entire student body—nearly four hundred students—fanned out across the city, distributing more than three thousand posters to local businesses, sparking one of Winnipeg’s largest searches for a missing person.

But I couldn’t keep my eyes off the photograph the police left with us.

I was shocked. It captured her very essence. There she was—so recent, so alive—her eyes shining. But it wasn’t only her eyes. It was her necklace.

It was unmistakable. She was wearing her tarnished locket—the one she loved so much.

There was a story behind that necklace.

Before moving to Winnipeg, we had lived in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, for almost five years. During that time, Candace had formed a special bond with a girl named Tracy Vickers, who lived just across the street, two houses down. The two girls were inseparable. They were the same size, shared the same interests, and even their differences—Tracy quieter, Candace more outgoing—fit together perfectly. They could lose entire afternoons together, content simply to be in each other’s company.

When we moved to Manitoba, it was heartbreaking to watch Candace mourn the loss of her best friend. As a going-away gift, Tracy gave her a gold-tone locket. Candace treasured it and wore it constantly. Even after it tarnished, she refused to take it off.

That worried me a little. I wondered whether she was adjusting to the move, or whether she still needed Tracy emotionally. I assumed that once she met Heidi at Camp Arnes and the two of them became close, the necklace would eventually come off.

But it didn’t.

Once, while traveling through Saskatoon, we made a point of detouring to North Battleford so Candace could see Tracy again. I assumed that life, as it usually does, would have moved on—that both girls, now nearly young women, would have changed enough for the bond to loosen. I expected the memories to fade naturally and the locket to find its way into a drawer.

I was secretly a bit relieved when we arrived at Tracy’s house and discovered she had another friend visiting. Just as I suspected, Tracy had changed. I felt a twinge of sympathy watching the two girls—once inseparable—stand awkwardly apart, quietly evaluating each other.

We spent the afternoon together, and by the time we left, the girls were enjoying themselves again. Still, something had shifted. The goodbyes were warm, but not tearful.

Driving back, I gently prodded her.

“Tracy has changed?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve changed?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not quite the same?”

Cliff shot me a warning look—leave the girl alone—but the question was already hanging in the air.
Her voice was quiet, but steady.

“No. It wasn’t the same.”

I glanced back at her. She was looking out the window, her fingers tracing the familiar shape of her necklace.
“It doesn’t matter how much we change,” she said. Then she turned toward me, her eyes clear. “When we walked to the store—when we were alone—I saw the old Tracy. She’ll always be my friend.”

And she kept wearing that necklace.

She was wearing that locket on the day she disappeared.

I knew then—convinced—that Candace wasn’t only a sanguine personality. Her love for her friends went very deep. She had the gift of deep, long-lasting connection with many—and she held it close.

*****
At the time Candace went missing, seventy-six other juveniles were reported missing: twenty-nine boys and forty-seven girls. In the previous year alone, the police had opened 4,455 missing children’s cases. Juvenile Division Staff Inspector Bill Heintz admitted to a reporter, “To a certain extent, we’re hearing from parents of other missing children asking for similar attention.”

So our campaign had to show why Candace’s situation was different. We had to establish—clearly and convincingly—that she was not a runaway. We simply told her story.

In the week following her disappearance, without any planning or conscious strategy, we gathered five compelling stories—stories that became the backbone of the campaign to find Candace.

We told everyone about David—the last person to see her—how he had teased her with a playful, flirtatious snow wash, sending her off glowing with delight. We told them that her best friend Heidi was arriving the next day, and that Candace had saved her money so they could celebrate together for two days. We told them about the song she played every night before bed, “Friends Are Friends Forever”—and that her little sister Odia could verify it.

And then there was the tiny tarnished locket she wore in her school photo—the gift from another “best” friend two years earlier—still around her neck despite my gentle requests that she set it aside. That little locket made something unmistakably clear: Candace had many “best” friends, and she was unwaveringly loyal to all of them.

Finally, there was the collective testimony of the Camp Arnes community—the director and staff who had watched her for two summers. They verified everything we said about this thirteen-year-old girl who simply loved her friends. She lived her life of love so openly that anyone who had been a summer camper during those two years would have seen her and Heidi in the back of the wigwam—giggling, glowing, utterly at home with each other.

What we didn’t yet know were the countless other stories of Candace’s remarkable ability to connect. People kept showing up in small, touching ways—like the young lad from Star Lake Lodge, who showed up with a Christmas tree for our bare living room, knowing we probably wouldn’t have the energy to get one while Candace was missing. He understood our grief because he was feeling it too… and we saw it in his eyes.

Within one week of her disappearance, the questions Who was Candace? and What was her state of mind when she disappeared? had been convincingly answered. Even the police finally accepted that she was not just another runaway. Her poster, carrying the most recent photograph, now bore a simple, urgent question: “Have you seen Candace?”

The search was beginning to be called one of the largest efforts ever mounted in Winnipeg for a missing teenager.

This was a huge comfort for us—knowing that we, the city, and all of her friends had done the best we could to find her and create awareness.

But there was nothing—no clue, no hint of where she could be or what condition she was in.
​
This “nothing” became the answer we had to learn to live with.

We were in transition again. Candace had successfully completed Grade Six, and once more we faced a familiar decision: where should she go next?

Given her late start and the teachers’ ongoing concerns, she had done reasonably well in elementary school. Still, I wanted to take a fresh look at her abilities—to ensure an educational foundation that would restore her confidence, rekindle her excitement for learning, and launch her into the life she was destined to live. My solution was to send her to a private school just down the street: Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute (MBCI).

Candace was not convinced. The thought of leaving her old school was painful. She wanted to continue on with the friends she had already made, most of whom were heading to a public high school together. She held her friendships close to her heart, and the idea of parting from them felt like letting go of something precious and irreplaceable.

I’m afraid I was insistent—and persuasive. Reluctantly, she agreed to try MBCI for at least a year.

As part of her admission, we requested a professional assessment, and what we learned surprised us. She did not have a learning disability at all. Her challenge was concentration. The assessor even cautioned us gently not to “slot” her too quickly, suggesting that she might one day do very well at university, provided she received private tutoring along the way.

Cliff immediately offered to take on that role. He was patient and intuitive, able to understand her mind because he shared some of her idiosyncrasies. We came to see that her struggle wasn’t with comprehension, but with focus. Words on a page, numbers in a column—anything that required sitting still and staring at a book—simply couldn’t hold her attention long enough to take root.

But Cliff was gentle and consistent, and something in their shared wiring made his guidance feel like a lifeline to her. Little by little, she improved. She was also supported by a wise, steady school counsellor who finally gave her the kind of sustained attention and encouragement she had long needed.

*****
But around this time, I began to notice another profound change. She was becoming a woman—still a child, yet now inhabiting a woman’s body. I had to buy her first bra, that unmistakable rite of passage. She was thrilled—positively glowing with excitement—and I tried to mirror her joy, even as something inside me tightened.

She was beginning to be noticed. We would walk into a café, a shop, a restaurant, and I’d catch it—men, grown men, glancing twice. Not leering, not overtly inappropriate, just… noticing. Something subtle shifting in their eyes as they took her in. She was blissfully unaware, but I felt the unease ripple through me. Her bright, generous personality—so open, so warm—was now carried in a body that drew attention she did not yet understand. And I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.

Still, she was fitting in at school. By then, she had been at Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute for nearly three months, and I felt myself beginning—tentatively—to breathe again. She was finding her place. I was starting to freelance and earn money again. For the first time in a long while, I felt light, even optimistic.

And despite her academic struggles, she chattered endlessly about the girls she was befriending and the parties she was being invited to. She had begun talking about the boys in her class, too—one in particular who made her laugh in that delighted, bubbling way of hers, and a few others who drifted through her stories like bright sparks. They were no longer bullies; they were simply “friends.”

Her world was widening, and she stepped into it with the same shimmer of joy she carried everywhere.

*****
 
It was a comparatively warm Friday in November. In preparation for the weekend, I had just finished my latest freelance assignment—work I was picking up again now that I had completed my journalism course. I was able to apply for better projects, edging toward more financial stability. I was in a good mood.

Then the telephone rang.

