The Half-Life Party

By Laurie Griffith Walker

Laurel Sinclair has carved out a quiet life for herself in the sleepy town of Sussex, Connecticut. By day she runs a thriving antiques shop, but her night job is an entirely different story. Spurred by a personal ghost experience, Laurel recently added the title of PAI to her resume - Paranormal Activity Investigator.

Her new cable show, Team PAI, is the talk of the town, and her antiques business has never been better. But soon it will be the second Saturday in May, Loser's Day, an annual celebration commemorating the town's historic loss to the British in the War of 1812, which also happens to be Laurel's 41st birthday. For some unknown reason, Laurel has always believed she will live to be eighty-two, making this her half-life birthday, and the party her friends have goaded her into is adding kerosene to the flames of panic.

Out of nowhere, life is pressing in upon her, forty-one years down and forty-one to go. Driven by the pressure of time, Laurel is forced to dredge up some ghosts from her own past, not all of which are easy to leave behind. She becomes obsessed with trying to understand why her grandfather has never kept his promise to contact her from beyond the grave, and launches a life-changing quest to discover what really happens to us when we die.

Riddled with a cast of eccentric New Englanders, including a ghost named George, and a painting Laurel recently acquired that no one seems to like, but everyone wants to own, The Half-Life Party is a comical, yet thought-provoking, race against the ticking clock of time to find peace in life and hope in the afterlife. Because life is full of possibilities ... you just have to go out and look for them.

Also by Laurie Griffith Walker:

Wetherton - "Powered by a diverse trio of endearing and self-empowered women, this delightfully entertaining novel I a highly palatable blend of mystery, historical fiction and (unlikely) romance ... a humorous and deeply poignant novel about friendship, community, honor, and love." - Publishers Weekly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laurie Griffith Walker
• Release date: Jul 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301012442

Laurie Griffith Walker

Laurie has visited Colonial Williamsburg at least 30 times, and has been a docent for school tours at her local historical society for many years - yes, she even dresses up in period costumes, and yes, she's a little crazy about American history. Which is why her books always include snippets of historical fact mixed within her storylines. Her writing has been described as "delightfully entertaining" by Publishers Weekly, and she strives to create stories that are a pleasant diversion from day-to-day life. Subscribing to the thought that good writers are good readers, Laurie tries to read a book every week. Some of her favorite authors are Phillipa Gregory, Kate Grenville, Robert Hicks, and Anne Tyler, but her all-time favorite is Straight Man by Richard Russo. When she is not writing, she is busy raising her two daughters, gardening and sewing. Born and raised in upstate New York, she has lived in Manhattan, Tokyo and London, but has called Connecticut her home for the past 20 years. Laurie's first book, Wetherton, was inspired by the very definition of history - a narrative of events. Her second book, The Half-Life Party, was inspired by her own ghost experience while staying in Colonial Williamsburg. She is currently writing her third book, which she hopes to publish by December 2013.

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THE HALF-LIFE PARTY

A novel by

Laurie Griffith Walker

Published by Laurie Griffith Walker at Smashwords.

Copyright © 2013 Laurie Griffith Walker

All rights reserved.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Please respect the hard work of this author.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in review, without permission in writing from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

PROLOGUE

I have always believed in the possibility of ghosts. Then again, I like to keep my mind open to most possibilities, never knowing when an idea might jump in, but that is aside. Although I have always believed it is possible that ghosts could exist, it was only recently that I acquired proof of the claim, one night a few years ago in an old house down in Virginia. It must be said, at least for me, that encountering a ghost is a life-changing experience, one that forces you from the safety of comfortable uncertainty onto the precipice of inexplicable reality.

We all know that sooner or later we will die, but what, what exactly, happens to us when we die is a subject of great debate. Once you encounter a ghost, the notion that we simply cease to exist falls off the bargaining table. Some of us, apparently, will spend time in old houses down in Virginia, but that is also aside. The most pressing fact in this conversation is the truth that a ghost presence of our mortal being is a possibility. Allow me to explain.

