by Lotta Smith
Then Karina walked him to the door.
“Thanks for a wonderful night,” Robert said clumsily and left.
“Good night.” She waved at him.
Her face was unreadable, and Robert had no idea that she was smiling when she ripped the sheets off the bed the moment she came back to the bedroom.
CHAPTER 1
“Oh my God. This is so… beautiful,” Jackie and I said in unison.
We were visiting Natalia Simpson, one of my neighbors in the same building where Rick and I resided.
Natalia couldn’t see or hear Jackie, so for her, I was the only one oohing and aahing over the beauty of her younger daughter Amelia’s nursery.
“Thank you so much for the kind words, Mandy.” She smiled broadly. “I’m glad you like it.”
“You know, Natalia, like is an understatement. I love, love, love it!” I giggled, admiring the spectacular beauty of the room.
The walls were painted in a calming shade of cream, with a couple stems of huge lilac flowers blossoming across the wall. The canopy bed looked as if it popped out from a fairy-tale book featuring a princess. With just a glimpse of the place, I knew it was the work of a truly talented decorator. People who don’t have respect for them tend to say, “I can recreate a similar room. It’s as easy as picking up paints in similar shades and purchasing look-alike furniture, right?” but they’re wrong. If using similar colors and items that resemble the ones used in a trendy room did just fine, there wouldn’t be professional designers and artists in the first place.
“We used to have a crib, but we replaced it with the bed.” Showing the bed with her hand, Natalia explained, “Amelia informed us that the crib looked like a bed for a baby, which was true, but her words were a little shocking to us. Seriously, Tim and I were stunned to witness how headstrong she is.”
“Oh, I can imagine how she delivered her opinion.” I giggled.
“Right. Your Minty is the same age as Amelia.” She chuckled and lowered her voice, even though we were alone at her condo. “And to be honest, we used to regard our younger daughter as a baby.”
“How old was she when you replaced the crib with a bed?” I asked. If I recalled it right, Amelia was four years old.
“At age three and a half, I think,” she said, running her long fingers across the gleaming brass guard of the bed. Her nails were beautifully manicured and embellished with rhinestones. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then she nodded. “Yes, it was when she was three and a half. That’s when she started fussing about being treated as a little lady and not a baby.”
“Ooh, a little lady? So cute!” Jackie cooed as she sat on the most glamorous chaise longue with her long legs propped up on the ottoman, totally behaving like the queen of the place.
Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I smiled. “Isn’t she adorable? I’m the older of two sisters, and Alicia was always like that. I think she stopped acting that way when she conceived her first child while I was still in college.”
“Sisters are destined for lifetime rivalry,” Jackie said matter-of-factly. “Still, in my opinion, you and Alicia are really good friends, Mandy.”
Under normal circumstances, I’d have said something like “You think so?” but I didn’t.
Jackie knew I couldn’t answer her when I was with someone who had no idea about my communication skills with dead people, but she never stopped talking. She simply had to say whatever popped into her mind, and in my opinion, that was one of her bad habits. The worst part was she always forgot about her latest faux pas by the time I was able to point it out without the risk of looking like one of those crazy people having a heated conversation with thin air.
“That’s interesting,” Natalia commented, as if she caught Jackie’s words. “I grew up with three brothers and no sister.”
“Oh, so they treated you like a princess, didn’t they?” I said.
“Not really.” She shook her head. “I was the oldest sibling, and I treated them like three little sisters—making them put on dresses and makeup. When they were little, seeing them in short skirts and lipstick used to be so adorable, but they soon grew up. They looked more like adorkable when they started growing mustaches. When their height surpassed six feet, they looked rather intimidating in skirts.”
“Oh….”
“Oops.” Jackie cupped her face in her hands. “Good thing I always looked feminine even after growing over six feet tall.”
Natalia cleared her throat. “Anyway, kids grow really fast, and sometimes it seems like a total waste to splurge on all the baby goods, décor, and furniture.”
“I can imagine that.” I nodded, then added playfully, “Then again, you don’t want to go all cheap when it comes to things for your kids, right?”