“Mom?” It was Candace.

I glanced at my watch. It was almost four. “I thought you’d be on your way home by now,” I said.

“I know,” she answered breathlessly. There was a pause, then a giggle. “David just gave me a face wash with snow, Mom.”

“David?” I was hearing that boy’s name more and more. “Careful now.”

“Oh, Mom,” she groaned, playfully.

“Shouldn’t you be starting home?”

“Aw, Mom—it’s Friday. Can you pick me up?”

I often did pick her up. I paused, juggling the schedule in my mind. If I went now, it would mean packing up the little kids, wrestling them into snowsuits, and waiting in the car. I hesitated.

“Mom,” she said, “someone’s waiting for the phone.”

“Candace, this is bad timing. If you’d called sooner, maybe we could have gone shopping with the kids before picking up Daddy. But right now, I’m in the middle of cleaning the family room for you and Heidi, and the kids are cranky. If I pack them into the car, it means waiting there. Can you take the bus?”

“Sure. It’s okay.”

I could hear the disappointment she was trying to hide, even as she sounded understanding. I reconsidered.
“Look—if Dad can get off early, I’ll pick you up. I’ll call him. Call back in five minutes. And don’t flirt too much.”
She giggled and hung up.

I phoned Cliff. Sometimes on Fridays he could get off by four-thirty.

“No, I’m busy,” he said curtly. I could hear the pressure of a deadline in his voice. “Pick me up at five.”

I looked around the room. There was still so much to do. The kids were quarreling again. If I packed them up now and went to get Candace, it would mean sitting in the car with three hungry children for at least half an hour.

I didn’t need that—no one did, I decided.

It was a warm day, probably one of the last.

Candace could walk or take the bus while I finished cleaning the room, and then, as soon as she came home, the weekend would begin. We’d bundle up the kids, pick up Cliff, cash his cheque, eat at the kids’ favourite restaurant—McDonald's—and then Candace and I would drop the family off and go shopping. I had already promised her she could choose all her favourite party foods for herself and her guest.

I felt good about the plan.

Candace would understand.

With new energy, I folded the sheet and began filing some of the scripts from my projects. The telephone startled me when it rang again. Right—I had asked Candace to call back.

“Mom?”

“Candace, do you have money for the bus?”

“Yup.”

“I can’t pick you up now, but tonight we can go shopping—just the two of us. Is that okay?”
“Yup. See you.” The telephone clicked.

Good. She hadn’t sounded too disappointed.

In twenty minutes most of the tidying would be done, and there might even be time for her to help me arrange the room the way she wanted it before we went out. Knowing Candace, she would have her own ideas. The family room was already a perfect teen haven: a telephone, an old colour television, a soft bed, and a card table for the goodies. Best of all, it was far enough from our bedroom that they could play their music as loudly as they wanted without us hearing.

My biggest job this weekend would be keeping Odia and Syras occupied.

I went on vacuuming, folding laundry, worrying about nothing of consequence.

Then I stopped.

Something was wrong. I could feel it.

I dropped what I was doing and went upstairs. The kids were so absorbed in their television show they didn’t even notice me. I went into the kitchen and glanced at the clock.

Candace would be home any minute.

I looked out the window and froze.

A sudden whiteout.

The temperature was plunging—and Candace hadn’t dressed for this weather. If I remembered correctly, she had slipped on only a thin polyester blouse that morning. If she didn’t come home soon, she’d freeze. It was unusually dark, too, for that time of day.

Life suddenly slipped into slow motion.

I began pacing—from the front living room window to the kitchen window at the back of the house.
Which way would she come—up the street or down the back alley?

I looked at the clock again. Where was she? She wouldn’t stop anywhere, at least not for long. Soon it would be time to leave to pick up Cliff. I couldn’t wait much longer. If I drove the route Candace would be taking home, I might still catch her.

I walked into the living room. The kids were still mesmerized by the television screen. I switched it off.
“We have to pick up Candace and Daddy,” I said.

They got dressed quickly.

“Odia,” I said as we backed out into the alley, “you keep your eyes on your side of the road, and I’ll watch mine.”
She nodded. “I’ve got good eyes, Mom. Right?”

“Right.”

“Remember the last time we went to pick her up? I saw her first.”

I nodded.

We crawled along the back lane and then turned onto Talbot Avenue, moving as slowly as rush-hour traffic allowed. As we passed 7-Eleven—the neighbourhood hangout—I scanned the windows. She wasn’t there.

With every block, my heart pounded harder.

Where was she?

We reached Candace’s school.

She was nowhere to be seen.
I swung the car onto Henderson Highway. I needed Cliff. Saving time—or miles—didn’t matter anymore.

I ran into his office. “Cliff, Candace didn’t come home, and I’m worried.”

He took one look at me and grabbed his briefcase. As we walked to the car, I filled him in—her calls, the scheduling dilemma, the weather, the growing dread.

“Cliff, nothing would have kept Candace from coming straight home today,” I said. “Heidi is coming. She wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize this weekend.”
He nodded. I didn’t need to describe Candace’s frame of mind. We had all been aware of it for weeks.

At the car doors we paused, looking across the roof at one another. There is something to be said for fifteen years of marriage. Not every thought needs to be spoken to be understood. I could see my fears reflected in Cliff’s eyes. They were no longer just mine.
We were of the same mind.

Back in the car, I suggested we retrace the route along Talbot. This time Cliff watched the right side of the road; I watched the left. Odia tried to watch both.

There was no one out. It had grown very dark.

I had left the house door unlocked, just in case Candace had taken another route and arrived before we did. I ran inside.

“Candace,” I called.

Silence.

I opened the downstairs door. “Candace!” Nothing.

Upstairs, everything was exactly as we had left it.

By the time I came back down, Cliff was helping the kids out of their coats.

“Tell me again how she sounded on the phone,” he said. “Was she upset that you didn’t pick her up?”

I shook my head.

“Did she have money with her? Could she have met a friend on the way home?”

I ran upstairs and checked her drawer. All the money she had saved for the weekend was still there.

Cliff pulled on his coat again. “I’ll drive back to the school. We might have just missed her.”

“I’ll call her friends.”

Six months earlier, I had given every member of the family a piece of paper and asked them to write down the telephone numbers of their friends. Candace had taped hers beside the phone. But now, as I scanned the list, I saw how drastically her life had changed in such a short time. The leap from sixth grade to seventh, from elementary school to high school, from public school to private school, had given her an entirely new circle of friends.


The names on this list belonged to her old neighbourhood friends.
Her new friends’ numbers were probably in her phone book upstairs.

Who was I supposed to call first—her new friends or her old ones?

The worst part was that I couldn’t make myself believe she was with any of them. And yet I had to call someone. I had to begin somewhere. I had to do something.

The first name on the old list was Deanna. She had been Candace’s closest friend throughout elementary school, the kind of girl who naturally connected people. A quiet leader among the neighbourhood kids. If anyone would know where Candace was—or how to find out—it would be her.

I dialed the number.

No answer.

I moved to the next name on the list. A young voice picked up.

“Krissy? This is Candace’s mother. Have you seen Candace?”
“No, Mrs. Derksen.”

“Do you know where Deanna is?”

“She’s right here.”

“Could I speak to her?”
But Deanna hadn’t seen Candace either.

“I can call around for you,” she offered. I could hear the concern in her voice. Deanna was quick that way—always alert, always engaged.

“Thank you, Deanna,” I said, and hung up.

I was disappointed, but not surprised. Even if Candace had run into Deanna on the way home from school, she wouldn’t have been in the frame of mind to linger. Still, I felt a small measure of relief knowing Deanna was now watching, listening. She knew the community. If she heard anything, she would tell us.

There was one more name. Sabrina—my last hope. She hadn’t heard anything either.

Now I had to call her new friends.

I ran upstairs to Candace’s room and found the list from her new school. I didn’t know these girls nearly as well. Using the phone beside her bed, I began dialing.

As I waited for answers, I remembered how reluctant Candace had been to attend a private school when the rest of her friends from George V were planning to go to Elmwood High. That first week had been the real test. But on Friday, when I picked her up, she had smiled and said, “You were right, Mom. They’re my kind of people.”