The house where I stayed that weekend some years ago was built in 1760; it was a house that knew the footsteps of British troops during the American Revolution. To stay in such a house without respecting the history harbored within would be nearly impossible for someone like me, as I hold fast to the notion that to understand where we’re going in life, we need to understand where we’ve been.

Alone in the bedroom upstairs, first door on the right, I woke around midnight to the gentle hum of air-conditioning. I tried to settle back to sleep, tried to ignore the fact that nature seemed to be calling, but after a few minutes I relented to the bathroom. I share this with some modesty, only because it is important to confirm that I was fully and completely awake.

Back in my soft, warm bed, I sat up for a few minutes sipping water from the bottle on the nightstand. The room was dark and still. Determined to get a good night’s sleep I settled down on my left side, my head sinking deep into the pillow, and pulled the thin cotton blankets up close over my shoulders and tightly under my chin. That is when it happened.

Instantly I felt cold hit my face. It wasn’t a breeze. It was as if someone held a giant block of ice just inches from my nose, but before I could process what this sensation of cold might be I heard a sound pass across my right ear. I would compare it to the sound inside a seashell when held to the ear, the hollow sound of movement and emptiness all at once.

For no reason, other than fear or confusion, my impulse was to shut my eyes tight, and that is when I felt something pressing gently on my back. At the time I had no idea what was happening, but now that I’ve replayed it over and over in my mind, I think I was being tucked in. My eyes were still tightly shut when I heard the sound of feet scratching along the carpet, a slow shuffle moving away from the bed.

I was utterly paralyzed. I tried to speak, but only the faintest, hoarse whisper could be coaxed from my lips. I have no idea how long I laid there after the scratching feet disappeared, eyes closed, mind racing, unable to speak, but I wish I had been brave enough to open my eyes. Why hadn’t I opened my eyes?

It was no matter. Seen or unseen, it was clear what I experienced. At that moment I knew, beyond any doubt, that ghosts are real.

CHAPTER ONE

Laurel Sinclair rambled along the winding roads of Sussex, Connecticut almost without thinking. A sixth-generation Sussex Sinclair, she knew the route by heart. She knew where the potholes could be found, where the deer were most likely to jump out in front of her and where the police might be hiding just beyond the curve up ahead. Today, distracted by the purpose of her mission, she edged along the Connecticut River catching occasional glimpses of the sparkling water dancing through the trees. She couldn’t risk being late. Being late might screw up the whole deal entirely. She calculated the chances of a police car lying in wait at this time of day and pressed a little harder on the accelerator. Laurel was not one to be put off by fear.

Sussex was a sleepy town filled with the picture postcard charm of New England, a uniquely preserved time capsule of collective bygone eras. If Hollywood dreamed up the iconic New England village, Sussex would be thy name. A careless mix of antique colonial houses and shops, sprinkled with a history of whaling and waterfront trades, fringed with farms and softball teams, Sussex was just about as cute as a Rockwell painting. Pity the soul who has never known a summer of lobster pots, a fall in the blaze of crimson and yellow, a winter washed in crystalline white and the promise of spring to bring it all back again.

During the American Revolution, Sussex survived untouched by British hands, but in the War of 1812 she would not be spared. On a quiet night in April 1814, the British sailed silently up the river into Sussex, targeting the town’s shipbuilding industry, burning twenty-eight ships, seizing miles of rope and thousands of dollars worth of rum. As shipbuilders, of course the citizens were very upset about losing the ships and the rope. Losing the rum, however, well that really made them mad.

Every year, on the second Saturday in May, the town commemorated the event with a fabulous Loser’s Day parade, as well as a dramatic re-enactment staged by the local sailing club. Colin and Cole Richards, direct descendants of the patriot Uriah Knowle, always led the parade dressed in period costume and flaunting enormous flasks of rum. One particularly hot and humid year, Cole was unable to make the distance, catching a ride on Anna Reed’s whaling float and sleeping it off under the giant sperm whale’s paper-mache tail. Loser’s Day was a source of such monumental local pride that graduations, weekend getaways, even weddings were scheduled around the town’s grand celebration of historic loss to the British.

