TRANSFERENCE OF SOULS
Alexandra couldn’t quite explain it, but she felt as though the soul of her mother had found its way into this little girl. She wasn’t one to believe in mystical nonsense, yet the coincidences were too many to ignore. The girl was born eight months after her mother passed away. Perhaps her mother’s soul had wandered wherever it needed to and returned to this earthly realm. After all, why not? The fact of birth alone wasn’t convincing, but it was the day she was born that added weight to the idea. She arrived on her mother’s birthday, exactly forty-six years later.
These coincidences didn’t stop there. Alexandra had been hired as the girl’s nanny. This was her second position as a nanny; the first was for her classmate’s younger sister, and now, here she was. Alexandra didn’t plan to be a nanny forever, as she had tried to get into a psychology program but had come up just short twice. She was determined to succeed on her third attempt. She didn’t see herself working as a shop assistant or a server; nannying didn’t feel like a job to her at all, it was pure pleasure. The woman who hired her agreed after reading Alexandra’s glowing recommendation letter, although initially on a trial basis. Alexandra was upfront about her plans to attend university in a year. The girl’s mother, Emily, was just a few years older than Alexandra and suggested they be on a first-name basis.
“Well, that’s good then,” Emily reassured her. “Anna will be in a special nursery by then. She’s so developed, she could’ve started ages ago, but I was just worried, and she does have daily activities. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but she has a condition—many nannies are scared off by disability statuses or demand a salary I simply can’t afford.”
Alexandra started fearing the worst—a cleft palate needing surgery or perhaps epilepsy.
“Anna has sensorineural hearing loss, it’s hereditary…”
Alexandra smiled and interrupted her.
“You don’t need to explain; I know what it is. It runs in my family too.”
“That’s partly why I chose you,” Emily said. “A mutual friend mentioned your mother dealt with it too, so I assumed you wouldn’t be put off by it.”
Alexandra wasn’t fazed. In fact, it was less complicated than she thought; modern hearing aids could nearly restore normal hearing. It was much harder for her mother, as they’d had to communicate in sign language.
The final coincidence was the resemblance. The girl had similar dark eyes and eyebrows that perpetually looked surprised, and her unruly curly hair. Alexandra even dug out her father’s old photo albums—sure enough, the girl was the spitting image of her mother as a child! When she pointed this out to her father, he merely chided her.
“Darling, you just miss your mom. Why all this mystical nonsense? You really need to think about having kids of your own!”
Alexandra blushed. She had met a guy named Paul during preparatory classes and had been on three dates with him, but it was too soon to talk about children. Somehow, her father seemed to read her feelings from her flushed cheeks.
“Have you asked if he has any family history of hearing loss?”
“Oh, Dad!”
Her parents had been harping on this since childhood—both she and her brother Tom were carriers of the recessive gene causing hearing loss. They were always encouraged to find out if a potential partner carried the same.
“What’s wrong with asking?” her father would insist.
So Alexandra had to retreat quickly.
Whether it was her imagination of soul transference or just the fact the girl was so sweet and clever, Alexandra grew quite fond of her and didn’t like thinking about their eventual parting. Maybe her father was right; she should start her own family, but she was still young and dreamed of getting an education. Somehow, she ended up discussing this with Emily, who worked long hours to provide a decent life for herself and her daughter.
“You need to study!” Emily insisted. “I had to leave college when I got pregnant, and I’m stuck at my job position. It’s frustrating knowing I have more experience and knowledge but get passed over for some recent graduate who only shuffles papers.”
“What about the girl’s father?” Alexandra cautiously asked. He hadn’t once appeared in the four months she had been there.
“He’s not around,” Emily replied.
“What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t know about his daughter. We met in another town while I was visiting a friend. It was love at first sight. We planned to meet soon—either he’d come to me, or I’d go to him, but then he broke it off via email, saying we couldn’t be together, I deserved better, things like that.”
“Wow, and you didn’t know you were…?”
“I didn’t. Found out a week later. Decided to keep the baby,” Emily smiled. “Never regretted it.”
“Yes, Anna is wonderful. She reminds me so much of my mom,” Alexandra admitted.
Emily laughed.
“There’s a karmic connection between you two; I noticed it a while ago.”
“When I mentioned it to my dad, he just laughed at me. Said I need to have my own kids.”
“Finish your education first; then think about kids,” Emily reminded her. “You don’t want to end up like me.”
For Christmas, Alexandra was planning to fly with her father to visit her brother in another city. Tom headed a department in a travel agency and couldn’t take much time off. Alexandra had only been to his place once, but she loved it—a luxurious apartment on the fifteenth floor with a marvelous view. She bought Anna a gift—a bear resembling one her mother had. The girl loved it and declared she would sleep with it.
Sitting in Tom’s cozy kitchen, chatting leisurely, Alexandra received a text from Emily showing Anna snuggled up with the teddy bear. Alexandra felt a tear escape and showed the picture to Tom, telling him the whole story about the karmic link and the soul transference.
“Alex, really? Soul transference?” he laughed.
“Just listen—Anna looks more like our mom than her own! Look.”
She pulled up a selfie they’d taken the day before—her, Anna, and Emily—and handed the phone to Tom. He studied it for a long time before asking in a strange voice.
“What’s her name?”
“Anna, like I said. Not our mom’s.”
“No, the girl.”
“Emily. Why?”
Tom swallowed hard.
“Is… is Anna okay?”
“Thanks for listening to half of what I just said. I told you, she has a hearing aid! The resemblance is uncanny! Emily’s father had the same condition as our mom. Maybe it’s not soul transference, just genes, but still…”
Tom jumped up and started pacing the room.
“How old is she? When was she born?”
“Why do you ask?” Alexandra began, then it struck her, and she whispered, covering her mouth with her hand, “Emily said he broke things off via email and never knew about the child. Was that you?”
The next day, the three of them somehow caught the last flights home. Their father wiped tears away, looking at pictures of his newfound granddaughter, while Tom bit his lip in contemplation, asking Alexandra everything he could about Emily and Anna in endless succession. Yet Alexandra remained serene—she just knew, everything would turn out fine. And no matter what anyone said, the idea of soul transference remained untouched.