This was only her third month at the school, and I still felt her friendship with Heidi was stronger than any she had yet formed there.

I reached one of her new friends.

“No, Mrs. Derksen. I left right after school.”

After that, I abandoned all order. I dialed any name that looked even remotely familiar, stabbing in the dark for some clue—any explanation at all. Candace had to have gone with someone. She wouldn’t do something like this alone. Who could she have met? Who would have been important enough to draw her away from coming straight home--today of all days?

As I spoke with her friends from MBCI, a picture slowly began to form.

Candace had lingered after school. She had been seen hovering near the telephone—probably waiting to call me back. One friend said they had met at their lockers and that Candace had stuffed her gym clothes into her burgundy duffel bag to take home to be washed.

“Because,” the girl quoted Candace, “it’s the polite thing to do.”

It sounded exactly like her. Most people washed their clothes because they wanted clean clothes. Candace washed hers for her friends.

Then she had gone outside, laughing, having face washes in the snow.

She was last seen walking down Talbot on her way home.

Alone.

Only minutes later, Cliff came through the door, his face pale, his coat dusted with snow.

“Is she home?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Any word?”

I shook my head again. I told him about the calls and the bits of information I had gathered. Then we looked at each other in silence. Neither of us could voice the fear that gripped us.

“Let’s call the police,” he said finally.

I was about to agree, but one thought nagged at me. “Not yet,” I said. “There’s one person I want to speak to first.”

“Who?”

“David.”

“Why? Do you think she’s with him?”

No. It was clear she had walked off alone. But I had never met David, and I knew that by seeing him, I would gain a better sense of Candace’s state of mind when she left the school parking lot.

A few weeks ago, when the whole school had been encouraged to attend the Terry Winter crusade at the Winnipeg Convention Center, Candace had come home walking on air. “Mom, he’s crazy,” she had said over and over, her highest compliment.

After that, I had asked Cliff to casually check him out with Lily Loewen, the outdoor education director at Camp Arnes. They went to the same church as the Wiebes. We learned that David was in eleventh grade—a good kid, although we wondered what an eleventh-grade boy was doing noticing a seventh-grade girl. But Candace had always related easily to people older than herself.

Cliff didn’t quite understand what I hoped to learn by meeting him now. We probably already had everything we needed to go to the police. But he handed me the keys. “I’ll feed the kids,” he said.

I drove slowly to the school, scanning each side of the street. I remembered Candace telling me about the time David had sat with her at a basketball game and how he had caught her arm during volleyball, making her so nervous she missed her next two serves. But when I asked if she was in love with him, she had laughed. “Mom, don’t be silly. He’s in eleventh grade.”

The school doors were still open. Evening activities buzzed through the hallways. Harry Wall, the principal, looked tired as he supervised the students. I asked if he knew where David was, and he pointed to a boy fumbling with his locker.

“You must be David,” I said.

He nodded.

“I’m Candace’s mother. She hasn’t come home from school today. She mentioned you were with her after school. Do you know where she is?”

His face tightened with concern. “I thought she was going home.”

“Was it after the face wash?” I asked. “She told me on the phone that you gave her a face wash with snow.”

He flushed. “Actually, I gave her two. One before she called you, and another as she was leaving.”

Two face washes. Candace would have been walking home practically floating.

Quick to read the seriousness on my face, he said quietly, “Mrs. Derksen, the last time I saw her, she was walking down Talbot toward your home. I had driver’s training after that, so I didn’t hang around.” He watched me closely. “This is serious, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“I’m so sorry.” He touched my shoulder gently, a sensitivity beyond his years. Barely able to hold back my emotions, I turned and walked to the car.

It was seven o’clock. I had my answer.

The night seemed blacker than I had ever seen as I slid behind the wheel.

I slammed my fist on the steering wheel.

“No, God! No! Not my Candace!”

Frantically, I turned on the ignition. We had to call the police. They would know what to do. It was about seven-thirty when we finally did.

“Are you sure she isn’t with friends?” the desk officer asked.

“Yes, we’re very sure. We’ve checked with all her friends,” Cliff answered, projecting a calm he didn’t feel. “We are absolutely certain she isn’t with friends. We’ve checked everyone and everything. Something is wrong.”

“Was she upset?”

“No. She was looking forward to having her best friend come over tomorrow morning. They were going to spend the weekend together.”

The questions were precise, systematic, all fashioned to assume every missing thirteen-year-old is a runaway. Cliff answered patiently. “Her best friend lives in Arnes, fifty miles away. She won’t be there until tomorrow. They haven’t seen each other for weeks. I know she wouldn’t have run away today.”

After a long pause, the officer said, “If she isn’t home in half an hour, we’ll put this out to the Transcona fleet of police cars. Can you give me a description?”

Cliff described her. “Petite, about five-one, slim—around a hundred to a hundred and five pounds. Light brown hair, blue eyes. What was she wearing?”

I mouthed the words to him. “Black wool jacket with burgundy raglan sleeves, tight blue jeans, runners that are never tied. She was carrying a burgundy duffel bag—and black gloves.”

The description felt hopelessly inadequate. Half a dozen teenagers in the city could fit it. How would anyone recognize her?

After the call, I went downstairs to look through photographs of Candace, in case the police needed them. Time dragged and raced at once.

Cliff came down to the basement to tell me the police had put out a citywide missing person alert and that they’d be stopping by around eleven to pick up a picture. We went back upstairs together. Relief washed over us, but it was tempered by fear. It was ten o’clock.

“There’s still time for me to walk to the school once more,” Cliff said, pulling his winter jacket from the closet.

I checked the thermometer outside the kitchen window. “Cliff, the temperature is still dropping. What if she’s outside? She wasn’t dressed for this weather.” It was falling below twenty—dangerous.

“She won’t be,” he said.

“Then what are you looking for?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know—tracks, anything that looks suspicious. I’ll check the stores. I don’t even know what to look for. I just have to go.”

I nodded. I wanted to go with him, but someone needed to be by the phone and with the kids. I shut the door behind him, shivering as the cold air swirled through the house, and returned to the living room window to watch for Candace.

At approximately eleven o’clock, two uniformed police officers knocked on our door. We assumed, having convinced the desk clerk—twice—that Candace hadn’t run away, that the officers would already be briefed and take our concerns seriously. Surely they’d understand this was urgent. Perhaps they would even question why we hadn’t called sooner.

Time was of the essence. All we expected was to brief them quickly, hand over Candace’s picture and description, and have them mobilize a full-scale search of Winnipeg—perhaps even with dogs.

We had scattered the photographs across the dining room table and invited the officers to sit with us. We spoke quickly, urgently, shoving pictures toward them.

But instead of taking a photo and rushing out, they leaned back, watching us. They wanted to know what kind of parents we were. What our relationship with Candace was like. Had we argued with her? Was she upset I hadn’t picked her up?

They interrogated us—the only word that fits.

Our hearts sank. We tried again to answer as clearly as possible, but how do you convince someone you are a capable parent in such a situation? Every explanation seemed to work against us. The harder we tried, the more skeptical they became.

In desperation, I picked up a photo of Candace and Heidi sitting under a tree. “Look at them. Even from this picture, you can see they are kindred spirits. They only spend the summers together, yet their friendship survives the long winters apart.”

Finally, still watching us with measured skepticism, the officers took the photograph. They promised to put it on the citywide computer system and to patrol the community.

At that moment, we were grateful for crumbs.

After they left, I realized their questions had drained me. But Cliff seemed energized. The officers’ scrutiny had sparked new ideas in him. Now it was his turn to verify her state of mind and pursue leads. He began calling a whole new set of people, and one of them mentioned that Candace had spoken to the school counselor that day. So he called Dave Teigrob.

“I’m sorry if he’s sleeping, but this is an emergency,” I heard Cliff say over the phone.

I was surprised it was so late. Most of the houses in the neighborhood were dark.

Cliff joined me at the window. “Teigrob didn’t say much,” he reported. “Candace seemed in good spirits, and he’s as puzzled as we are.”

Once again, we were at a loss. We stood together, staring into the darkness, reviewing the steps we had taken, replaying every thought, every possibility, trying to think of something else. Our options were dwindling. Soon everyone—like Teigrob—would be asleep, and there would be nothing more to do.

