Consuelo Vanderbilt knew perfectly well she was dead.
She had swallowed the deadly rat poison the housekeeper had bought days earlier to kill the rats that kept running into the kitchen. She had watched her place it on the top shelf of the cupboard. Months earlier, she had read a newspaper article about a wife who had brutally poisoned her husband with rat poison. She had no interest in the piece, which condemned the wife throughout. What caught her attention was a quote attributed to the wife: "... After Bob swallowed the rat poison, he didn't seem to suffer at all. He fell asleep quickly. No force in this world could bring him back to hurt me anymore. God knows I was merciful to him. He deserved a thousand hells."
That was exactly what she needed—a painless death.
She chose a sunny afternoon, as bright and beautiful as the day she met the love of her life, James Rutherford. She poured some carefully stashed rat poison powder into her teacup, stirred it gently with a spoon, then dropped in three sugar cubes, watching quietly as they dissolved into the orange-red tea.
A lady would take her tea without sugar, but she was about to die—who cared?
She drained the sickeningly sweet cup in one gulp, clutching the locket bearing James's portrait, and died.
*
Consuelo was not a devout believer. Her father was; every Sunday he took the family to St. Mark's for morning prayers. But outside those days, Consuelo was not one to seek strength or forgiveness from God.
Her view of faith mirrored that of many well-educated American heiresses of her era: on one hand, she used religion to justify her fortunate possession of all good things; on the other, her upbringing fostered an innate skepticism toward the divine. Consuelo did not believe in heaven, much less that it was a place where everyone remained eternally young and joyful. She believed death was nothingness, a release—like the heat dissipating after a candle was blown out. If she had to find a reason to convince herself that the dead shared a common destination, it was because she longed to reunite there with her beloved James.
Thus, when Consuelo opened her eyes once more and found herself standing in her own room, she nearly despaired, convinced she was still alive. Yet she immediately saw herself—or rather, her corpse—lying still upon the hand-carved white oak bed. Glancing down at her current "body," she discovered with horror that she had transformed into a pearl-gray shadow.
She was indeed dead, yet she hadn't vanished from this world.
Consuelo had no clue why she had become this way. She cautiously "glided" forward—the best word to describe her movement—stopping at the bedside. She bent down, staring at her own face, which looked as though she were in a deep sleep.
Then, those eyes opened, staring back at her in terror.
*
"My name is Consuelo Vanderbilt, and this is my home," Consuelo said aloud, watching as her familiar face contorted into an utterly unfamiliar expression. The sensation was both jarring and strange, like witnessing another person wearing a mask fashioned from her own features.
"Consuelo? Who still goes by that name?" Her body stared at her wide-eyed, the words spilling out in a tone utterly unlike that of a well-bred lady. "That name is probably older than the era my neighbor Grandma Mary was born in, and she's over ninety—"
Consuelo couldn't comprehend a word her body was saying. She only saw the other pause in astonishment, slowly surveying the room's furnishings, decorations, murals, wallpaper, and furniture with an expression of utter disbelief. Consuelo realized she could actually hear her body's thoughts in her "mind"—assuming she still had one—as it pondered how ancient and out of place these furnishings were. Out of place? Consuelo frowned. Her mother, Eva Vanderbilt, was renowned throughout New York's high society for her taste in interior design. The opulence of the marble mansion Eva had personally designed had even astonished the notoriously fastidious Knickerbockers.
"Okay, I definitely heard you say something, but I didn't see your mouth move," Consuelo heard her body utter the word "okay," a term reserved for the lower-middle class, causing her to frown again. "Something about marble..."
"Can you hear my thoughts?" Consuelo blurted out.
The other person jumped up in surprise, darting excitedly around the room before launching into a stream of gibberish Consuelo couldn't decipher. "Good heavens! I really do have magical powers! I can even hear ghosts' thoughts! That gypsy woman back then was telling the truth! Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I can't believe this... It's like something straight out of Doctor Strange!" Spinning around, the figure suddenly leaned close to Consuelo. "Judging by your accent, I'm still in America, right?"
Caught off guard, Consuelo nodded. "This is New York."
The other grew even more excited. "I was born in New York! So, what year is it now?"
"August 1895," Consuelo answered honestly, though she couldn't fathom what purpose this exchange served beyond making her watch her own body talk and walk like a clown. "As for the exact date, I'm not sure—"
"So, to put it simply, I died in August 2018," the other person uttered a year that felt like an astronomical figure to Consuelo, "and you died in August 1895. We both died in New York—that's the common ground between us. After my death, my soul mysteriously reincarnated into your body. After yours, perhaps because your body remained alive, your soul persisted. So in a sense, we both still exist—just in two entirely different forms. Oh, and by the way, my name is Isabella. Isabella Young."
Consuelo was utterly bewildered by Isabella's words. "How... how could you accept all this so quickly?" she asked. God knew she still couldn't believe she'd become a pearl-gray shadow after death, drifting through solid furniture and across rooms, forced to watch her young, beautiful body taken over by some vulgar woman named Isabella who'd appeared out of nowhere. The only reason she hadn't fainted yet was that God hadn't given these pearl-gray shadows the ability to faint when He created them.
But she'd completely forgotten the other could hear her thoughts.
"I'm not vulgar. We're just from completely different eras," Isabella seemed to have fully accepted her situation, leaning back relaxed in the chaise longue beside the bed, fingering a pillow embroidered with exquisite Indian prints. "In your time, there were no color movies or the internet. Naturally, this seems utterly unacceptable. But in my era, it's relatively less unimaginable. Besides, I'm Chinese. I grew up hearing stories about reincarnation—"
Perhaps misinterpreting Consuelo's confused and impatient expression, Isabella suddenly paused, then offered a resigned smile. "I understand, I understand. An American-born Chinese with a Spanish name is indeed peculiar. I believe if it weren't for everyone knowing my poor health, I would have been bullied for this name long ago."
"What on earth are you talking about?" Consuelo asked, bewildered. She'd heard tales of this country and bizarre legends about the distant Eastern nation. Lately, she'd only read about "Chinese people" in newspapers and assumed they were no longer allowed into America.
"My mother adored Jane Austen. In fact, she majored in English literature at New York University." Isabella flushed with a shy smile. For the first time, Consuelo glimpsed a vaguely familiar expression on this face. A pang of sorrow washed over her as she suddenly realized this body—and the life it would lead—no longer belonged to her. It now belonged to this peculiar girl who called herself "Chinese."
Yet, perhaps too absorbed in her own world, Isabella showed no reaction to these thoughts, simply continuing her story.
"When she gave birth to me, she decided to name me 'Isabella,' after her favorite novel, Emma. Of course, at that time, my mother had only been in America for three years and hadn't yet realized how strange it was to give a Chinese child a Spanish name. By the time she'd been in America long enough to understand that, she felt I was perfect with this name and didn't need to change a single thing."
Just then, hurried footsteps echoed down the hallway. The familiar sound of low-heeled, high-ankle lace-up boots striking the carpet with heavy, decisive thuds sent a shiver through Consuelo. Before she could utter a warning to the woman now known to the world as Consuelo Vanderbilt, her mother Eva had already pushed open the door. Her gaze passed straight through Consuelo and landed squarely on Isabella.