Part One: The highway

The vibrant reds, pinks and oranges of a June twilight danced along the corn stalk-filled horizon as Joshua Cunningham pulled onto Highway 218, south of Iowa City. The 19-year-old was on his way to meet high school buddies for a late-night showing of "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," when he cruised past a gravel road junction he knew well.

Stephen Bina's two passengers, his father-in-law and a friend, had dozed off somewhere between their fishing cabin in Spring Valley, Minnesota, and Iowa City, the halfway point to their homes in St. Louis. He hoped the radio call of Game 6 between the Dallas Stars and the Buffalo Sabres in the Stanley Cup Final - mixed with thoughts of getting back to his newlywed, Carla - would push him through the next four hours.

Lauren Brenneman, her boyfriend, Todd Graham, and her two daughters, Amanda, 7, and Samantha, 4, had just left a party at the home of Graham's boss when they rolled to a stop, waiting to turn from the gravel road onto the highway. Chronic alcoholics embroiled in a tumultuous relationship, Lauren and Todd were drunk, and the girls weren't wearing seat belts, as they pulled into the wrong lane on Highway 218.

Abbie Kampman, Brenneman's daughter with her first husband, was in the Ozarks, vacationing with family friends and babysitting their three little girls. Before leaving Iowa, Abbie, then 14, told her mother she wouldn't be able to supervise Amanda and Samantha's overnight visit, as was mandated in the custody agreement between Brenneman and her second husband. No one told the girls' father.

Trooper Steve VanOtterloo was asleep or close to it after a long shift. The piercing ring of an early morning phone call soon would break his slumber.

Minutes before 9:30 p.m. on June 19, 1999, every one of these people moved in their separate orbits, enjoying the last gasp of a warm Iowa evening and utterly unaware they were careening toward a tragedy that would end their lives as they knew them. Just a few miles up the road, in the shadow of Mile Marker 83.20, their stories would collide for one heart-wrenching moment before being thrown apart just as quickly.

Show caption Hide caption On June 19, 1999, Todd Graham drove his blue Cutlass the wrong way on Highway 218. Lauren Brenneman was in the front seat and her... On June 19, 1999, Todd Graham drove his blue Cutlass the wrong way on Highway 218. Lauren Brenneman was in the front seat and her daughters Amanda, 7, and Samantha, 4, were in the back. Graham crashed into the white vehicle, killing everyone in his car, and Stephen Bina in the other. Submitted photo/The Register

For about two decades, the people affected by the tragedy on Highway 218 carried guilt like an invisible boulder on their shoulders. They were connected by a date and a place, but living in bell jars, dealing with the bloody ramifications on their own.

The weight of the guilt Abbie bore was made tangible in the pictures, paperwork and personal effects she kept in a "crash box." Every year on June 19, she would go to her basement storage closet, open the box, sort through her mother and sisters' every remaining material possession, and read for the umpteenth time her collection of news articles about that fateful evening. When her face turned raw from tears, she would put the box back on the shelf, allowing the hurt to recede to its resting place in her heart and her mind until the ritual started again the next year.

Items found in the storage tote that Abbie Kampman calls the "crash box" are seen on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. Items found in the storage tote that Abbie Kampman calls the "crash box" are seen on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. Items found in the storage tote that Abbie Kampman calls the "crash box" are seen on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. Brian Powers/The Register

But, in 2017, an impulse told her not to put the box back on the shelf. As she went through the annual motions, the names of the other people affected by that evening kept jumping out of the articles: Carla Lanzafame, Steve VanOtterloo, Joshua Cunningham. Who were these people who shared a part in the worst day of her life?

Her five kids asleep, her husband out of town and her computer screen bright, Abbie thought to herself, Could I find them?

She wanted to learn their faces. She wanted to mine their memories. She wanted to know the full weight of the pain her mother's decisions that night wrought.

But most of all she wanted to know if they'd healed enough to start living again. If they had, could they ever forgive her?

In the blue light of her computer, her cursor blinking in a blank Facebook message, Abbie was going to find out. She started with Carla, the newlywed.