It was a strange place for us to be. Cliff was creative—he had a natural artistic ability—and I had spent the last two years studying communications. We were people of ideas. Usually we had too many. Now, we had none.

We wandered around the house, tried watching television, but we couldn’t focus.

When the front doorbell rang around midnight, we both rushed to the door. Hope! But it was only Dave Teigrob, the school counselor and vice president of MBCI.

“I couldn’t go back to sleep,” he explained simply. After the initial disappointment, we were amazed he had come all the way from his home on the outskirts of Winnipeg just to sit with us.

He had nothing new to offer, he said, other than to stay with us. So we sat in the living room and went over every detail of the day again. I can’t remember everything we talked about, but his presence was like an anchor in a storm—a solid rock to hold onto. He reassured us repeatedly that his last encounter with Candace had given no reason for alarm. She had seemed pleased with herself and confident her problems could be managed.

There was little else we could do but wait together, convincing ourselves that by now she must be inside a building, that whatever situation she had been in was resolved, that the police were looking for her, that cars were everywhere in the city and someone would surely notice.

By two o’clock, there was nothing left to say. Dave urged us to try to sleep. We reassured each other again that in the morning we could call around, refreshed and ready with new ideas. By then, Candace might have called.
We thanked Dave for coming. We were truly grateful.

I think Cliff was probably more comforted than I was. He seemed confident that Candace was safe by now, that the police would find her soon. I tried to believe it. I really did.

But after Cliff fell asleep, I slipped out of bed and took up my vigil by the living room window.

Candace wasn’t safe. She needed me. I could feel her struggling.

I turned on the porch lights, left the door unlocked in case she needed to run into the house, and switched off all the interior lights so I could see outside without being seen. I watched every movement in the community.

Then a police car raced over the Nairn overpass, its red lights flashing. I jumped up from the sofa.
Candace! Had they found Candace? Was she hurt?

I rushed to the phone and waited, pacing tight circles in the kitchen.
It didn’t ring.

I pulled up a chair and sat staring at the telephone—terrified it would ring with bad news, terrified it wouldn’t ring at all. I was trembling. I don’t know how long I waited. Time had lost all meaning.

Eventually I realized there would be no call. The emergency had been for someone else.
I returned to the sofa and resumed my lonely vigil.

That’s when I remembered something I had once observed: people often throw their faith away at the very moment they need it most. This was not the time to question or abandon my faith. I needed God. More than at any other time in my life, I needed the direction, comfort, wisdom, and strength my faith could give me.

So I prayed.

I prayed that God would be with Candace. I told Him that it didn’t matter what happened to Cliff or to me—the important person was Candace. I said that more than anything in the world, I wanted my daughter safe at home. But if that was not to be, then I asked that He would protect her from pain.
She couldn’t bear pain.

As the implications of what I was praying sank in—as the possibility that she might die pressed in on me—I was terrified. It was entirely possible that she was already dead.

And then, for the first time, I felt that God was crying too.

It seemed as if the whole universe was crying with me. I realized that God knew exactly what I was feeling. He had sacrificed His child. He was a parent of a murdered child too.

I sat for a long time. Though I could only hold Candace in spirit, I wanted to stay awake with her. I grew colder and colder. I turned up the thermostat and wrapped myself in blankets, but nothing stopped the shivering.

Finally, I thought of Cliff—warm in bed. Maybe he could warm me. I could still be with Candace if I lay beside him, pressed close. I didn’t plan to fall asleep. I wasn’t tired—just cold.

Before going upstairs, I glanced at the kitchen clock. Five-thirty. Almost morning.

I lay beside Cliff in the darkness, his warmth beside me, but it didn’t help. Just as I was about to get up and return to the window, I noticed that the wind had stopped.

I hadn’t even realized there had been a wind. Had it been inside the house? Had there been a sound?
Now, in its absence, the silence—the stillness—was deafening and horrific.

The struggle had stopped.
I sat up in bed.

It could mean only one thing.

“Candace!” my soul shrieked. “Are you in heaven? Are you OK?”

I heard a tiny voice.

“Yes, Mom.”

Somehow the heavens were still open, and her presence filled the room. She was close, yet impossibly far—just out of reach. I wanted to step fully into that other dimension, but a soft black velvet curtain fell between us, shutting me out.
Then she was gone.

I tried desperately to penetrate the wall again, but I couldn’t.

My comfort was this: she was safe.
I told myself again and again. Whatever had happened was over.
I closed my exhausted eyes, and the room went black.

The next thing I knew, the alarm went off at six o’clock.
It felt as if I had been in limbo for hours, but it could only have been ten or fifteen minutes.

Cliff woke up, and we lay there in silence.

“She’s not home?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“She could be at a friend’s place,” he said quietly.

I broke into sobs.

Should I tell him?

What was there to say?

Had it been real?

Or had I been hallucinating?

When I finally regained control, I told Cliff about my all‑night vigil at the window—my struggle to accept the situation, my exhaustion, and how, in the final moments of the night, I had felt the struggle come to an end.

I told him that the wind had stopped. That I had felt Candace’s presence—but that she had slipped away somewhere I could not follow. I told him what that meant to me.

She had probably died during the night.
She wasn’t coming home again.
“Then it’s all over?” he asked.
“I can’t say for certain,” I said. “It’s just a feeling.”

But the energy drained from his face, and tears began to ooze from the corners of his eyes. Candace had always been her father’s daughter. Maybe that was why I had found it so easy to love her and get along with her. She was so much like Cliff—athletic, fun‑loving, outgoing.

There was nothing else we could do but cry together.
“What do we do now?” I asked. “Do we continue to look for Candace?”

“How certain are you?” he asked. “Do you have any doubts?”

It was hard to explain. Yes, I was certain—and yet I wasn’t.

I didn’t doubt that God could perform miracles. I could believe that this kind of experience might happen, especially in those critical moments when a soul hovers between heaven and earth. But the one thing I wasn’t certain about was myself.

I had been overwrought—exhausted, terrified, frantic. I had been nearly out of my mind. Maybe I had been out of my mind. Maybe I had imagined it. Maybe I had created the whole experience because I needed answers—something solid I could hold onto.

I didn’t know.

“Can you tell me without a doubt that you didn’t hear her?” Cliff asked quietly.

I shook my head.
Even though I knew I would never be able to prove the reality of the experience to myself, I couldn’t deny it either. I turned the question back to him.

“Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “You obviously experienced something.”

I was stunned. He believed me. It was the most beautiful gift he could have given me.

“But what do we do now?” I asked again.
We sat in silence for a long time. Finally, Cliff spoke.

“We carry on. We look for Candace. We aren’t one hundred percent sure that she’s dead, so we can’t ignore the possibility that she might still be alive and need us. But we can hold the knowledge that she is probably safe in heaven as an inner comfort. Maybe we’ll need it. Maybe God knows we will.”

We reached for each other.

Perhaps Candace’s struggle was over—but ours was only beginning. I could see the terror of my own heart reflected in Cliff’s eyes, but he was the one who found words for it.

“I wonder what must lie ahead of us,” he said, “that would make the knowledge of her death a comfort.”

It was a question that would haunt us for weeks.
​
Only in hindsight did I understand: we needed that inner knowledge—that peace. It was the first gesture of Candace’s transcending love, a love strong enough to reach through even the veil between heaven and earth.

​​​With the help of the Star Lake Lodge board, we settled into Winnipeg very quickly. They even helped us purchase our first home—a modest side-by-side in the Elmwood area.

This time the school was four blocks away: a little far, but manageable. But our house neighboured three townhouses filled with young families. Within days, Candace had gathered an instant neighbourhood army of friends once again.
They walked to school together, a small procession of backpacks and chatter, and every afternoon she came home full of stories—evidence that her world was opening, step by step.

Cliff, meanwhile, quickly fell in love with his work—and truly, we all loved Star Lake Lodge. Even though Cliff’s chosen camping career didn’t bring in much money, we never felt as though we were lacking. His work gave us access to something far more valuable: summers.  Summers at a lakeside camp brimming with activity, laughter, and community—and the steady, reassuring presence of God..