Laurel’s pickup truck bounced onto the gravel road that led down to the water’s edge. Without warning, Prudy Glover phoned early this morning to offer Laurel the chance to buy the painting if she was still interested. She was, and without a moment’s hesitation, despite the fact that she should have been grouting tile in her two-year-long bathroom renovation, she quickly threw on a pair of jeans and a baseball cap and hit the road for Prudy’s house. Laurel’s antiques business often had the distinct ring of junk collector, her shop brimming with everything from antiques to architectural salvage to funky mid-century light fixtures. The painting in question had been on Laurel’s radar screen for a few years, but she’d never been able to strike a deal with the old broad, and although this morning’s surprise telephone call prickled the back of Laurel’s neck with a healthy dose of trepidation, she wasn’t about to let this one slip through her fingers.

Prudy was a wealthy, hard-dealing old bag who enjoyed rubbing people the wrong way. In fact, it seemed she was born for this sort of work. Not a friend in the world and she couldn’t care less, or at least that was the impression she liked to give. Folks often retreated from an encounter with Prudy feeling that something was eerily wrong, either she had gotten the best of them, or they had just stared down the devil. Either way, contact with Prudy was entirely unsettling which delighted her that much more.

Then again, sometimes the natural order of things will find its own balance, despite money and all its apparent power. Glover Park, a well known Prudy-funded venture, was a pleasant reminder to everyone in Sussex that justice does exist and may even possess a snarky sense of humor.

No one could remember how it started, but it was believed to have been inspired by a somewhat similar tradition at West Point Military Academy down the road and across the Hudson River. Glover Park had long been the destination of superstitious Sussex High students seeking a little good luck on their final exams. Legend dictated that if a student entered the park after midnight and pressed his bare bottom to the bronze plaque bearing Prudy’s name, a guaranteed passing grade would come his way. In her younger days, Laurel had tested the legend herself, creeping off to the park at midnight only to discover a line of twelve other bare-bottomed souls in equal states of desperation. Yes sir, that bronze plaque remained as shiny as a new penny, and despite Prudy’s constant complaints to the local authorities the legend lived on in happy defiance.

Today, determined to get that painting no matter what the cost, Laurel braved the trip into Prudy’s lair.

She drove carefully past the triple set of mailboxes that posted a sign of life beyond the thick cover of woody rhododendrons and neatly clipped boxwoods. A vivid pink azalea caught a narrow stream of sunlight through the thick canopy overhead, calling out with a shock of color and signaling the turn into Prudy’s driveway. There were no fewer than a dozen post-it notes tagging the dashboard of Laurel’s truck, most of which had gone so long ignored the urgent message contained upon them was now irrelevant. She glanced at one that said LOBSTER and cringed, muttering something entirely unladylike and realizing she had yet again forgotten to phone her friend Cabell about the party. She slowed the truck, grabbed a post-it pad, scribbled CALL CAB in giant letters and slapped the two-inch square of neon green paper onto the center of her steering wheel. This business of the party was becoming a pain in the neck.

At first it was a joke. For as long as she could remember, Laurel believed she would live to be eighty-two years old. She had no idea why. The notion popped into her head one day like a forgotten fact from middle school history. The Gadsden Purchase was in 1853 and, oh yes, you will live to be eighty-two years old. The joke came as her forty-first birthday approached, her half-life.

It was funny, wasn’t it? They should have a half-life party, what a great idea. It was Tate who came up with it, but everyone else jumped on the party wagon with collective feet. It would be a small party, just the five of them, maybe a few other friends, some great food and good music. After all, last year Laurel insisted that no one make a fuss about her fortieth birthday, and why wait until fifty? For most people fifty was well beyond half, at least in purely numerical terms. Why not celebrate her impending mid-life at the appropriate moment?

So a party was casually cobbled together, and since food was pretty much their collective reason for living, it held reasonable promise to be a good time. While some friends found common ground in book clubs, others in political activism, Laurel, Tate, Jerry, Ted and Joey found purpose in eating really good, interesting food. Well, except for Ted, who was always welcome to bring his fondness for a bag of potato chips and a plastic tub of onion dip. In Sussex, modest, no-frills Yankee simplicity was never out of fashion.

