Face Wash with Snow
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.
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.
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