Hello. You do not know me, but my name is Abbie Kampman. Almost 18 years ago, my mother was involved in a car accident that killed your husband…

The healing story of Abbie Kampman In 1999, a car crash killed five on an Iowa highway. A relative of three of the dead finds peace by reaching out to others affected by the tragedy. Brian Powers, bpowers@dmreg.com

Joshua

Great country songs are written about nights like June 19, 1999. Temperatures hovered around 70 degrees, clear skies fought off rain, and the road seemed to lead straight to the stars. Joshua would have been that song's perfect subject: He was "19 going on 16 as far as my maturity level," living without many cares and flush with friends.

"I had a good work ethic, but I guess I'd say I wasn't that versed in life," he tells me.

To Joshua, Highway 218 was the route he took from rural Ainsworth to urbane Iowa City. For many others, the divided highway was a main drag connecting eastern Iowa to St. Louis. In between interstate-like exits, from which drivers would get up to interstate-like speeds, small gravel roads fed right onto the highway.

A diagram of the accident that killed five people on June 19, 1999. Courtesy of Abbie Kampman

Joshua hurtled toward a gravel road junction, one he traveled often to visit a friend whose parents' acreage was down that road. He noticed a beat-up 1983 blue Cutlass waiting at the stop sign, trying to turn left onto the highway to drive north.

He watched the car inch out. He followed its path as it turned into the southbound lanes toward oncoming traffic instead of crossing the median to join the cars going toward the city.

Shocked, Joshua figured the driver assumed this was a two-lane road, and he sped up to pace with them. He rolled down his window and yelled across the median, waving frantically into the dark night, desperate to get their attention. He flashed his lights to warn oncoming traffic that something was wrong.

Lauren and Todd were "stoic" in the front seat, oblivious to the cars madly swerving around them. In the back seat, two towheaded kids played with each other, bouncing around like they didn't have "any concerns in the world."

Joshua couldn't get the Cutlass occupants' attention, so he pulled off at the next exit, ran into the A&W and called 911, hustling to get back on the highway and catch up with the car.

But less than a mile from the exit, dust settled over snarled metal that was once two cars. The Cutlass' wheel well had collapsed into the front row seats, pinning Lauren and Todd. Samantha lay on the road. Amanda was collapsed in the scrunched back seat.

Joshua joined the others who'd stopped to help and pulled Amanda from the car, laying her down near her sister. The winds off the nearby farmland kicked up flames that engulfed the Cutlass as police and firefighters and ambulances and medevac helicopters swarmed the scene.

Amanda and Samantha Brenneman in September 1998. Courtesy of Tarin Bickford

He watched from the shoulder, unable to take his eyes off the little girls. People buzzed around them, never stopping at their side. When the helicopters took off, the girls were still lying on the road.

"They placed the emphasis on who they could save," he said. "So I knew the two little girls didn't make it."

Every moment from when he left his parents' house up until those girls were left on the highway is crystal clear to Joshua. But the hours and days after that are hazy and dark, like an action movie that ends before the star gets the bad guy.

Soon after, Joshua dropped out of Indian Hills Community College and joined the Army. He went on tours in Iraq and Afghanistan where he would see death again, but none pushed this experience from his mind. The story became a part of him, like his fingernails or his mop of brown hair, and he would never stop questioning his choice to pull off the road.

"If I just stayed on pace with that car," he said he asked himself often, "just flashed my lights more, could I have saved them?"

Stephen & Carla

Stephen Bina and his wife Carla at their wedding in 1998. Submitted Photo

In the 11 months and nine days since saying, "I do," to Carla - a prodigious conversationalist who made friends wherever she went - Stephen and his father-in-law had become partners, ready at a moment's notice to run off hunting in the woods or waste a day fishing at the lake. Both dedicated to their families, they were often just as excited to run back home to their wives, toting dinner for the week.

This weekend was no exception. Carla was away, too, enjoying a girls' weekend at Hilton Head Island. She left first, kissing Stephen goodbye before running out the door.

The pair had met through friends, and their vivacious energies drew them together like magnets. It was love at first sight, Carla says now, and they wasted no time starting their lives: getting engaged her senior year of college and married right after.

In 1999, he was working at a printing shop, and she had finished her first year of teaching, though she still waited tables on Friday nights for pocket money. They'd bought their first house - a cute two-bedroom where they had their first Valentine's Day, Halloween and Christmas. Kids were in the plan, but, at 23, Carla felt like they had forever.

The hockey game hummed as the car in front of Stephen swerved suddenly. His friend jolted awake when Stephen screamed, "There's a car in my way."

