by Eve Paludan
“Amanda and I talked about it. I would have done the exact same thing.”
“I’m surprised Amando told you. He got so messed up after that. So confused. Was he—I mean, was she confused when you knew him? Her!”
“Umm, you know, there were a few people in her head, actually, a few spirits—some light, some dark—but toward the end, she was very happy with her life and career and she had someone she truly loved, and who very much loved her back.”
“A man friend?” Bree asked.
“Yes. A man friend. A very beautiful man named Ramon Santiago. He loved her so much.” I didn’t want to go into the whole story. It was complicated and would make her even sadder.
“This is so unexpected. I mean, of course I understand what transgender is. It’s all over the news. I just didn’t know that my son...Wait! Did her boyfriend know that she used to be a man?”
“I doubt it. The surgery was perfection, I assure you.”
“Are you going to tell the man?” Bree asked.
“No.” I thought of Ramon and his dead body. There seemed to be no point in telling Bree. “Amanda was a very girly and beautiful woman. You cannot even imagine how beautiful of a human being she was, too, inside and out.”
“How did you know her?” Bree asked.
“I was her medium. She hired me to be a sort of ghost whisperer for a haunted location where her last movie was about to be filmed.” I paused. “Sadly, she was killed on set. The other principals of the film company—all her equal partners—have inherited her share in the production company.”
“Oh, my heart hurts. This is so tragic. I’m so devastated.” Bree blew her nose into a tissue and dried her eyes. “How did she die?”
“She fell off a high balcony.” I really didn’t want to tell Bree that a spirit had caused that fall, a spirit I should have protected her from.
“My child is dead! Forgive me, it’s very hard to comprehend this news. To accept it.”
“I’m very sorry, Bree.”
“Where’s Mandy’s body?”
“Buried by her amazing friends and business partners.”
I got the cemetery address and plot number out of my purse and gave it to her, along with a memento card from the service I’d attended.
“Thank you,” she choked out, holding the papers tightly.
After a lot more crying and some regret that I felt emanating from her, Bree asked, “She made movies? She always wanted to do that.”
“Yeah, she made lots of them.”
“But I would have seen her in them. I go to the movies all the time! How could I not know what Amando—sorry, what Amanda, was doing?”
“They’re short films on YouTube. It’s all ad-based revenue and sponsorships. She was really a creative, entrepreneurial genius—and one of the most absolutely loving people I’ve ever met.”
“That is my child all right.” She clutched the movie posters to her chest. “You are very nice, Pauline, to come all the way here to tell me this sad news. And to say such wonderful things about my Mandy.”
“If she was my child, I would want someone to do the same for me. Not the medical examiner, but someone who cared about her while she was alive. A phone call just can’t cut it. This has to be something that you tell a mother in person.”
“I agree. How did you even find me, though? I don’t even have the same last name I used to have.”
“I used a private investigator. Don’t worry, he won’t tell anyone anything. He’s very discreet.”
“Thank you. I know my son…sorry, my daughter stayed away because she worried that I would be prosecuted for what I did that day.”
“Yes. She loved you that much.”
“I know. I loved my baby, too. What did you bring me in the suitcases?”
“Her personal effects. Her clothes, her perfumes, her jewelry, photos and most importantly, letters that she wrote to you. Beautiful letters. I…I read one of them, but not all of them. I’m sorry. The envelopes were not sealed up. She basically wrote you one letter per week for years.”
“But why didn’t Mandy send them to me?” Bree cried.
“She didn’t want anyone to arrest you, I think, for what happened back on that day when your lives went from an idyll at a commune to a nightmare of years of fleeing and hiding.”
Bree let out a heavy sigh. “You said you watched my child go into the light. Is that really true?”
“I swear to you, it is.” I glanced around at the artwork on the walls. Angels. Bree painted angels. And they all had her beautiful child’s face, as a boy. Amando’s face. “I know you believe in an afterlife.” I nodded toward the paintings.
“Yes, I do. Every night, I prayed for a way that my son and I would be able to share some kind of a relationship without fear that the past would rise up to bite us and separate us. Ironic, I know. We stayed apart to protect each other.”
“You have lost so much.” I hugged her, feeling her pain.
She said, “Would you like to stay a couple of days and we can watch Amanda’s movies together on YouTube?”
“I would love to, thanks. I’ll also give you the contact names and numbers of her best friends, who are her cast and crew. We’ll pop popcorn and watch her movies, and we’ll talk about her. A lot. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
Bree nodded. “Okay. Did you bring a change of clothes?”
“Yeah, I did. I have an overnight bag.”
“Bring it in. We’ll celebrate her life. Together. I mean, you obviously cared for her.”
“I did. In the short time that I knew her, I believed she was beautiful, inside and out. I would love to celebrate her life with you.”
Bree dried her eyes. “Thank you for loving my child this much that you would come to me with this in person and be so kind to my darling Mandy.”
I smiled. “The world could use a little more kindness.”
“It sure could, Pauline. You know so much about Mandy.”