“Exactly.” She let out a hearty laughter. “So, Mandy, will you be interested in contacting Alexa, the interior decorator?”
“Oh yes, sure.” I nodded like a bobblehead, almost forgetting the reason I was visiting my neighbor in the first place.
When Mom and Alicia came to see me, they’d wanted to know what we were planning to do for the nursery. A cold sweat seeped out of my skin at the question. We hadn’t planned anything for the nursery.
Okay, so we were expecting a baby girl, and it didn’t require rocket science to assume we’d be needing a nursery for the child. So I did what a responsible mom-to-be had to do. First things first, I purchased a plasmacluster air purifier. Everybody needs clean air, and I was sure a newborn baby would definitely need very clean air. Thanks to attending med school until getting kicked out, no thanks to the unfortunate nickname the Grim Reaper, I had enough medical expertise to consider the immature immune system of a baby. When the air purifier arrived, I tested it to see how it would work and was pleased to discover the air was fresher and cleaner. So I ordered more machines to install in the living room, kitchen, dining room, and our bedroom.
At first, I was going to sort of DIY the nursery—not that I was actually doing the job, but I thought it’d be fine if I purchased the items needed and then hired someone to install them. I was planning to order everything with antibacterial features. At first I had decided to go with baby pink, but at some point I shifted to more sterile shades of silvery white and fluorescent white. Until Rick commented, “Wow, are we trying to recreate a hospital room?”
He had a point. When I reviewed my plan, it looked almost like a clean room. And by saying “clean room,” I mean one of those rooms at the hospital where they keep immunocompromised patients like the ones suffering from leukemia.
That was when I realized I was in serious need of a decorator.
So I started making calls to the ones listed in baby nursery magazines, but of course, making an appointment with any of them on such short notice was difficult.
Not that everyone said no to meeting me, but so far, whenever I had a meeting with a decorator scheduled, I got sick and it had to be cancelled. I didn’t know how or why that happened, but I suspected there was something about the potential decorators that the little person residing in my body disliked.
That afternoon, I gave up on hiring a decorator and was going to head for Bergdorf Goodman. They had a section for baby furniture, and I presumed they’d design the whole nursery as a project. The store was close to our home, and the baby really loved sending me there and forcing me into eating the Lobster Napoleon dish at their restaurant.
When I was about to waddle out of our residence—not that I gave up on walking and strutting, but my gait started to resemble that of a penguin’s as the baby bump grew—the phone rang with a call from Natalia. As if she could read my mind, she asked me if I had already arranged everything with the baby’s nursery.
In our building, with the average age of its residents quite high, she and her husband, Tim, happened to be the only family with young children. When I reached a stable phase of my pregnancy and broke the news to her, she was so thrilled about the prospect of having a child close to her girls’ age
. She often asked me if everything was okay, and I appreciated having her close by, but the timing was so unbelievably good that I got a little teary.
I confessed my failed attempts to create a plan for the nursery, followed by my inability to hire a decent decorator. And the next thing, she invited me to take a look at Amelia’s room. She also said, if I liked what I saw, she could have me squeezed into her decorator’s schedule. So I thought, Why not? and happily visited Amelia’s elegant little kingdom.
Another reason for my visit was because my daughter seemed to have approved of the occasion. The moment Natalia made the offer, the baby kicked me. As always, she kicked my bladder, but that time, it was a happy kick. Since her kicks were so frequent, I was getting used to them, and lately I could tell if she kicked me because she disagreed with me about something or if she was so happy that she couldn’t help but move her legs.
I knew this wasn’t normal baby behavior, especially before being born. According to Jackie, our baby happened to have her opinions and she didn’t hesitate to express them. To my relief, most babies would forget about what they were thinking while they were in the womb, and Jackie assured me that our daughter wouldn’t have memories of her life there once she was born.
