My Daughter's Legacy

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I smiled a little in agreement. It didn’t sound as if there was anything anyone could have done. “Unbelievable.”

  Maddee’s expression turned serious. “Well, that, my dear sister, is the historical part of what we know. Tomorrow we’ll pick it up in 1984, when the rabbi’s great-great-grandson is watching the news one day and learns something that will end up changing his life.”

  After a night spent dreaming of sinking ships and dead sailors, I was glad when my alarm went off the next morning.

  Church with Nana was fine, as was lunch at her place afterward. Our parents, who lived about two hours southeast, joined us, as did Aunt Cissy, who was all fixed up in a brightly flowered chiffon dress, her hair in a bouffant updo, her welcoming hug leaving me in a cloud of lilac-and-rose-scented perfume. Fortunately, we all had a little time to hang before heading to the museum, which gave me a chance to visit with my mom and dad and catch them up on school and stuff. We weren’t especially close, but it was good to see them, and I could tell they were deeply relieved that I was still on the straight and narrow.

  The reception at the museum was scheduled to begin at four, but thanks to our family’s contribution to the exhibit, we were among those allowed to come early for a private viewing, where we could take it all in without crowds or commotion.

  Once we got there and headed for the building, it really was kind of exciting, even if our family photos made up just a small percentage of the overall exhibit. According to Aunt Cissy, the Talbot pics wouldn’t be all together but instead spread throughout, depending on subject matter.

  The first thing I noticed as we entered the stately exhibit hall was the clever spin they’d used for the presentation, framing this collection of Civil War–era photographs in modern-day terms. Glancing around, I could see big headers, proclaiming “The World’s First Selfie” and “The World’s First Viral Photo.”

  Curious, I checked out the selfie, which was a somewhat stained and blurry daguerreotype of a young man with thick curly hair and a thoughtful gaze. According to the description, the man was an amateur chemist and photographer who had taken advantage of the long exposure times required back then by running in front of the camera, removing the lens cap, posing for a minute or two, and then putting the cap back on—thus capturing the image of himself and creating what was, indeed, the world’s first selfie.

  I was smiling at the thought as I moved on from there, but my smile faded when I came to the next one, “The World’s First Viral Photo.” Talk about a jolt. According to the description, the picture had been taken in 1863 and, using some new technology, turned into a “carte de visite,” which was a small, mass-produced reproduction printed on cardstock that could be collected, shared, and passed around. The carte de visite of this particular image had caught on like wildfire, eventually ending up in the mainstream media and becoming one of the most widely viewed photographs in America at the time.

  It featured a man named Peter, who had been enslaved but managed to escape and make his way to a Union camp. That’s where, once they saw what had been done to him, they decided to take photographs. In this image, Peter was sitting on a bench, posed with his naked back to the camera.

  This horrific display of cruelty was hard to stomach. The man’s back was almost completely covered by crisscrossed ridges of scars upon scars, evidence of a lifetime of whippings. Considering its shock value, it didn’t surprise me at all that this particular carte de visite ended up going viral, so to speak—becoming a tool of abolitionists and sympathizers who circulated copies as proof of the evils of slavery. Gazing at it now, I could barely process all the thoughts and feelings it brought out in me.

  I forced myself to move on, though many of the photos to come were equally disturbing—shots of the dead and wounded, of the enslaved, of the degradation of war. Walking through the exhibit and taking it all in, I found myself growing anxious and becoming short of breath. I was waiting for a wave of nausea to pass when I felt an arm around me and knew from the flowery scent that it was Aunt Cissy.

  “Come over here, dear,” she said gently, pulling me further into the hall to a different section of the exhibit, one about everyday life in the 1860’s South. It was a lot easier to take, and I thanked Aunt Cissy for rescuing me.

  “You were looking a tad pale,” she said. “Which is understandable, of course. This was the first major conflict ever to be captured so extensively in photos. The images are startling, to say the least.”

