Recently a fire raged within the community I live in, and it was nerve wracking. I’ll never forget the sight as I rounded the corner at the bottom of my street early one evening and saw the fire on the hill behind my home (I had been out river fishing with my family). Trees were exploding and shooting fireballs into the air. As much as it was mesmerizing, I realized I needed to take action before the fire got closer. But for a few seconds I couldn’t think straight – couldn’t decide what items I needed to pack for evacuation because I didn’t know how much time I had.

In that brief snippet of time I realized it was photos, my children’s projects from school, and the haphazard homemade gifts they had crafted with love that had priority. (A lot of other items could easily be replaced.) Along with those items I grabbed my computer hard drive having my book, Who Killed My Sister, My Friend, plus the big storage bins containing all the paper files relating to Cindy’s death. And cherished mementoes given to me by others were also whisked away.

Fortunately the fire never came much closer, so three or four days later all the treasures returned. I’m so grateful the fire stayed at bay, but I keep thinking about how devastating it must have been for Cindy when, during her seven years of harassment, she lost many precious items in her house-fire of April 1986. Treasures of the past really hold special memories!

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My Friend
The unsolved mystery of the death of Cindy James