Carla Peretz and Stephen Bina relax in this undated family photograph. Submitted Photo

The friend told police he came to after a brief moment of black and heard Stephen's father-in-law, Sare Lanzafame, roaring in pain in the back seat. Lanzafame would spend the ensuing few weeks in the University of Iowa Hospital recovering from multiple broken bones and a host of other injuries.

Stephen wasn't moving.

Carla wouldn't know her husband died until the next day when she arrived home to find her best friends gathered on her parents' porch. She threw up as they broke the news and then threw up again.

She tossed her life into neutral as the arrangements were made. Her friends didn't leave her side for months, telling her when to eat, when to shower and when to sleep. If they went out, they formed a circle around her and batted away anyone who had that "Oh, aren't you that poor widow?" face.

In a few months, she moved back into the two-bedroom she once shared with Stephen. In a few more months, she took off her wedding ring. And after a summer of falling apart and building herself back up, she decided to "purposefully and intentionally choose not to be miserable."

Time passed and she met a nice man named Mike Peretz. Somewhere in their first month of dating, birthdays came up. His was June 19, he told Carla, as she remembered the world slowing down around her.

"I just froze," she said. "I just told him, 'Yeah, we're going to get you a new one because I really hate that day.'"

Lauren

From left: Amanda, Lauren and Samantha Brenneman play outside during the winter before their deaths in a car crash on June 19, 1999. Courtesy of Tarin Bickford

The fog of addictions cleared slightly for Lauren Brenneman where her kids were concerned. In letters to her lawyer and detailed personal accounts of her yearlong custody battle for Amanda and Samantha, her mama bear instincts were clear: She wanted to be a mother to her children.

The temporary custody paperwork filed in the first months of 1999 declared that 14-year-old Abbie must be present when her sisters visited her mother. Abbie "could walk in the room and tell with one glance how many drinks her mother had had," according to her aunt, Tarin Bickford. But appointing a teenager to be the adult in the room was never ideal nor supposed to be a long-term solution, and Lauren's notes show she planned to fight that provision.

Family had always been central to Lauren, even though hers wasn't traditional. Her parents and another family lived on a commune where their 11 children - in all forms of wholes, halves and steps - were co-parented by the adults. "It was a '70s experimental thing," Tarin offered.

Tarin and Lauren had the same parents, and they fit together like yin and yang. In all the ways Tarin was introverted and intellectual, Lauren was extroverted and athletic and popular.

But struggle entered Lauren's life early. The commune broke up when she was young, and Lauren moved away from her father, whom she always considered her North Star, Abbie said. Emotional abuse and distance plagued the large family.

Letter from Lauren Brenneman to her two daughters Amanda and Samantha. Courtesy of Abbie Kampman

Lauren started drinking when she was 13, Tarin said, and was a "hardcore drinker" by 16. At 18, Lauren had two OWIs and plenty of psychological scars from bad relationships.

As peers grew up, Lauren "just never got out of the teenage partying thing," Tarin said.

Lauren drank through her divorce from her first husband, Abbie's dad, and her marriage to her second, Chris, who was father to Amanda and Samantha.

When she was pregnant with her youngest child, Samantha, she got an OWI and spent the night in jail. She told Tarin she'd been drinking O'Doul's, a near beer, and that someone must have forgotten to take the alcohol out.

"It's embarrassing now, but I believed her," Tarin said. "Our whole family was in denial."

From 1996 until her death in 1999, Lauren "kind of disintegrated," Tarin said. She went to at least four in-patient treatment centers, and her family believes the people she met in rehab introduced her to cocaine and meth.

When she left the last in-patient treatment center - which she did before completing her treatment - she moved in with Todd, whom she'd met as a patient. They lived in a small apartment in a Hy-Vee parking lot, and Lauren got a job at Amoco making about $800 a month, custody documents show.

Lauren wrote letters at the time saying she "doesn't know what she'd do without" Todd. But a police report from six months before the accident says officers heard Lauren crying and telling someone, "No, no, don't," and, "Stop, stop, stop," before they forced their way into the apartment. (Todd wasn't charged in this case.)

A police report regarding Lauren Brenneman and Todd Graham. Special to the Register

Despite the turmoil of her life, Lauren tried to keep a normal facade around her youngest children.