  She stayed with me for a few minutes, helping to calm my jagged nerves by pointing out some of the pictures and objects in this section that had come from our family’s collection. Just as I’d finally begun to calm down, the hall began to fill with people, and I realized it must be four o’clock, time for the opening reception to begin.

  Aunt Cissy noticed it too, and after making sure I was okay, she excused herself to go greet friends and mingle with the throng. I stayed where I was, turning my attention to a display about the children of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. It featured photos along with some of their toys—a porcelain doll in a green velvet dress and bonnet, a little china dog, a pink-and-white tea set—on loan from a museum in Louisiana.

  As the minutes ticked by, I couldn’t believe the number of people who were filling the space around me, brushing against me, laughing and talking and sporting complimentary glasses of wine given to them by tuxedoed waiters circulating through the crowd.

  A woman wearing a large diamond necklace nearly bumped into me, her loud laughter reverberating against the case, red liquid nearly sloshing over the rim of her glass.

  I had to get out of there.

  My heart racing, I looked around for an exit and began moving toward it, nearly colliding with Maddee on the way.

  “What are you doing,” she hissed, gripping my forearm. “Can’t you at least pretend this stuff interests you? For Aunt Cissy’s sake?”

  “It does interest me,” I said, my voice tight. “I just—I need to leave.”

  She huffed. “So like you.”

  “Hey,” I replied too loudly, jerking my arm free. A few heads turned to look. I lowered my voice. “Don’t jump to conclusions. I hate that.”

  Without another word, I pushed through the exit and found myself standing in the museum’s inner courtyard.

  The fresh air made a difference almost right away, and I stood there for a long moment, breathing in deeply and looking around at the pretty spring landscaping. I wasn’t sure what had bothered me so much in there, but at least I’d known enough to remove myself from the situation.

  Feeling the weight of keys in my pocket, I thought about taking off, but Maddee and I had ridden together, and as irritating as she could be, she didn’t deserve to be abandoned. I decided to use the time as my counselor might have advised, identifying what had disturbed me so, praying about it, and figuring out how to keep it from happening again.

  I made my way farther into the courtyard and sat on a bench facing a small koi pond surrounded by pink and purple blossoms. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I was feeling much better when I sensed someone’s presence and realized my sister had come outside and was heading my way.

  “You here to lecture me some more?” I gestured to the bench beside me, and she sat.

  “No, I’m here to apologize. I am so, so sorry.”

  I turned to look at her, sure she was being sarcastic, but her expression was earnest as she continued.

  “Obviously, I’m a little slow on the uptake. But once I figured it out, I felt terrible.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The alcohol? The wine?”

  I exhaled slowly, looking away. “Well, thanks for the apology, but that was just a small part of it. I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out what happened in there, and I think I know. It has to do with self.”

  “Self?”

  “Yeah, like, selfishness, self-centeredness. As my friend Riley says, the only thing more self-oriented then an
addict is an addict in recovery.”

  Maddie nodded thoughtfully. “I hadn’t heard that one.”

  “I’m actually glad we came here today because I need to be reminded once in a while that my suffering is nothing compared to the rest of the world. All those pictures of all those people…” My voice trailed off as I tried to articulate my thoughts. “That man? With the scars all over his back? He had no say in what happened to him, no control over his own suffering. But I did. Most of what I’ve gone through in my life has been self-inflicted. I had choices. He did not.”

  “I get what you’re saying,” Maddee replied. “But you can’t keep hanging on to mistakes you’ve made in the past. That’s all behind you now.”

  I smiled. “I’m not hanging on to it. I’m just saying that for years, everything in my life—both before and after the accident—was all about me, me, me. It’s the nature of addiction, but it kind of has to be a big part of recovery too. And that’s okay. But I’m in a different place now. I’m supposed to be looking outward. I’m supposed to remember that there’s plenty of stuff going on beyond the end of my own nose.”