The Lodge turned out to be the perfect family retreat - tucked in the Whiteshell Provincial Park. The lake’s shoreline was dotted with private cottages, each one its own small world of fishing, swimming, hiking, and rest. The family camp was known for two things in particular: a perfect water-skiing route and a perfect swimming beach—warm, shallow and gently sloping into deeper water.  

We had a small but vibrant children’s program – because even then Candace was a natural.

By this time, I was beginning to recognize an appreciate Candace’s a pure sanguine personality. I had seen it before, in my Aunt Susie – my father’s sister –almost a rarity in our rather strict Mennonite culture. When we visited with extended family, we as children were monitored. But when my Aunt Susie was part of any family gathering, Something shifted.  

The adults would begin by visiting quietly with one another, voices measured, manners intact. But at some point—almost imperceptibly—the laughter would begin. It wouldn’t take long and someone would close the French doors to the living room, and the laugher began in earnest. But all we could hear wa Aunt Susie’s unmistakable laughter—bright, generous, and utterly contagious.

Was she entertaining them? Or was she simply giving them permission—permission to relax, to remember their own funny moments, to be unguarded and joyful? We never did find out. What we did know was that the usual rules had loosened. We were allowed to play freely, to run and invent and linger far past our normal bedtime.

Eventually, the evening would end. We would pile into the car and drive home in the quiet, the road humming beneath us. And our parents were smiling—soft smiles, unforced smiles—as though something in them had been lightened.

Then I saw that same magic again when they watched Candace. Parents smiled when they noticed her carrying that same infectious style as her Aunt Susie—the way she naturally gathered children around her, creating space for laughter, belonging, and joy, without even seeming to try.

*****
After watching her father circle the island again and again—sometimes skiing, sometimes driving the boat—Candace decided she wanted to ski too.

We encouraged her. It was the perfect place to learn; the retreat was well known for its water-skiing. Directly across from our beach sat a small island, just large enough to hold three modest cabins, about a city block away. The ski boat would circle the island again and again, creating a perfect, natural loop—safe, predictable, and ideal for beginners.

We were excited for her, and she had no trouble getting up. She never did. Candace had always been a natural at things that required balance and courage. The boat carried her smoothly around the island, and as she passed by us we cheered. She grinned back—bright and triumphant. Then the boat went around again. And again.

That’s when something stirred in me—a recognition, a memory resurfacing.

Years earlier, in North Battleford, my parents had bought Candace a bicycle. Cliff taught her to ride right in front of our house. We watched as he ran beside her, one hand steadying the bike, until suddenly she surged forward on her own. Around the block she went, and when she sailed past the house we cheered, amazed. Then she went around again. And again.

By the fourth lap, she wasn’t smiling anymore. She was simply riding—focused, determined, relentless. And then I realized: she didn’t know how to stop.

“Cliff! She doesn’t know how to stop!” I called out.

He sprinted after her, caught up to the bike, and finally helped her brake. They collapsed into laughter. Later, she admitted she would have kept going forever rather than confess that she didn’t know how to stop.

Now, watching her circle that island again and again on water skis, I saw the pattern repeating itself.

I caught Cliff’s eye and signalled that the boat needed to bring her in. She would never let go of the rope on her own. He understood instantly.

Cliff stepped onto the wharf and signalled to the driver. The boat slowed, rounded the bend, and eased gently toward shore. The motor softened, the pull slackened, and at last Candace released the rope, skimming gracefully onto the beach. She landed beautifully.

We broke into applause. Once again, she was the star.

Only later did I understand what I was seeing. Candace learned too quickly. Most people fall a few times while learning to ride a bike or ski; through falling, they learn how to stop. Candace hadn’t fallen. She had mastered the skill without learning the art of stopping—leaving her with no instinct for when or how to let go.

*****
We stayed in a cabin next to the lodge—two small bedrooms, one with bunk beds. Candace claimed the top, and aside from the occasional mouse, it was the perfect place to spend the summer.

Camp days were long. I remember coming in from the lodge in the evening, tired and sun-warmed. After the usual cleanup, Cliff and I returned to our cabin and found Odia and Candace sitting side by side on their bed, talking softly—glowing, their smiles just a little too wide and far too synchronized to be entirely innocent – or so I thought.

I confronted Candace. “What did you do?”

“Oh, Mom, we didn’t do anything wrong,” she said reassuringly. “We’re just excited. Odia wanted to know about God, so I led her to Jesus. Odia accepted Jesus into her heart.”

Odia sat quietly beside her, utterly content—radiant, really—a happiness deeper and more conscious than anything I had seen in her before.

I apologized at once for misreading the moment. Then Cliff and I celebrated with them. We prayed together that night, blessed the girls, tucked them into bed, and finally crawled into our own—surely the most comfortable bed in the world after a long, lake-washed day.

As we lay there, full and grateful, it struck me again how blessed we were to have them both. Candace excelled in relationships; Odia approached life like a puzzle to be understood. Together, they drew out the best in one another—heart and mind meeting in a way that felt both holy and entirely their own.

*****
Cliff’s flair for promotion and design soon drew attention to the extraordinary camp he was shaping. It wasn’t long before other camps across Manitoba took notice. He was offered a position in promotions at Camp Arnes, and it suited him perfectly. There, he finally found his rhythm: children’s program director in the summer, artist and promotions work in the winter. He was thriving.

Camp Arnes was situated on Lake Winnipeg—the closest thing Manitoba has to an ocean. For me, its vastness always stirred echoes of childhood, carrying memories of visits to Vancouver Island: wide horizons, moving water, and the deep comfort of being held by something immense.

It was a lake that had already challenged us.

When we first arrived in Winnipeg, a friend invited our family to join them on their sailing yacht moored in Gimli. We drove out with great anticipation, found the boat, climbed aboard, and set out across the lake. The water was a little choppy, but that only heightened the sense of adventure—the feeling of truly being at sea. Conversation flowed easily. Stories were shared. We listened as they explained the yacht’s history and its ways, moving steadily forward across the open water.

Before long, the shoreline thinned into a faint line on the horizon.

And then, suddenly, everything changed.

We were caught in the wildest storm I had ever experienced.

As one of the world’s largest lakes, Lake Winnipeg has a vast surface area and a shallow depth—conditions that allow wind to whip up towering waves with astonishing speed. What had been expansive and calm turned violent within minutes. Waves rose six feet or more, crashing hard enough that it felt as though the boat might be swallowed whole.
Instantly, my mind leapt to the storms of the Sea of Galilee. I felt the disciples’ terror in my bones. The four of us adults clung on for dear life, hearts pounding, as the boat pitched and groaned beneath us.

And then I looked down—to the small, sheltered lower deck of the yacht.

There were Candace and Odia, curled together.
Sound asleep.
Sleeping.
Peacefully.
Completely unaware of the chaos raging above them.

Didn’t Jesus sleep during the storm?
Didn’t Jonah sleep too?
One had the confidence of being deeply loved. The other had developed impressive avoidance techniques. Both, when you really think about it, were remarkable forms of resilience.

Cliff and I caught each other’s eyes and smiled. Our daughters were steady, held, and unafraid—even as the world above them raged.

They woke only after the storm had passed, when the waves had settled and we were able to sail safely back into the harbour at Gimli.
​
And then we could laugh again—the kind of laughter that comes after endurance, after holding on without knowing when the stopping will come. We had been carried through, not by control, but by trust. We had truly weathered a storm, and somehow, done so in the most elegant of ways.

​Then, while we were living in Calgary, Cliff received an invitation to become the lead pastor of a tiny church in North Battleford. He accepted immediately—this was the opportunity to finally live his dream.

We moved and settled into a modest bungalow that served as the parsonage, just a block from the elementary school. Even better, the perfect little friend for Candace lived two doors down.

Candace was five years old and in absolute heaven. She didn’t have to work to attract children from the neighbourhood—she simply had to walk down the street to her friend’s house, and beyond that, an entire school of children waited just one block away. She thrived immediately.

I, on the other hand, was not in a good place.