After the girls were dropped off on June 19, a friend took the trio to Lake McBride, where the adults drank a six-pack, according to timelines the family gathered in the wake of the accident. They came back to the apartment and drank more until Todd, who had also been drinking, got home and told her they were all going to his work party.

Lauren Brenneman and her boyfriend Todd Graham in 1998. Courtesy of Tarin Bickford

Knowing there would be more alcohol and hoping to spend quality time with her daughters, Lauren told Todd she didn't want to go, but, after a fight, she gave in, Lauren's friend later told Tarin.

As well as Tarin could trace things after the accident, Lauren arrived at the party at 8:15 p.m. She was holding Samantha on her hip.

Nothing in Lauren's surviving personal effects indicates she thought that Saturday would be her last day.

In fact, the calendar Lauren dutifully kept noted one important event scheduled for the following week: On June 23, she was meeting with her lawyer to fight for her kids.

Trooper Steve

When cars are going the same speed - say, 65 mph - and they hit each other head-on, the scene is surprisingly small. The two cars involved in the June 19 crash came to rest within feet of each other.

But Trooper Steve , who'd been called early the morning of June 20 to do a technical analysis of the crash, knew small scenes often leave large devastation. Helping families sort through that havoc was why Steve followed his older brother into law enforcement, working his way up from local beat cop to trooper to accident investigator.

Steve had seen hundreds of accidents before this one, but this was the first that involved two small children.

Accident report Courtesy of Abbie Kampman

He started that day at the hospital, where he took pictures of the victims: Stephen, Lauren, Todd, Samantha and Amanda. Blood would be drawn from Todd, but Steve had seen enough bodies to know what "drunk" looked like - and both Lauren and Todd had the smell and puffiness that tipped off his trained eye.

Next, he went to the scrapyard to measure and document damage to the cars. And finally he got to the scene, where blood still marked the pavement and errant vehicle parts scattered in the hubbub rested on the highway shoulder.

He'd been "out of sorts" since that morning, when he'd photographed those two girls on cold metal trays. But he focused on his work, determining momentum and vectors and speeds.

"All the things you need to do to make sure the evidence is collected correctly kind of keeps your mind off of what you're really looking at, but your brain is soaking it in," he said. "Something like that will definitely resurface."

A few days later, he found out Todd's blood alcohol level was .417, over four times the legal limit at the time. Even a tolerant alcoholic would have to drink 15 to 20 shots or 180 to 240 ounces of beer in a short amount of time to be that drunk, news reports said.

It was the highest blood alcohol level Steve had ever seen, and it further rooted what he already believed: "This guy committed vehicular homicide."

But unlike cases where a driver could be prosecuted, there was no justice for Steve to seek, no way for him to right this wrong.

Abbie Kampman meets trooper Steve VanOtterloo Abbie Kampman meets Steve VanOtterloo, the former state trooper who investigated the car accident that killed her mother, sisters and two others. Brian Powers, bpowers@dmreg.com

Within a week, he started to dream about Amanda and Samantha. Sometimes it would just be their faces appearing out of the darkness, other times they'd be playing in the back seat.

Even as he moved on to the Division of Criminal Investigation, racking up cases across a 30-year career, those faces never left him, and that rotten feeling persisted that there wasn't anything he could do to bring peace.

Like Joshua and Carla, Steve had no idea there was another daughter.

Abbie

"Mom's dead, isn't she?"

Ted Eickelberg, Abbie's father, had driven through the night to tell her about the crash in person, and as soon as she saw her dad, Abbie knew the worst had happened.

She'd been preparing for her mother's death her whole life, playing out scenarios in her head to gird her heart.

Lauren gave birth to Abbie when she was 19, so they'd grown up together, really: Abbie, Lauren and alcohol.

Lauren Brenneman, center, holds her eldest daughter, Abbie Kampman, shortly after her birth in 1985. Courtesy of Tarin Bickford

"I knew the difference between Bud Light and Miller Lite when I was two-and-a-half because she would tell me which one to get," says Abbie, now 34.

Ted and Lauren were both drinkers when they got together, but he expected they would slow down when Abbie entered the picture. She didn't, and they divorced but stayed amicable.

Abbie lived with Lauren and visited her dad on weekends, always hoping she could figure out the key to saving her mom.