Tell her the truth. “We switched bodies for a few days, so I could free her of her inner demons. She was possessed, including by the man that she killed.”
“So, that was real? Even a priest couldn’t deal with it. Even psychiatrists couldn’t.”
“I sent them all out of her before she died. It’s my belief that she is on her way to Heaven, if you believe in that.”
“I do.”
I remained silent for a moment. “Did you know about them? Her other spirits haunting her in her head?”
“Of course. My Mandy was so tormented.”
“She was. I know that most modern psychiatry doesn’t think that multiple personality disorder is real—they call it disassociation—but all of the people in her head were Mandy’s very real coping mechanism for the things that happened in her early life. Only they weren’t really other personalities. They were the spirits of dead people she’d crossed paths with, and who had latched onto her vulnerability. Even as a young boy.”
Bree nodded. It was a lot for her to absorb, to accept. “I don’t completely understand. But I do that you believe what you’re saying is true.”
“Thank you. Bree, I want to assure you that Amanda was completely free of the others before she went into the light. When she goes before God, if that’s what happens, it will be as the beautiful spirit she was born with. The one you saw when you held your beautiful baby in your arms and fell in love with that face.”
Bree broke down in my arms and I held her for a long, long time as she wept her guts out, this time, in relief. In acceptance. And, with a mother’s utter, unconditional love.
Chapter Twenty-four
I stayed for a few days and shared the wonderful things about Amanda Jordan with her mother. I kept Amanda’s cocaine addiction to myself. It was moot.
We said goodbye reluctantly and promised to keep in touch. I didn’t know if we would, but we both wanted to. I liked Bree very much. She was so giving, so accepting and so kind that I actually vowed to myself to become a mor
e selfless person.
On the flight home from Tucson to Los Angeles, I swiped my credit card and called Julie from the plane’s pay phone. Now, it was time to make amends with my best female friend.
After we said our awkward hellos, I said, “Julie, I don’t want you to feel marginalized in our friendship. I am so sorry for everything that happened. I want to make it up to you. Let’s do lunch and a movie. We won’t talk shop. I won’t ask you for any favors. We won’t drink alcohol. We’ll just be two normal girlfriends out for a play date.”
“Oh.”
I paused, sensing she was deciding whether to go forward in our friendship. “I miss you, Julie. You’re very special to me.”
Choked up, she replied, “I miss you, too, Pauline. I just don’t know if I am done being mad at you yet.”
“You’re still mad?”
“Yeah. I want to feel like I am loved for myself, not for what I can do for you. I hope I am explaining this right.”
“How can you even say that to me?” I asked, choked up, too.
“It’s just the way I feel that it is not about who I am—why you want to be my friend—but about what I can do for you.”
I took some slow, deep breaths to keep from saying anything in anger and I also got a psychic read on Julie. “You’ve been talking to someone about me. In depth.”
“Yes. For my job, they gave me Allison Lopez’s phone number so I could get some details from her about her regular psychic phone clients who are being routed to me. She’s the gal whose place I’m taking as a temp because she’s suspended for breaking some stupid rule. Long story. Anyway, she and I are friends now.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Thanks for sending her to save the day.”
“She didn’t tell me what happened over there at the haunted mansion. Did she save Mack when he was lost?”
“Yes, and more of us, too. She saved my life, actually. And Mack helped.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Allison’s a really amazing woman,” I said.
“I know she is. I love talking to her. When I first got her job and she was training me, we were talking about her regular callers. Afterward, she did a psychic reading for me, and she said that I needed to become more symbiotic in my friendships. That there needed to be equal give and take, and that I was not utilizing my personal power in a positive way. She said I was too submissive within my friendships, and even in romantic relationships, not that I have had one lately.”
“Ugh, don’t get me started on that topic,” I mumbled, still feeling heartsick about the mess I would have to clean up when I got home.
Julie continued, “Allison said that I would be happier if I directed some of my emotions toward an empathic goal, and was less shy about expressing my wants and needs. That’s why my relationships with other people have been failing. Including our relationship. I wanted you to like me so much that I did whatever you wanted. And worse, you let me, Pauline. You let me.”
My chin trembled. “Allison is really good at her job as a psychic and as a witch. And I say that, even knowing it’s my loss, but she gave you sound advice.” I paused. “Look, having said that, I don’t want to lose you as a friend, Julie.”
“I don’t want to lose you either, Pauline. I love you. I just don’t always like you.”
“I love you, too, Julie.” I sensed her pulling away. “But I understand you want to work on yourself for a while and grow as a psychic and as an assertive woman.”
“Exactly.”
“Will you promise to call me every so often? Keep in touch and, hopefully, we can continue our friendship when you’re ready?” My voice was trembling. I was completely gutted to lose her as a friend.
“Yes. I promise I’ll stay in contact. We’re worth it.”
I flashed a sad smile. “Yes, we are worth it.”
“I have a call coming in on my psychic hotline,” she said abruptly. “I’m sorry, but I have to answer it. Goodbye, Pauline.”