When she was happy, her kick felt lighthearted and fluffy and made me giggle. On the contrary, when she was dissatisfied, displeasured, or disliked anything, she made a point to notify me by kicking me, as if she had turned into an aspiring MMA fighter, which usually sent me waddling to the bathroom. Speaking of MMA fighting, lately Rick had been torn about whether to take her to the MMA gym where he had a membership or not. As much as he wanted his baby girl to grow up in an environment without the need or urge to punch or kick others, he’d been overthinking about how much self-defense training he’d need to teach his daughter.
“I can’t believe we’re in the same building!” Jackie exclaimed as she bounced on the princess-y canopy bed, and I couldn’t agree more.
“This is fantastic!” I exclaimed. “To be honest, I wish I could go back to my childhood and enjoy a room like this.”
“I know.” Natalia chuckled. “Sometimes I dream of my soul being swapped with Amelia’s, and I wake up in this room as my child. The hilarious part is Amelia looks really happy to play mommy in my dreams.”
“Wow, isn’t that cute?” I cooed, imagining it.
I knew her daughters. They were lovely girls. Actually, they happened to be the ones who connected me with their mom. I’d moved into Rick’s condo before we were married or even engaged. Mom and Alice often visited us, bringing food and my nieces. When Alice and I were walking into the lobby with Emma and Minty in tow, we came across Natalia and her girls. It turned out her daughters were the same ages as Emma and Minty, and the girls hit it off immediately.
“So, Mandy, when would you like to meet Alexa?” Natalia’s voice brought me back to the present.
I suddenly felt nervous. “She must be super popular, right? I’m due in three months or so. Can she fit me in her schedule on such short notice? Oh dear, I should have started looking for decorators earlier. What was I thinking?”
My voice resembled that of Minnie Mouse’s. No thanks to the hormones, I tended to get edgy and emotional so easily these days. And I was panicky.
“At the early stages of pregnancy, you were so busy puking and then eating, and repeating the whole process over and over,” Jackie said casually. “By the time your morning sickness resolved, you were obsessed with hounding me about the gender of the baby and weren’t really listening to me when I suggested you’d want to start contacting potential decorators. But I don’t think you’re in trouble. If it’s difficult for you to grab a rocking decorator’s time, Dan should be able to pull some strings. To be honest, I don’t think there are many things he can’t do.”
I furrowed my eyebrows, a little tempted to respond to the ghost. Dan was my father-in-law and the current CEO of USCAB. Though he was nice and sweet, his sense of décor differed slightly from the styles I fancied. Recently, he bought a real-size robot of a thoroughbred, saying his grandchild would fall in love with it and enjoy learning horseback riding before she was capable of practicing on living horses. I knew he meant well, but at the same time I was sure he’d forgotten about some important aspects of childhood. The real-life horse robot was too tall for a baby, and the robot itself looked more intimidating than cute or lovely. Throw in the fact that it generally took three to four months or much longer to master the art of sitting up, and it was just wildly impractical.
So I was a little scared to ask Dan to help me hire a decorator for the nursery. Not that I detested his taste, but he had a tendency to go slightly over the top when it came to his grandchild, and I had a feeling he’d have the contractors build a castle or something instead of simply decorating a nursery. I didn’t mean to go all cheap and stingy with my child, but I wasn’t sure about pampering her with too much of everything.
Still, considering we were living on Fifth Avenue, I was afraid that I was beginning to lose my sense of how much was too much.
“Don’t worry. No need to panic.” Patting my hand gently, Natalia cooed, “Alexa will work for you, and she’ll fit you into her schedule no matter what. I can guarantee that.”
“Really?” My eyes widened. Then I realized it was too good to be true. “But how? She’s super busy, isn’t she?”
“I bet she is,” Jackie chimed in. “Decorators, stylists, nail artists—no matter the profession, popular people are extremely difficult to book with. Unless they commit some kind of social faux pas, such as slipping out a racial slur or making some politically incorrect comments. Then, their schedule suddenly turns into a blank page—except you might not feel like working with them anymore. When I was in the theater industry, no one wanted to work with formerly popular people who had just committed social suicide, believing bad luck and bad karma were transmissible like deadly cooties.”