Maybe she'll stop drinking when she gets remarried? Abbie remembered thinking, but she didn't. Maybe when she had two more daughters? But no. Or maybe when they moved to a house in the country, just like she'd always wanted? But by then she wasn't just drinking, she was using cocaine and meth, too. The family soon learned she paid for the drugs by selling her body.

"She would be gone for three or four days at a time; we wouldn't know where she was," Abbie said. "But, eventually, she would stumble in, in the middle of the night, bruised and dirty."

Not knowing what to do, sixth-grader Abbie would pray at night, modeling her hands off the TV shows she watched.

"I was laying there and just said, ‘God, if you're out there, I really would love to have a loving family.' I think that was the first thing," Abbie said. "The second thing was, 'I want to feel happy; I want to feel joy again.' Because I just, for so many years, had felt depression and struggle. And then the third thing I prayed for was a window sill seat.

"Totally a child's prayer, you know, two very heavy things and then I'll throw that window seat in there."

Abbie never let her father know how bad things were. In her young brain, staying was the only option.

"I thought, 'What would happen if she didn't have us there?'" Abbie said. "'What would her purpose be?'"

After another round of rehab stints failed and the drug use ramped up, Abbie moved in with her father permanently, and Chris took Amanda and Samantha.

Abbie Kampman holds her sister Samantha Brenneman as her other sister, Amanda Brenneman, leans on her in 1998. Courtesy of Tarin Bickford

Back in the Ozarks, Ted answered her question: Yes, her mother was dead. But he kept staring at her.

"It dawned on me, I hadn't told my stepdad I wouldn't be there," Abbie said. "And so I said, ‘Not Amanda and Samantha? Not them, too?'"

"Them, too," her dad said.

The next few days exist in flashes of memory. Before the visitation, she cried by her sisters' shared coffin, unable to reconcile the sight of them together in the open casket, with their mother's cremated remains set at their feet. What wounds the mortician couldn't patch, he covered with Winnie the Pooh Band-Aids, a nod to the girls' favorite books.

At the funeral, an old hymn that played as background music included the line, "It is well with my soul," and Abbie couldn't understand why anyone would think that was true.

She read the hundreds of cards that poured in from all over America. Some writers had seen the news and just wanted to offer condolences, others knew Lauren as a child or young mom, offering that she was always kind and cheerful and loyal.

She asked her grandfather to take her to Todd's service. "I felt like I needed to forgive him," she said. He was never the one she was angriest at anyway; she rested her ire squarely on her mom's shoulders, sure that she was at fault for putting the girls in that car.

She spent that summer with Tarin, picking up memorials left by strangers on the side of the road. By herself, Tarin drove Lauren's last route over and over, irrationally hoping that if she could just figure out how Lauren went wrong, she could change the outcome.

Abbie never moved forward, but kept up appearances so no one asked questions. In quiet moments, she would flash back to the night of the accident when she was giving the girls she was babysitting a bath and braiding their hair. She would emotionally beat herself up, saying that she should have been with her sisters, going through that bedtime routine with them, saving them.

She moved to Texas her junior year of high school and, now out of her comfort zone, confronted her feelings. She joined a youth group, the pastor of which welcomed her to her first meeting with a booming, "Hello! We're so glad you're here."

Items found in the storage tote that Abbie Kampman calls the "crash box" are seen on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. Abbie's two sisters, Amanda and Samantha, along with her mother Lauren, were killed in a car accident on June 19, 1999. Items found in the storage tote that Abbie Kampman calls the "crash box" are seen on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. Abbie's two sisters, Amanda and Samantha, along with her mother Lauren, were killed in a car accident on June 19, 1999. Items found in the storage tote that Abbie Kampman calls the "crash box" are seen on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. Abbie's two sisters, Amanda and Samantha, along with her mother Lauren, were killed in a car accident on June 19, 1999. Brian Powers/The Register

Faith became the life raft she needed to pull herself out of sorrow.

Over time, relatives gave her things they'd kept of Lauren's, and she put them away in a box that she could pull down to remember and put away to forget.

But the truth was she could never really forget.

Part Two: Redemption

So here were Joshua, Carla, Steve and Abbie, two decades on and again existing in separate orbits.

They'd moved on with families and careers, but the grief from June 19, 1999, lay like a bruise just below their skin - not festering, but always there. Each was like a George Bailey standing on that bridge outside Bedford Falls, waiting for their Clarence to drop into the cold stream and set their minds at ease.