When Cliff and I married, it was understood that I would support him in pursuing his dream—whatever form it took—and that once he was established, I would begin my own quest. But now that he was finally living his dream, I found myself stuck at home in a small town that felt like the middle of nowhere, caring for two young children. The edges of postpartum depression began quietly creeping in.

In desperation, I threw myself into the one church program that truly appealed to me. As a pastor’s wife, I had options, and I chose to host the College and Career young adult group in our home. That way, I didn’t need to find a babysitter—and I could still enjoy deep conversations with curious, blossoming young minds.

So every Friday evening, we opened our doors to the young adults of the church. Nothing grand—just conversation, simple snacks, and a safe, warm place to gather. To our surprise, it became remarkably successful, even drawing young adults from other churches in the small town. At times, the group rivaled the attendance of the Sunday congregation itself.

Most important of all, our young guests never resented having our two children underfoot. Candace loved it. She seemed able to relate to everyone—on so many levels. Inevitably, during our discussions about the Bible and the wide-ranging conversations that followed, she would listen intently and then offer her two cents—some small insight that landed with wisdom far beyond her years.

Our guests were always impressed. Often, after we had put our little ones to bed, someone would glance at us and say, with quiet wonder, “You’ve got a bright one there.”

And we knew we did.

In fact, we had two bright little ones—already forming a sisterly partnership, especially when they teamed up against us.

Candace loved Christmas—she loved any season that gathered people together—but Christmas was her favourite. She especially loved the giving of gifts, and because of that, I took great care to keep her presents a secret.

One year, I had both the time and the inclination to give the holiday special attention. I started early, sewing two costumes and buying gifts well in advance.

But I wasn’t paying much attention to Odia. She was still so little; since she wasn’t talking yet, I assumed she had no idea what was going on. So as I wandered through the stores, I narrated everything out loud. I believed children should be included in life as it unfolded, and I had once heard that even wrong information was better than none at all. So I told Odia everything—confident it was harmless.

But then—suddenly—she could talk. With surprising clarity.

Candace, quick as ever, caught on immediately. She realized that her little sister had somehow become the keeper of all the family Christmas secrets. Right there in front of me, Candace gently but relentlessly drew every secret out of her. They had their own private language. By the time Christmas morning arrived, I didn’t have a single surprise left.
In the end, we all laughed.

But I was more careful with Odia after that—she had a way of knowing everything.

And the two of them bonded through it, sealing a sisterhood in mischief and trust, a pure delight to watch.

*****
There was another important moment I remember.

Candace was sitting beside me one evening as we went around the circle of our College and Career group, sharing our God stories.

When it was my turn, I told the story of how, when I was about seven years old, my chore at the end of the day was to walk to the edge of our back lawn and throw the garbage into a large bin. One evening, after tossing the bag inside, I happened to look up at the night sky. It was black and velvet-soft, studded with stars. Suddenly, the stars seemed to pop out of the darkness—twinkling at me, dancing before my eyes.

I described how I was mesmerized that the stars had taken notice of me—sparkling, delighting, surrounding me with their glory. In that moment, it felt as though the full presence of the Creator had descended upon me. I felt seen. I felt known. I felt a longing to belong—to establish a relationship with this starry Father.

Later that same evening, as my mother tucked me into bed, I asked her how I could get to heaven. I wanted to live with this God I had just encountered. She paused, uncertain, and finally suggested I pray: ask forgiveness for my sins and “ask Jesus into my heart.” When I hesitated, unsure of what words to use, she told me to simply pray my usual bedtime prayer—a memorized German prayer—and assured me that God would understand.

So I did. I mumbled those German words, resenting that I didn’t understand them, yet praying with all my heart that God would understand German. And then—another miracle. I felt a flutter inside me, like the twinkle of those stars, and I knew God had entered my heart. The bond was complete.

After I finished my story, our guests shared theirs. It was a marvelous evening of listening and sacred telling.
When everyone had gone home and I was tucking Candace into bed, she looked up at me with wide, earnest eyes and said she wanted to say “yes” to God too.

We prayed together—this time not in German. As she whispered her own “yes,” her eyes sparkled with a new depth. I told her that while God being a Father was important to me, she—who understood friendship better than anyone I knew—might relate most easily to Jesus as a friend. Her eyes brightened even more.

From that moment on, we always felt God was especially close to her—meeting her with exactly the wisdom she needed for each step of her life.

*****
Then one day, as I was preparing her after-school snack, Candace dropped another unexpected question.

“What is sex?”

I had once read that if a child is old enough to ask the question, she is old enough for the answer. In theory, that had always sounded noble and wise. I had promised myself I would be honest with her.

But now, as she looked up at me with those wide, trusting eyes, I felt like every mother who has ever lived: surely this was too early. Perhaps any age feels too early when it’s your child.

At the same time, I remembered something my older sister had mentioned just days earlier. She and her husband had taken Candace along to a friend’s family gathering. Their friends had a son—a few years older than Candace. Later, my sister described spotting the two of them sitting together on one of those huge floating tubes at the far edge of the lake, feet dangling in the water, completely absorbed in conversation. She said they watched them for the longest time, fascinated.

“That girl held that boy’s attention,” she had said, half admiring, half bewildered.

I had noticed it too. Candace spoke to boys with the same ease she related to girls. She was never flirtatious—just open, curious, genuine. There was something in her that made people lean in. And the boys were leaning in.

I realized this wasn’t a question to sidestep. I would have to do this carefully.

While I was still explaining the basics of how babies are made, she moved on to the next important part of the question.

“What does ‘making love’ mean? Is it the same as sex?”

So I answered. Carefully. Slowly.

And she kept going.

“How?”
“When?”
“Where?”

Then came the question that made me realize I had wandered into deeper waters than I intended. I had been—perhaps—too graphic.

“But, Mom… why would anyone want to do that?”

Still wanting to be honest, I said gently, “Because… well, it feels good.”

Her eyes grew enormous.

“Feels good? What does it feel like?”

At that point, I knew I was in trouble. I searched desperately for an image she would understand—something safely within her world. We had just been to the fair the day before, so I latched onto the only thing that felt remotely comparable.

“It feels,” I said, silently praying the analogy would somehow work, “like the rush of a roller coaster going down the steepest hill.”

Her eyes brightened.

And in that instant, I realized—with slow, dawning horror—that I had turned my careful attempt at sex education into an accidental commercial.

I reeled myself back in as quickly as I could.

“But, Candace,” I added, “it can also be a cheap thrill. Sex is only wonderful with someone you really love.”

And so began a long, motherly monologue—about trust, commitment, marriage, choosing a good father for her future children, and never kissing anyone without a promise of marriage. And on and on.

My only comfort afterward was the belief that she would forget the whole thing. Children forget everything—brushing their teeth, picking up their jackets, returning library books. Surely, she would forget this.

But years later, when I switched off a TV movie that had become too raunchy for a youngster, drifting into territory I didn’t think she was ready for, she looked over at me with a mischievous spark in her eyes and said,

“Like a roller coaster, huh, Mom?”

Then she burst into delighted laughter and fled the room—before I could deliver the lecture she knew I was already winding up to give.

*****
Then the other shoe dropped.

Nothing could have prepared us for our first parent–teacher meeting when Candace was in Grade One.

The teacher began with a glowing report on Candace’s extraordinary social skills—exactly what we expected. But then she paused and expressed her concerns: Candace’s ability to comprehend the lessons, her lack of reading skills, her struggle with simple math. It seemed she wasn’t catching on to anything academic at all.

We were stunned.

We asked for evidence. We asked for explanations. Patiently, the teacher went through it all again and again. And then she made her recommendation: Candace should repeat the entire year.

Cliff and I were completely unprepared for this. We had always believed Candace to be exceptionally intelligent, and now we were being told that she couldn’t keep up with Grade One—that she couldn’t learn the basics.

At the time, we didn’t feel we had any recourse. So we accepted the recommendation to have her repeat the year.
As we were leaving, the teacher smiled—almost apologetically.

“I’m really sorry to do this,” she said. “I truly admire Candace. I think she has exceptional gifts. I’ve placed her with the two bullies in the class because she’s the only one who can handle them.”

Inside, I wanted to scream: Perhaps if you provided our daughter with a safer environment, she could learn. But I stayed silent.