  We were both quiet for a long moment.

  “At least it’s a cute nose,” Maddee offered, “and not some giant honker.”

  We both laughed, and as we stood and brushed off our skirts and decided we’d cut out early, I said a silent prayer of thanks for my sweet sister.

  The sun wouldn’t set till eight, so after a quick stop at home to change into shorts and sneakers, we headed to one of our favorite places in town, Belle Isle. After a few stretches beside the car, we walked the length of the suspended footbridge, cars thump-thumping overhead, and then jogged the nearly two-mile loop around the island. It felt so good to run, especially when I thought of how different my experience here had been a year and a half ago, when my legs were still healing, and it was all I could do to get up the ramp at the start of the bridge. What a difference time makes.

  When we finished the loop, I told Maddee I was ready for the rest of the story, if she felt like telling it.

  “You sure you’re up to it?” She shot me a concerned glance. “Emotionally, I mean. Last night was the easy part. Now we get into the cabin and the stuff that happened when we were kids.”

  “I’m ready.” I wasn’t sure if it was the exercise or my earlier revelations in the courtyard, but I wasn’t feeling anxious at the thought, not at all.

  “Great. So where did we leave off?”

  “Something about a guy watching the news and it rocking his world.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nicole

  As we jogged toward the bridge to cross back over the river, Maddee returned to the story. “So we stopped with the Civil War having ended, the rabbi coming home from fighting, and the Talbots realizing that at some point over the past month or two, all of their valuables had been stolen, including the rabbi’s illuminated manuscript.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, so that would’ve been in 1865. Now we jump ahead one hundred thirty years to March 1995—just four months prior to us finding the dead body in the cabin.”

  We started up the concrete ramp to the bridge as Maddee continued with the story. “The rabbi was long gone, but his descendants lived on, including his great-grandson, a man named Taavi Koenig.”

  “Our Taavi Koenig?” I shivered. “The man we found dead?”

  “Yes, one and the same. By this point, the Koenigs lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and Taavi was married with two teenagers. Though he and his wife both worked, they struggled to make ends meet.”

  I led the way onto the concrete bridge at a quick pace as Maddee kept talking. “One night in March of ’95, Taavi was watching the news when they did a story about the CSS Alabama. They said the ship was discovered off the Normandy coast back in 1984, and an association had just been accredited as the operator of the archaeological investigation of the ship’s remains. Family lore among the Koenigs was that they once owned a valuable old illuminated manuscript, but it had been stolen, recovered, and stolen again—and that it had something to do with Taavi’s great-grandfather getting swindled and the CSS Alabama. Although he’d heard there was a bunch of paperwork somewhere that explained everything, he’d never read it and didn’t know where it was. He was fuzzy on the details, but his assumption was that the manuscript sank on the Alabama.”

  We both walked briskly as Maddee talked. “As the reporter went on about the types of artifacts that the divers were bringing up, Taavi grew excited, remembering the old stories and wondering if the priceless heirloom might have been one of the things recovered from down there and, if so, if there was any way it could’ve survived underwater all these years.”

  The breeze picked up off the river as I concentrated on Maddee’s story.

  “Taavi went looking for the fabled paperwork, finally finding it about a month later and getting a firsthand look at the truth behind the old family lore. The file was quite organized and included an extremely helpful summary that detailed what happened each step of the way.”

  We hurried around a family with small children, Maddee’s face lighting up at the sight of them. “Basically,” she continued once we were past, “Taavi learned all the stuff I told you last night and saw that the manuscript wasn’t aboard the Alabama after all. Curious, he wondered if the manuscript had ever turned up in the years since. It didn’t seem like it, but as he researched, he realized how incredibly valuable it would be now if it still existed. Considering that he was financially strapped, the appeal of finding this thing and selling it loomed large in his imagination.”

  When we reached the halfway point, I increased the pace even more.