Instead of an angel, Carla, Steve and Joshua got a mother of five from Grimes.

As Abbie sat in the blue light of her computer, Facebook message open, she wrote and rewrote the words, convincing herself again and again that this was a fruitful pursuit. Even if the message ended up in spam, she said, at least she will have sent it.

Hello. You do not know me, but my name is Abbie Kampman. Almost 18 years ago, my mother was involved in a car accident that killed your husband…

At home in St. Louis, Carla, who calls herself a "pretty aggressive Facebooker," was lying in bed, waiting for Mike, now her husband, when the notification appeared: 1 new message.

She read it, and the butterflies kicked in immediately.

She lost Stephen when she was 23, during what now felt like a different lifetime. She'd fallen apart after the crash and spent about a year allowing herself to climb out of that dark hole very slowly. With the help of friends and family, her wounds healed and she found her way back to the cheerful, exuberant Carla.

She remarried, had three kids (now ages 15, 14 and 10) and thrived in her teaching career. Now, when she thinks of June 19, her mind doesn't go to the death of her first husband, but the birth of her second one.

So she faced a choice: Did she want to go back into those feelings? Risk slipping back into that hole?

Yet something inside her soul said Abbie needed to hear from her.

"She said, ‘I'm sorry,' so many times in that message that I thought, ‘I have got to talk to this girl,'" Carla said. "I can't have her thinking that I, for one second, blamed her for this."

They made a date to talk on the phone, eventually connecting and sharing their life stories. The conversation turned to the crash, and Abbie offered to send Carla some of the articles and information she collected over the years.

Abbie Kampman keeps articles and documents about the accident that killed her mother and two sisters on June 19, 1999. Brian Powers/The Register

At the time of the tragedy, Carla wasn't interested in the details; she wanted to separate from the physicality of Stephen's death. That stayed true over the years: Carla had locked her questions and "What ifs" away and looked ahead.

But Abbie's offer lingered, and she seized it. It was time to allow the weight of it all to flood over her. So she read through the stories, stared at the ripped-apart car and learned the severity of Todd's blood alcohol level.

And she weathered it all.

She realized the pain of Stephen's death doesn't have to be separate from her everyday life; he can be in her heart and her mind, and she can still be Carla.

With the understanding that she didn't have to separate her two lifetimes, Carla thought back to that day Mike told her his birthday.

Where an end had happened, she said with all the benefits of hindsight, God had also allowed a new beginning.

…I am searching for a former state trooper by your same name that was a first responder in a fatal alcohol-related car accident…

Steve opened this new Facebook message with trepidation. Blame the years of law enforcement, but his first thought was, "Is she legit?"

As he finished the message, he flashed to the hospital and the girls on those cold metal tables. For a year after the crash, he would wake up once a week from dreams of those faces. The visions had abated in two decades, but, still, every six months, images of Amanda and Samantha, bouncing in the back seat with life stretched out in front of them, would shock him from slumber.

He worried the dreams would return with a fury, but Steve had made a point over his career to talk with families and answer whatever questions they had about the death of their loved one. It was an easy way to help, and he couldn't betray that creed now.

He and Abbie chatted on the phone, and, as it was with Carla, they shared their stories for hours. Abbie asked for a copy of his report and the crime scene photos, and he obliged.

As he hung up, he literally felt a weight lift, he said.

"It had bothered me for 20 years that the guy never went to trial, that he never did any time, that there wasn't justice, in a sense," Steve said. "But to help her, it felt like something was coming full circle."

He paused and looked me straight in the eye: "I haven't had another dream about her sisters since that phone call."

…My mother, sisters, and mother's boyfriend died in the accident, but a kind man named Josh tried to get their attention without success…

Joshua was the hardest for Abbie to find. Pair his common name with the fact he'd moved a lot and wasn't a frequent social media user, and Abbie had to resort to messaging the woman she hoped was his wife.

"That is my husband!!!" Shana Cunningham replied. "We have talked about that incident so much. He was heartbroken that he couldn't help more. He tried so hard."

Abbie suggested she and Joshua meet up while her family vacationed in Colorado, and even though he is "an especially private person" and wasn't sure he would be able to make it through the conversation without "totally losing it," Joshua wanted to try.

For years, he had imagined his own loved ones in the car. He decided if all things were equal and he'd lost what Abbie lost, he would want to speak with the person who saw his family last, too.