When we came home, we told Candace she would need to do Grade One again. She took it all in stride. We encouraged her to ignore the artificial classifications—that she was still free to be anyone’s friend.

In hindsight, agreeing to hold her back without offering professional tutoring may have been one of our biggest mistakes. But at the time, we didn’t even know that was an option.

When Candace returned to school after the summer, we soon learned that she moved easily between classrooms—between her old peers and her new—never losing her connection with anyone, no matter where she was placed. She handled it with grace. She never once complained.

In hindsight, this may have been the moment she learned never to put people into boxes—because boxes are artificial limitations on the inner beauty of a person.

 *****
 
Then, after pastoring for about five years, Cliff found himself unhappy in the role. He experienced the position as restrictive and overly academic, and began to wonder whether camp directing might better suit his temperament and make fuller use of his gifts. So he applied for a position at Star Lake Lodge in the Whiteshell region of Manitoba—and he was hired.

I was ready to leave.

Cliff was ready to leave.

But I don’t think Candace was.
​
We didn’t think to ask her.

She was exquisite—a crown of soft black hair and eyes wide open. So alive, yet impossibly tiny. She was pure grace—fragile, radiant, angelic. And she was mine!

Cliff and I weren’t ready for a baby; perhaps we never would have been. Yet here she was—this unplanned, impossible little perron who had slipped past my defenses, defied all odds, and come to stay to live with us.
She turned her head and looked at me, her eyes wide and bright, seeing me as I was seeing her.

About seven months into the pregnancy, we were only beginning to accept this newcomer. We decided that we would each choose a name—Cliff if it was a boy, me if it was a girl. One evening, watching a Candice Bergen show on television, I was struck by the name. Soon after, I found the biblical reference to Candace of Ethiopia. The name carried promise, dignity, and the quiet authority of one who reigns.

Now here she was in my arms – six pound and three ounces – and she was a queen.

I brushed off the surge of emotion as blind parental love—belated, perhaps, but genuine. Then I noticed the nurses gathering near her bassinet, whispering to one another, “She’s the cutest baby ever.”

I was so proud of her that I wanted to dress her for the part. Her first public debut would be a stop at my parents’ house on the way home from the hospital, so I asked Cliff to buy her a dress—something special.

He returned to the hospital carrying a tiny pink lace dress—delicate, luminous, and perfect.

He returned to the hospital to pick us up with a tiny pink lace dress—delicate, luminous, perfect.

When we arrived at my parents’ house, I cradled our baby in my arms, wrapped in lace and wonder, brimming with pride.

But my mother took one look at the dress and gasped—not with admiration, but with alarm.

“Oh, Wilma,” she said, shaking her head, “babies need flannel, not lace and frills. She’s too tiny. She just needs something soft and warm."

It was my first true lesson in motherhood: comfort outweighs charm, and warmth matters more than beauty. I wanted to be a good mother—and my own mother, ever practical and tender in her way, stepped naturally into the role of teacher. I absorbed every word.

After the visit, as Cliff and I drove home through the mountains—from Greendale, near Chilliwack, to Harrison Hot Springs—I felt that everything had changed. I had always loved that drive, the sweep of the mountains and the quiet curve of the road, but this time it felt different. With my daughter nestled against me, the world seemed larger, deeper, more alive. Everything was more beautiful.

When we brought Candace home from the hospital and laid her gently in her pink bassinet, our pastor and his wife—who lived just across the yard from us—came over. Together, in that small, ordinary space, we dedicated our little baby girl to God.

Soon after, feeling both awed and unprepared, I asked Cliff to buy a book I had heard was essential for new parents: The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by Dr. Spock.
 
*****
Cliff and I had married two years earlier. We spent our first year of marriage working in Vancouver, then moved to Winnipeg so Cliff could attend Mennonite Brethren Bible College. He was pursuing his dream of studying theology and becoming a pastor, while I worked at Mutual Life Insurance—“putting hubby through,” as people used to say in those days.

That plan changed abruptly when I discovered I was pregnant.

Providentially, Cliff was assigned a summer interim practicum at a tiny chapel in Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia—nestled along Agassiz Lake, a place famous for its warm, mineral-rich, healing waters. It was also close to my family, which mattered more than I could have known at the time.

Since I couldn’t work, Cliff took a seasonal job as a busboy at the elegant Harrison Hot Springs Hotel. The church provided us with a small, cabin-style cottage overlooking the beach. It was simple and cozy—and utterly perfect, like living inside a dream.

Even though we were tucked away in what was technically an isolated holiday resort, it felt as though we were living at the very heart of something alive and unfolding. The hippie movement, which had begun in the United States as a rejection of mainstream values—embracing peace, love, and freedom—had inspired an offshoot known as the “Jesus People.” A group of them had chosen Harrison Hot Springs as their summer home.

It wasn’t unusual to see young Jesus People wandering through the village with guitars slung over their shoulders, gathering in coffeehouses, singing songs of faith and freedom that spilled out onto the streets. Their voices filled the air like a rising tide, and their presence carried the unmistakable sense of awakening. Somehow, in ways we couldn’t quite name, we felt part of it—participants in something fresh, hopeful, and full of promise.

I even wore a granny dress—long, flowing, and free—and let my hair grow past my shoulders. Candace seemed to fit right in as well. They treated her like the queen she was. I often invited these Jesus People in for coffee and cake, simply to get to know them, to hear their stories, and to borrow a little of their contagious joy.

But summer slipped away far too quickly. Before we quite knew it, we were packing up and heading back to Winnipeg, returning to Cliff’s second year of studies—carrying with us the quiet imprint of a season that had shaped us more deeply than we yet understood.

Driving back across the prairies, I worried about how we would possibly manage life in a college dormitory with a baby. But when we arrived, we discovered that five other couples were returning with infants as well. The college graciously gathered all of us on the first floor of the residence, creating an unexpected gift.

It became an instant mothers’ community. Each day we tended to our small routines, then drifted into the hallway where our babies crawled from door to door. We traded stories, advice, worries, and laughter. In that narrow corridor, motherhood didn’t feel lonely—it felt shared, like a small, warm miracle we were all learning together.

And of course, to me, Candace outshone them all. She was always smiling and giggling, so healthy and strong. By five months, she was already standing —determined, delighted, and utterly fearless. We were so proud.

I remember one evening when Cliff and I slipped out to attend a church meeting, leaving Candace with the couple next door. When we returned later that night to pick her up, they opened the door wide-eyed and breathless.
“She took her first step!” they exclaimed. She was only six months old.

They spoke as though they had witnessed a tiny phenomenon—a miracle in miniature. And from that moment on, she never stopped. By seven months, she was walking confidently, as if she had always known exactly where she was going.

If we ever wanted attention, all we had to do was set her down in a mall on a Saturday afternoon. The sight was irresistible—this tiny baby walking. Shoppers would stop in their tracks to watch a bright-eyed, smiling little creature toddle about, her diapers practically bigger than she was. We could have charged admission. And of course, she adored every bit of it.

When my parents visited us during one of their cross-country tours, even my stoic father was undone.

“We have to take a picture of this,” he insisted.

But after snapping one photograph, he frowned, unsatisfied.

“Just seeing her in a picture won’t show how tiny she really is. We need a comparison.”
He paused, then brightened.

“Take a picture of my foot next to her.”

We did—and he was right. She stood just a little taller than his shoe.

No wonder this miniature, determined little person—striding into the world long before anyone expected she could—was a show-stopper wherever she went.

After Cliff graduated, we accepted a ministry position in Pauingassi, managing a trading post. It was a hard posting from the start. Cliff’s role as money manager of the community, was nearly impossible—he was threatened, harassed, pushed to the edge. I worried constantly for his safety.

Strangely, though, I never had to worry about Candace. At first, I hesitated when the local children came to the door asking to play with her, but they were fascinated by her—this small, bright newcomer. They loved her, and she loved them back with the same openness. Her natural charisma stood us in good stead. They were gentle, protective, utterly captivated and she was only three years old.

We didn’t last long. Eventually we retreated to my parents’ home in BC to recover, exhausted and burned out in every way.