  Maddee matched my stride and kept talking. “As part of his research, he contacted Talbot Paper and Printing and ended up speaking with Granddad. This big, unanswered question of what happened to the manuscript has always been a part of Talbot family lore too, but Granddad wasn’t much help because he knew nothing more than Taavi.”

  Maddee’s mouth was keeping pace with our walk. “He did, however, put Taavi in touch with a man he knew who he thought could help, Dr. Harold Underwood, who’s an academic and scholar specializing in historical documents, particularly those that are diaspora related.”

  “And what does ‘diaspora’ mean? Something about migration, right?”

  “Yeah. Think dispersion, people groups leaving their homelands and scattering to other places.”

  My brain lit up. “Like the Huguenots had to do.”

  Clearly pleased with my answer, Maddee’s tone took on that elementary schoolteacher vibe again. “Exactly. Or the Amish. The Acadians. The Cherokee Indians on the Trail of Tears.”

  “How about African slaves?” I thought of the man with the scars in the photo at the museum. “Is it still diaspora if they weren’t forced to flee like the Huguenots but instead were dragged away against their will?”

  “Yeah. Diasporas can occur for a lot a reasons. Religious persecution, natural disasters, political oppression, other stuff. Think of the Irish during the potato famine or the Cubans after the revolution. It happens all over the world and throughout the history of the world. In the case of the Koenigs’ manuscript, the diaspora depicted in it was an important one, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.”

  “So who is this Dr. Underwood guy?”

  “You remember him. He’s the one who authenticated the pamphlet Granddad gave to the Smithsonian. He worked with Renee on that. He came to the dedication ceremony at the reunion two year ago?”

  I felt heat rush to my cheeks. “I wasn’t there that year, remember? I didn’t come till afterward.”

  Maddee seemed startled and slowed her pace a little. “Oh. Right. Sorry about that. Anyway, Granddad suggested Taavi contact Dr. Underwood because, I guess, he figured if anyone might know of the manuscript’s reappearance, it would be him.”

  Now it was my turn to slow and match my sister’s pace. Maddee paused and turned, her hands on the ra
iling. I stopped beside her.

  “So Taavi got in touch with the guy and told his story,” Maddee continued. “Underwood was skeptical but deeply intrigued and agreed to look into it. He had Taavi send him copies of everything and said he would do some digging around and get back to him with whatever he found out.”

  Maddee explained that in the meantime, Taavi’s financial problems were getting worse, and his house was in danger of foreclosure. “His wife said by that point he was totally obsessed with finding the manuscript, like a gambler counting on his next big win to get him out of trouble. Near the end of June 1995, she came home from work one night to find him gone. He’d left a note that said he had to go out of town and would be back soon. She didn’t know where he went or why, but he never contacted her, and he never returned. Oddly enough, she didn’t suspect foul play. She just thought he’d abandoned her as a way to get out of the marriage and the money issues.”

  “Wow. What a depressing story.”

  “I know, right?” Maddee frowned. “But hold on. There’s more coming.”

  I nodded. The murder.

  “As we both know,” Maddee said, “when Taavi left, he came to Richmond. He was probably getting so desperate to find the manuscript that he decided to poke around for some answers in person. But while he was here, he must’ve gotten mixed up in something bad, because he ended up paying for it with his life.”

  “What does Detective Ortiz say?” I asked. Calm and competent, Ortiz was the lead investigator on the case, and over the past two years, we’d come to appreciate and respect her efforts even if she hadn’t yet found all the answers.

  Maddee shook her head. “She can’t know for sure because she hasn’t been able to account for a single minute of how he spent his time while he was here. She finally did figure out where he stayed—a cheap motel right off the interstate—and things got really exciting when she combed back through some old databases and located his car—or what was left of it. Apparently, at some point after he died, it ended up in a syndicate-owned chop shop in Norfolk, where it was used for parts. An engine block with that vehicle’s VIN number on it was listed among the inventory of items recovered there during a raid in early 1996.”