The blame fell mostly to Tate. Her degree from culinary school had been gathering dust ever since motherhood knocked on her door, but that didn’t stop her from cooking. Her three daughters, all under the age of ten, were well-versed in everything from sushi to beef stroganoff, tapas to carpaccio, although the humble, oddly-named chicken finger continued to dwell high upon their list of favorites. Then there was Jerry, hailing from a long line of Southern cooks, the kind of folks who use bacon, cheese and eggs in every dish, who buzzed with tales of his Southern youth and family recipes for everything that could be battered and deep-fried, including pickles.

The presence of Sussex foodies had grown in recent years, presumably due to cable television. Once upon a time, secret family recipes for lobster rolls were the height of local cuisine, but a renaissance in epicurean pursuits now compelled most Sussexers to stretch beyond their comfort zone of the fried clam. No longer was food a territory cornered by housewives at backyard picnics. Even Joey, tough and tanned, could wax on and on about the subtleties of feta cheese in a way that would once have earned him the nickname Fairy. These days no one thought twice about it, and other tough guys would lean in, anxious to learn his secrets for grilling the perfect souvlaki.

By happy coincidence, or the evil of fate, this year Laurel’s birthday fell on the second Saturday in May. Loser’s Day. How perfect. The notion that someone was trying to tell her something could not be ignored. Thankfully, Laurel possessed the gift of self-deprecating humor, something she believed she inherited from her father’s side of the family. She could use a party just as much as the next girl, so why not? In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she sold herself on the idea that she actually deserved a party. Didn’t everyone deserve a party sooner or later? Always one to throw parties for others, including a goldfish named Sunshine thanks to Tate’s youngest daughter, Laurel couldn’t remember the last time she was the birthday girl of honor. Was she eighteen? Twenty-one? No. She knew all too well it was when she turned thirty, and the party had ended badly. Very badly.

That was more than ten years ago and suddenly, for no particular reason, she decided it was time to celebrate birthdays again. So, as she often did with so many things, Laurel agreed to dive into the water without much thought, and, as always, the water was deeper than expected.

Some inherent quirk in her DNA made Laurel one of those people who believed she could do everything herself, someone who would blindly rush into new projects with the American can-do attitude that would make Teddy Roosevelt proud. Laurel could be instantly spurred into action by an otherwise harmless magazine article. A bit of lunchtime reading might have her cutting and coloring your own hair by dinnertime, running out to buy the ingredients for home-brewed ale or preparing a site for a make-your-own-compost pile. The result was rarely what she hoped and often downright disappointing. Still, her urge to go ahead and try was irrepressible. Even living amid the detritus of her best intentions couldn’t stop her from tackling new projects at the drop of a hat.

Of late, her bathroom renovation lingered near the twenty-six-month mark, a record even for Laurel, and there appeared no end in sight. This was the manner in which she had ambled through life for a long time now, like the silver orb in a pinball machine, bouncing here, there and everywhere, crashing off one obstacle only to collide with another. She was exhausted without really getting anywhere, but she kept moving. So to say that she was receptive to the idea of a little distraction, a little celebrating, was an understatement. As the party date approached, however, an uncomfortable feeling nagged at her.

Tate, her best friend since high school, told her last year that turning forty would be wonderful and liberating. She would no longer need to worry about all those things that consumed the thoughts of silly women in their thirties. Tennis lessons for three-year-olds or chairing committees for the school fundraiser. Those were the problems of younger women who didn’t know any better.

Women in their forties enjoy the benefit of wisdom and self-confidence afforded by age and experience. Then again, Tate had three children and Laurel had none, so forty hadn’t presented the epiphany of freedom she expected. For Laurel, forty highlighted the reality that she was single, with no particular prospects to the contrary, and she might just have to get used to the idea. Another little twist on the road of life.

Now, with her forty-first fast approaching, the half-life party had coaxed some new, undefined anxiety out into the daylight, like an overturned rock reveals a shocking, unidentifiable creature that quickly tries to burrow back into the earth. She hated to think it was fear of aging. She didn’t feel old. She was