It was there that we began to realize Cliff might need a different path. Perhaps he wasn’t meant to be a pastor or missionary after all. He turned toward his artistic side and applied to the Banff School of Fine Arts. We even moved to Banff for the summer. He was accepted—but then changed his mind once again.

So we packed up, yet again, and moved to Calgary. We rented a small house, and Cliff found work as a milkman while we gathered our thoughts and tried to imagine what our next venture might be.

I loved that old house—with its creaks and cracks and sense of possibility. But I worried about Candace. She missed the attention of her dark-haired playmates terribly.

One day, while I was busy unpacking, I suddenly heard a wild clatter—an eruption of noise so startling that I dropped what I was doing and ran to the front of the house.

There was Candace on the front step, an array of pots and pans from the kitchen arranged around her like a makeshift drum kit. She was pounding away with fearless enthusiasm, creating a dreadful racket that echoed down the street.

“Candace, what are you doing?” I gasped, horrified.

She turned toward me with a sly, knowing smile.

“Wait.”

So I did. I stepped back inside and watched her through the living-room window—half worried she’d attract the wrong kind of attention, half curious about what exactly I was waiting for. What did she know that I didn’t?So I did. I stepped back inside and watched her through the living room window, half worried she’d attract the wrong kind of attention, half curious what exactly I was waiting for. What did she know that I didn’t know?

Within minutes children from up and down the block began drifting toward the noise, gathering around her in fascinated clusters. And Candace—bright, confident, delighted—made friends with them instantly.
By the end of the day, she came inside glowing with satisfaction. She had her friends.

Another moment – I’ll always remember was when I had just finished sewing for her—a bright, cheerful creation with a tiny midriff top, butterfly sleeves, and a short skirt with attached panties. I had stitched it together with more hope than skill, and somehow it had turned out beautifully. It fit her perfectly.

She floated through the house like a miniature dancer—twirling, posing, admiring herself in windows and oven door. Her delight was contagious. To celebrate her joy, we decided the two of us would go shopping together.

We climbed into our little blue Datsun and headed for the mall. Candace rolled down the window and rested her arm on the ledge exactly the way I did—her quiet imitation both touching and amusing. A soft prairie breeze lifted her long curls, and her big blue eyes shone with a happiness that felt almost weightless. We smiled at each other, sharing a small, private moment of mother-daughter pride.

She carried herself with such confidence that day—older than her four years, yet still small enough to catch the warm, amused glances of strangers. People smiled at her as we passed. She was simply radiant.

As we wandered the mall, the sound of western music drifted through the corridor. We followed it to a small grandstand where four singers in wide-brimmed hats were serenading the shoppers. Their harmonies were surprisingly lovely, and we found a place to stand near the side of the stage.

One of the singers glanced down and spotted Candace. They were in the middle of “If You Happen to See the Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” and as he saw her, a slow smile spread across his face. He shifted his stance slightly, singled her out, and sang the rest of the song as though it were meant for her alone.

Candace stood utterly still—captivated, her little body wrapped in wonder. Her eyes widened, shimmering with something like awe.

“They were singing to me - about me,” she whispered, as if revealing a sacred truth.

I nodded, my heart full. To me, she was the most beautiful girl in the world—beautiful not only in the way she looked, but in the way she glowed, the way she received joy so openly, so purely.

It was—one of those memories that never fades.

But then, I became pregnant again. I honestly couldn’t seem to get this “birth control” thing straight. Life had its own ideas for me, long before I had any ideas for it.

While I was pregnant, my parents came by, planning to help me with the new baby. But since I was late in delivering --very late—and they had already scheduled a family camping trip – they offered to take Candace along and bring her back when the baby arrived.

Odia was born a week later, my parents returned soon after to help me with the baby.

My mother pulled me aside with that gentle-but-knowing look only mothers possess. “Candace was wonderful… but we discovered she can be quite determined,” she said.

Apparently, something had stuck to Candace—gum, a burr – I’m not sure. We never did figure it out from my mother’s confusing descriptions. What we did learn was that Candace wouldn’t let anyone touch her to help her. She stood her ground with the resolve of a tiny queen defending her kingdom.

My mother could not believe how this sweet, gentle, accommodating little girl revealed an entirely different side of herself whenever she felt even a hint of physical discomfort. She could be immovable, resolute, almost fierce in her self-protection. Eventually—my mother said—Candace had taken care of the problem herself, whatever it was, all on her own.

This became part of her way of being. Candace always took care of her body. Pain was her sworn enemy. She guarded herself fiercely and refused help with a determination far beyond her years. So different than me. When I was a child, I remember collecting scratches and bruises; she never did. She was steady, coordinated, cautious—my careful child.
When we introduced baby Odia to Candace. I braced myself for some kind of sibling rivalry, Instead, Candace looked at her sister – a little squirming bundle—as if she had been waiting for her. A companion. A friend.

By the time Odia was a toddler, Candace had quietly taken over the job of raising her sister. She dressed Odia up—sometimes three times a day—and together they would parade out of their bedroom in fresh outfits, like two miniature debutantes.

Both of them loved the drama of it all: the buttons, the ribbons, the tiny shoes. Every time they emerged from their shared bedroom, I never knew what I would see.
​
Those were simple days, crowded with diapers and giggles and small surprises. Looking back, I can see how early Candace revealed her blend of gentleness and resolve. Even then, she knew exactly who she was—and she loved her sister fiercely, in her own steady, determined way.

Suddenly it dawned on me that as a dedicated writer, I have not truly told Candace’s story. I have spoken endlessly about forgiveness—the word that saved our lives—but I have not written Candace’s story, her biography. My grandchildren, and this entire next generation, may never know who she really is. They will know the crime. They will know the legacy that followed.
But they will not know her—or how it all came to be.  

But how do I do this? How do you write a story about a child who lived only thirteen years - a life that had not yet reached the milestones we tend to call a “good plot line?”  I might have to use my own life as a springboard for her.

The next question: Why does Candace’s story still transcend her years?
We continue to see it happening. When she went missing, an entire organization—Child Find—rose in her wake, born out of the urgent need to search for other missing children. In her death, she drew attention to the importance of living in the moment. She loved the water, and now a swimming pool carries her name—a place alive with splashing, laughter, and play.

Then, after twenty-two years, her unsolved murder erupted into a dramatic arrest, followed by a decade-long trial process that exposed a painful truth: how victims can be re-victimized by the justice system itself. Out of that reckoning came the Candace House—a place of refuge, compassion, and dignity for families living in the shadows of the courthouse.

Yet perhaps still unexplored is something deeper: her transcendent love. Even as a child, Candace had a way of connecting with troubled children—a quiet, intuitive gift that continues to inspire me and to challenge me. It’s a love that has drawn me across boundaries I once believed were impossible, leading to profound learning and ongoing transformation.

So how do I write her story? Not as a conventional biography. Not as a catalogue of achievements. But as an exploration—an act of listening. A journey inward. An honest engagement with the questions her life continues to raise. 

And yes—I am going to glow about her. Legitimately. She was remarkable.

I remember one afternoon standing by the window of a friend’s house, watching our two daughters play in the backyard. My friend, disappointed and discouraged with her own child, said, “I was reading Reader’s Digest this morning, and I’m so tired of parents who write in such glowing terms about children who have died. No one is that good. I could never write an article like that about mine.”

I said nothing. I wanted to honor her pain.

But as I watched Candace—her hair lifting in the breeze, her giggle floating through the air—I remember thinking, I could write that about Candace. She was a pure spirit of light and love. Not perfect—but even in her raw moments, she carried an indescribably beautiful spirit.
My second thought was, I hope I never have to write that article.
Ironically, decades later, Reader’s Digest did publish an article about Candace.
​
That memory gives me permission to glow about her—legitimately.

In this book, I  also want to explore the “Candace Conversations.” 
Perhaps even now, she can teach us a way of speaking that is warm and curious, open-hearted and brave; unafraid of truth, unafraid of pain, unafraid of wonder—unafraid to cross impossible boundaries.

​Please feel free to comment here or write me at [email protected]
At this point, I would love to hear all comments, suggestions, additions, corrections and reflections. Her memory now belongs to all of us.... W