Their coffee lasted for hours as Joshua told her his story and she asked questions. The entire time, Joshua waited for the right moment to deliver the message he'd carried for 20 years.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry I couldn't save your sisters."

Before parting, Joshua told Abbie he now has two little boys. In some corner of his mind, he thinks of it as a second chance to save two innocents. This time, he can make sure these two get to grow up.

The crash became a part of him a long time ago. Those memories are indelible, but since that meeting with Abbie, he's thought about the accident, and her sisters, a lot less.

"I think I have gained a little bit of peace from it," he said. "It's like it haunts me less."

83.20, revisited

Recently, Abbie and I drove out to Mile Marker 83.20 on Highway 218. We walked along the shoulder, remarking at how fast the cars were going and how loud they sounded, and we stared at the road where five families were shattered 20 years ago.

Nothing will change that lives were lost here, and nothing can make us feel better about the fact they were cut down so needlessly.

But, to a person, Joshua, Carla, Abbie and Steve have said that connecting with someone who understood that day and having a chance to tell their story has freed something inside them. It realigned the part of their soul that came loose on this highway on June 19, 1999.

Left: Amanda, Lauren and Samantha Brenneman in January 1999. Right: Abbie Kampman releases balloons on the first birthday after her mother's death. Left: Amanda, Lauren and Samantha Brenneman in January 1999. Right: Abbie Kampman releases balloons on the first birthday after her mother's death. Left: Amanda, Lauren and Samantha Brenneman in January 1999. Right: Abbie Kampman releases balloons on the first birthday after her mother's death. Courtesy of Tarin Bickford.

Grief, they've learned, is insurmountable alone. Even the most emotionally hearty of us simply cannot do it by ourselves. Pulling together, leaning on others, is the only way through.

As Abbie sat in front of that computer, she was seeking forgiveness from the people whose lives her mother shattered. But what she discovered along the way is that she needed to forgive.

When she reached out to Joshua, Carla and Steve, she also spoke with her mother's last therapist. Just before her death, Lauren wanted to tell Abbie how much she loved her, the therapist recalled, but she had made so many poor decisions and asked for so much forgiveness that she didn't know how to start the conversation.

"All I could think was, ‘Why didn't you share that with me?'" Abbie said.

Abbie may have spent a lifetime preparing for her mom's death, but she knows now that she wasn't really ready. And it took her two decades to realize that the grief she held in her heart wasn't "love with nowhere to go," as the platitude says, it was directionless anger that had overstayed its welcome.

In 2017, "Even If," a song by Christian pop band MercyMe, started getting radio play. The last line of the tune is the same as the old hymn Abbie heard at her mother and sisters' funeral: "It is well with my soul."

Every time the song came on, Abbie would have to pull over and collect herself. It felt like God was closing the loop for her, that this was her sign "things have been redeemed as much as they can be."

In speaking with the others connected to that night and learning more about the crash, Abbie has also come to know her mother as a complete person, broken and imperfect. Through that, she let go of her resentment, moved past her pain and, in some way, finally saved the one person she never could.

Abbie looked at the pavement, bathed in the yellow of an early fall twilight and wiped a tear, the first and only one she's let fall in my presence.

"If I've done anything," she said, "I'd like to think I've done that."

Left: Abbie Kampman, middle, sits with her two younger sisters, Amanda and Samantha Brenneman in September 1998. Right: Abbie Kampman stands along Highway 218 where her mother and two sisters died in a car crash on Jun 19, 1999. Left: Abbie Kampman, middle, sits with her two younger sisters, Amanda and Samantha Brenneman in September 1998. Right: Abbie Kampman stands along Highway 218 where her mother and two sisters died in a car crash on Jun 19, 1999. Left: Abbie Kampman, middle, sits with her two younger sisters, Amanda and Samantha Brenneman in September 1998. Right: Abbie Kampman stands along Highway 218 where her mother and two sisters died in a car crash on Jun 19, 1999. Left: Courtesy of Tarin Bickford. Right: Brian Powers/The Register

Courtney Crowder, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. She hopes that you and your family have a Thanksgiving filled with fun, family and (over)filled plates. If you want to know more about Abbie, visit her website at AbbieKampman.com. Reach Courtney at ccrowder@dmreg.com or 515-284-8360. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.