“Goodbye, Julie.” I hung up the phone and replaced it on the back of the airline seat in front of me. I looked out the plane window, tears blurring my eyes. I realized I didn’t tell her that I had helped to kill a soucouyant vampire—a vampire that had been controlling the spirits in the house. Amanda, Allison and I had killed it with salt. Salt!
Yeah, that was a first. Had I not lived through it, I would never have believed it. It just goes to show you the more you think you know about the supernatural world, the more you don’t.
My mind drifted back to Julie. This whole breakup with my closest female friend had been my fault. The fallout between Julie and me had been caused by the cavalier way I had treated her over the last few months. I was clueless because I had been drinking heavily, but that was a reason, not an excuse for treating her like that.
It was true. I had asked her to take over a class or two for me, without any compensation or even my proper appreciation. And, the third time I’d asked, she had gotten fed up with me. I didn’t blame her. I’d used her and I’d tried to use her again, but she’d had enough. It was true. I was a terrible friend, it seemed.
I gulped down my soda. I’d worry about the calories later. At least it wasn’t booze.
In preparation for landing, the flight attendant came to pick up everyone’s trash. I put my empty ginger ale can in her recycle bag and tossed my crumpled napkin and empty pretzel bag in the trash.
Empathic, she looked at me and gave my little shoulder a pat. “You okay, hun?”
“Yeah,” I lied with a smile. “Thanks for asking. How about you?”
She looked surprised that I asked. “Confidentially, my feet hurt,” she whispered. “I can’t wait to go home and put them up. And I miss my cat. Otherwise, life is good. Very good.”
We smiled at each other and she carried on with her duties.
I could see into her life and it was cool that I could. She had a sweet calico cat from an animal shelter and they lived in a tiny house on a hill in Culver City.
I thought about that and the fact that I had known where the cop had lost his wallet. Strange things were afoot with my increasing medium abilities. I thought I needed to see the witch again so she could give me some insight.
Whatever had been in that drop of blood that Allison had dropped down my throat when I had been in Amanda’s body, it had been a bit of a turning point for me as a medium. A turning point in a good direction. For that part of my life, anyway.
The plane descended through the smog layer of Los Angeles, leaving the crystal-blue sky above us—sky the color of Amanda Jordan’s eyes. And her mom’s.
The pilot was telling us the temperature and giving us a weather forecast. Rain was expected tonight. A lot of rain. El Niño was descending on L.A. once more.
Now, below me, everything was a grayish-brown. Welcome back to Los Angeles, Pauline. I hope you will be okay. I heard Julie’s thoughts in my head.
I put my head in my hands and tried not to cry again over the loss of Julie as a friend. I hoped it would not be a permanent loss. Obviously, I could not treat people like I had been and still keep them as friends.
I thought of Mack, my handsome ghost friend, and how Julie had once referred to him as my ghost boyfriend. A spear of fear shot through my heart as I tried to telepathically connect with him, but was unable to. Maybe it was because I was upset about Julie, but I could not feel Mack, not from this far away. At all.
I quelled my panic and my emotional tumult with some attempted meditation. I tried to reason with myself that I was just too far away, that we were traveling at a few hundred miles an hour—and that I had been stone-cold sober for a week, for the first time in years.
The plane slowed as we got lower over the city and traced over the stopped line of cars on the freeway. Ugh. Pretty soon, I would be getting out there in that mess to drive from LAX and back home to my apartment in Echo Park. And yet, I couldn’t wait to start the last part of my journey home.
Home.
Why did it
always feel like an interminably long time for a journey to return home?
Even though we had not parted on good terms, I was so homesick for Mack that I almost had an anxiety attack.
I took slow, deep breaths. For some stupid reason, I worried that Mack wouldn’t be there when I got home. I was freaking out that maybe he went into the light and went Home while I had been gone. I was in a terrible panic that I would never see him again. Ever.
I knew it was a long way for the golden thread that tied us together to be stretched, but I had not felt his presence since I’d left Los Angeles. Unable to connect with him, I took deep breaths to try to calm myself.
I had been in denial to give my heart what it wanted, but I supposed it had been because I felt ours would be an impossible romantic relationship. And I had denied that love any power. That was the biggest sin of my life.
Mack and me. I tried out the phrase in my head. It began to come clear to me that I hadn’t had any outside love interests since Mack had come into my life.
I didn’t want my personal history to repeat itself with Mack. But it was clear to me that I was unable to break this relationship pattern of falling for ghosts. First James, long ago, and now, Mack.
The message was finally reaching from my heart to my head…just what Mack meant to me.
Everything.
Chapter Twenty-five
Stupid Los Angeles traffic.
For some unknown reason, I was missing Tucson, with its comparatively light traffic, cerulean-blue skies, and clean, sweet creosote-scented air in the saguaro-studded foothills above the city at Bree Stark’s eclectic artist’s house. I wanted a house like that, someday—a physical and spiritual retreat.
While I was at it, I let myself extend the dream: Somewhere where I could live with Mack…peacefully. Maybe things would be easier between us if we had a secluded house instead of my Echo Park apartment.