While my guardian ghost went on with her chatter, Natalia nodded. “Yes, she is. Actually, she’s fully booked for the next three years.”
“Oh,” I sighed. “I mean, of course she’s booked. On the contrary, I’d be shocked if she wasn’t. Then again, I have a hard time imagining the kind of people who hire a decorator to do their nursery three years in advance,” I mumbled.
Then Natalia said the mother of all unbelievable statements. “Actually, my cousin called me last night, saying Alexa just had an opening and Karina wants to offer it to you.”
“Oh… really?” I muttered, not quite following her story. “Oh my. I didn’t see that coming.”
“Still, this offer is a total godsend, and you’ve got to accept it, Mandy,” Jackie urged me, leaving the bed and coming toward me. “Say yes before she changes her mind.”
As if to join her, the baby kicked me, so I said, “Well, if she hasn’t changed her mind, I’d really appreciate an opportunity to work with Alexa.” I was in serious need of a good decorator, and the baby had been rapidly kicking me. “Hello? Will you pretty please stop kicking Mommy’s bladder?”
“What? Does she kick your bladder?” Natalia’s eyes widened. “That didn’t happen in my pregnancies.”
“I think Keira and Amelia stayed in normal positions. Mine is breech,” I said.
“I see.” Natalia let out a small gasp, looking like she wasn’t sure how to respond. Then she said, “Let me call Alexa and set up a meeting.”
When she made that call, I had a chat with Alexa. It was a brief conversation but long enough to tell she wasn’t one of those snappy, condescending women who treated her potential client like a toddler without the slightest idea of what was best.
“Thank you so much for the referral.” I hugged Natalia after we set up the meeting. “Can you send my huge thanks to your cousin?” At this point, I assumed that her cousin had offered to pass on Alexa’s sudden opening to someone she knew, and I scored the opening as the result of random luck. “Alexa must trust your cousin, or she wouldn’t have shared
the info about her sudden opening.”
“Well, actually….” Natalia furrowed her perfectly waxed eyebrows. “Karina, my cousin, used to be Alexa’s boss.”
“Wow, how nice,” I said perkily.
“And actually, she made Alexa create a sudden opening for you,” she admitted apologetically.
“What do you mean?” I wasn’t quite grasping the situation. As I looked at her nervous face, I started to wonder if jumping onto the offer was a bad decision.
“Oh my God, where should I start?” She held her head in her hands. “Rick once solved a cold case of three missing girls on live TV by channeling the murdered girls’ spirits, right?”
“Yes,” I said cautiously. Actually, I was the one who did the channeling of the deceased part, and Rick just posed as a ghost whisperer, but I didn’t tell her that. Since we left the FBI and joined USCAB, we’d made an arrangement to pretend that I wasn’t the one communicating with dead people, fearing unwanted media attention and random people asking me for favors involving dead people. “Still, he thinks it was a lucky coincidence. And he says he’s not sure if he’d be able to do it again.”
I crossed my fingers behind my back.
“Oh… I see. I wish she’d understand that point,” she muttered, still frowning. Then she offered a small smile. “Perhaps I’m not making much sense, but the thing is, Karina wants to see Rick. She says she needs his help dealing with a phantom of the theater.”
“Pardon me?” I asked, not quite following her story.
“There’s the famous Phantom of the Opera, so I’m not surprised if there’s a phantom of the theater,” Jackie commented.
“I know this is absurd, but Karina happens to be a stage actress, and she believes that her latest project, Hamlet, is haunted and wants your husband’s help.” Natalia sounded like she couldn’t believe they were discussing a phantom. As far as I knew, she was a former molecular biologist who wasn’t a serious believer of ghosts, fairies, and the afterlife.
I could understand her confusion. When I was in med school, I never imagined that I’d be called the Grim Reaper, kicked out of school, start working with the FBI’s Paranormal Cases Division, and then start talking to dead people. Jackie happened to be the first ghost I’d seen, and back then I was seriously afraid that I was completely insane. Who would have imagined having a ghost of a drag queen volunteer to be my guardian angel?
