Danielle Steel - Legacy (2010)

They found nothing for days, and then finally, there she was again, and the earlier story was confirmed.

The man telling this story sang the praises of the Crow chief Napayshni, whom he had known as a boy. He said the chief had two wives and was given a beautiful girl they had taken from the Sioux. He called her a bad spirit and said she had bewitched their chief, lured him into the woods, and killed him. They never found her again. He thought she might have been taken by another tribe, and a trapper said she had been taken by a Frenchman, but she was long gone. The man telling the story was convinced that she was a spirit and not a girl, and she had simply vanished after killing their chief. As she read it, Brigitte knew it was Wachiwi, and she was mesmerized by the mention of the Frenchman. Brigitte knew in her bones that someone had saved this girl. And whatever had happened, she had clearly been very brave, to kill her captor and run away. She knew in her gut that it was the same Wachiwi who had gone to France, and whoever the Frenchman was in the second story, somehow he had taken her home. The rest of the story might never be told. But it was enough. Brigitte knew what she needed to of Wachiwi, the young Indian girl who had been adored by her father and brothers, taken by the Crow in a war raid, and given to their chief; she had killed him to escape, and then a mysterious Frenchman had found her and took her back to France. She must have been a beguiling woman. The second narrator had called her bewitching. But she was no witch, she sounded like a beautiful, fiercely brave young girl, and from there she became a marquise in Brittany. It was an extraordinary story, and a remarkable history to share.

Brigitte hated to leave, but she had accomplished what she had come to South Dakota to do. She had found the traces of Wachiwi she needed to confirm what she believed. She thanked Jan profusely when she left, and felt as though she had made a friend. After saying goodbye, she drove back to Sioux Falls, and caught a flight that would connect her to Boston. She felt at peace, as though a missing part of her had slipped into place. Wachiwi. The dancer. Brigitte wondered what more she could discover about her if she delved deeper into her family history in France. A girl as remarkable as that would have been talked about there too—a young Indian girl of the Dakota Sioux, who captured the heart of a marquis, and spent the rest of her days in France. Surely someone would have written of her there. It had become Brigitte’s mission to follow her trail.

Chapter 5

Brigitte had a lot to think about on the flights from South Dakota to Boston. She had only been gone for ten days, but she felt as though her life had been changed forever by one Dakota Sioux Indian woman. Wachiwi was all she had thought about for days, while she tried to find her in the oral histories. There were still so many mysteries about her. How had she come to leave the Crows who had kidnapped her? Was she the same girl as the Wachiwi who had married the marquis in Brittany? Was she really the one who had killed the Crow chief and disappeared? Had someone rescued her? Who was the white man with her that one of the oral histories talked about? And the Frenchman with her in another? And how had she gotten from South Dakota to France? Brigitte was convinced it was the same girl, and it was frustrating beyond belief not to have all the pieces of the story and all the missing links. She felt like one of Ted’s fellow archaeologists finding bone fragments and trying to build an entire dinosaur out of them, to discover everything about him, including where he lived, how he died, who his enemies were, and what he ate. But sooner or later, most of the time, the pieces came together. And she hoped they would about Wachiwi too. It had been such an exciting time for her. She was so glad her mother had convinced her to go to Salt Lake. She had picked up the trail where her mother left off, and had discovered something entirely new. Wachiwi. Brigitte thought she was more interesting than all the rest of their relatives put together, except maybe the marquis.

As exciting as the trip had been, because it had taken her mind off all her problems and failures, coming home to her apartment in Boston sank her into a depression that took her breath away. The apartment looked dark and dusty. It hadn’t been cleaned in two weeks, or more since she’d been depressed when she left. The first thing she saw when she looked at the bookcase was a shelf of Ted’s books that she had forgotten to return and he had forgotten to reclaim. It reminded her that he was gone forever, that she didn’t have a boyfriend—or a job. There was not a single response by mail, or e-mail, to all the résumés she had sent out. No one had offered her a job, or even wanted to see her for an interview. And she didn’t have a man in her life. And if she wanted one, she had to start to date again. How was she supposed to do that? Computer dating? Blind dates through friends? Pick-ups in bars? None of those solutions appealed to her, and the thought of starting to date after six years sank her spirits to rock bottom.

When she checked her messages, she found that Ted had called to say goodbye. He hadn’t called her cell phone where he knew he would almost surely get her, he had called her at her apartment, at an hour when he’d been almost sure that she was out, so he wouldn’t have to talk to her. It was a cowardly thing to do. He didn’t want to talk to her, and his voice on the message said he was leaving for Egypt the next day. When she had been flying in from South Dakota, he was flying out. He was gone. Forever. Following his dream. And what was hers? Another job in a college admissions office, checking applications? Finishing a deadly boring book about women’s voting that no one would ever read? For ten days she had been totally excited about what she was doing. And hours later, if that, she felt dead again. As dead as her life. But she couldn’t spend the rest of her days chasing Wachiwi either. She had lived more than two centuries ago, and many of the mysteries about her would never be solved, the questions never answered. Brigitte had to go back to trying to finish a book she no longer cared about, find a job she didn’t want, and look for a replacement for a man she no longer thought she really loved and who hadn’t loved her. What was she doing with her life? And what had she been doing for the last ten years? Damned if she knew. And she knew even less what she wanted to do now. It was a miserable place to be in. And finally, not knowing what else to do, she went to bed.

She got up early the next morning, and organized all the notes she had taken in South Dakota and Salt Lake. She wanted to put them in some kind of chronological order for her mother, and hand them over to her. She had it all in perfect sequence by noon, and then she faxed it to her mother. Late that afternoon her mother called her after she had read it all and digested it.

“That’s fantastic, Brig. I’m sure it’s the same woman who married the marquis.”

“I can’t prove it, but so do I. She must have been quite a woman. It’s nice to know we’re related to her. She must have been one gutsy kid.” Her mother smiled at what she said. Brigitte sounded better again, but Marguerite was worried about the direction her life was going to take.

“So what’s my gutsy kid going to do?” her mother asked her. “Are you going to stay in Boston, or move back to New York? This might be a good time to do it. You’d probably earn more money here.”

“There are more colleges in Boston,” Brigitte said reasonably. “I’m just going to wait and see who responds, and try to finish my book.”

But it was easier said than done. She felt as though she had a cement block on her head, when she got back to her book about the vote the next day. Compared to her exciting research about Wachiwi, her book about the vote was like swimming through glue. She just couldn’t do it, and she could no longer remember why she thought the definitive work about women’s suffrage was such a good idea. She called Amy in her office that afternoon.