For Caitlin and Nicole O'Connor two sisters from Massachusetts, the divorce of their parents and the death of their best friend was only the beginning of their problems. It now seems that there is a ghost in their house and a mystery to be solved as well. With the help of their grandmother, a dog named Dog, their next door neighbor Craig and a bizarre gypsy, the girls set out to form "The Soul Patrol" and try to uncover the reason why their friend Kelsey can't cross over and be at peace. With only a short amount of time on their hands, the girls must somehow deal with frozen windows, a talking doll, a wake, a singing alarm clock and a dark, shocking secret all the while learning that death is a part of life. "The Soul Patrol" will make you laugh, cry and reflect on how precious life is. But most of all, like the girls, you will learn that while family and friends may not be perfect, love given freely and without condition can solve any crisis and perhaps even bring a broken family, back together.

The Soul Patrol

By B. Grigoletti

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 B. Grigoletti
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-1581-7

Chapter One

A Terrible day ...

My name is Caitlin O'Conner and I live outside of Boston, Massachusetts in a town called Braintree with my mother and little sister Nicole. My dad, who I get my Irish last name from, has been living in the city since the divorce and is a struggling author. I love my dad very much. He visits us often and is the only man I think my mother will ever truly love, even though he drives her crazy. I have a very cute black wire-haired dachshund who we named "Dog". He got that name because when my dad was still living with us, my parents could not stop barking at one another long enough to actually agree on any of the other names that we came up with. Dog follows my sister and me around the house like we have kibble in our pockets. Wherever we go, Dog is there.

My neighborhood is nice and quiet. There are about thirty families with kids living on our street and even though we are not all in the same age group, almost everyone tends to get along.

I also have a best friend named Kelsey Adams who grew up right next door to me. We've been playmates since both our moms brought us home from the hospital twelve years ago. Our birthdays are only five days apart and we have shared everything we've ever owned since we knew how to share. Until recently, I could not have imagined a life without her, but two weeks ago, both she and her mother Suzanne were killed in a car crash on the highway that runs alongside our town. Since then, I have cried, thrown up and felt like a part of me has somehow been lost. I've also seen my Mother collapse twice from the grief of losing her best friend. She and Mrs. Adams had known each other since they were little kids. I swear to you that I am as struck with grief as I possibly could be. I just sometimes wish Kelsey would move on and stop haunting us.

Let me back up a bit and explain what has been going on over the last twelve days. We got news of the tragedy from my dad. It seems that the police found his number in Mrs. Adams' purse on her emergency contact list. They called my dad to notify him that there had been a terrible accident. As usual, Matthew, her husband was away on business. He travels a lot for a company that makes special drugs for very sick people.

Nothing in this world could describe the joy I felt when I saw my father's crappy old black Jeep pull into our driveway on a day that he wasn't scheduled for a visit. I burst out from the front door with Nicole and Dog right behind me and ran up to give him a great big hug but the second I saw his face, I knew that something bad had happened. He dropped down on one knee calling us over to him. I froze solid. I couldn't move. My feet felt like they had sunk into the earth.

I thought to myself, Here it comes, he is marrying someone else. He is going to finally move away to get on with his life. Or maybe he is here to tell us that he is dying from some rare form of cancer. I was in a panic. My heart was beating so fast, I felt faint.

He called to me again. "Caitlin, come here sweetie."

"No."

My sister was already in his arms and he was holding her close. I always hated when Nicole snuggled up to our dad; it's not as if she didn't get enough attention as the baby of the family already.

"Caitlin sweetie, I need to talk to you."

"I am not going to listen to you. It's bad news. The last time you knelt down like this, you and mom got a divorce!"

My dad began to tremble. He held my sister tighter and whispered, "Come here Cait, please."

I swallowed a huge lump in my throat and walked the last three steps towards him. He pulled me in. It seemed like this simple act of holding me brought all of his grief rushing to the surface. Tears I had not seen since the day he drove away in that terrible little rental truck carrying everything he owned, came gushing from his eyes. I started to cry as well. There I was in my front yard, arms locked around my daddy's neck, wedged in along with my sister, crying hysterically and I wasn't even sure why.

My mom came to the door. Seeing the display taking place, she immediately went into her "this is obviously your father's fault" mode and said in a voice far colder than even she probably intended, "What the hell is going on out here, Ian?"

My dad's eyes shot open. Slowly, he un-snaked our arms from around his neck and stood up. He took our hands and walked towards my Mother.

It's very weird how time slows down when your world is coming undone. Since that day, I have stood in the same place where we were huddled together and counted how long it takes to walk the eleven paces from that point to the front porch. It's less than four seconds. Yet on that day, still not knowing what the news was, the walk felt like a mile and the time it took to complete it felt like an eternity. I can tell those of you who have not yet been through this kind of situation, that you notice things, things that normally would simply be too small or unimportant to grab your attention. For instance, I noticed that my dad was still wearing his wedding ring, something I never noticed before. If he was about to get remarried, he wouldn't be wearing the gold band that Mommy had given him, right? That thought seemed to calm me momentarily but then as we took each step towards my mom, I saw her expression change from anger, to uncertain, to nervous, to frantic and finally to fear.

"Chrissy, it's Suzanne and ..."

"Oh God, what happened Ian?"

I never heard what he said after that. Perhaps it was God's way of softening the blow, who knows? Although it's hard, I can now admit as I write the account of that day, that I am a terrible person. More terrible than any of the villains or antagonists that my dad writes about in his stories, more terrible than any kid born on this planet from the beginning of time until now. I stood there as my mom fell into my dad's arms crying. I watched as she hit him with a small punch to his chest, a reaction that I'll never understand but one that seemed to make him want to hold her all the closer, and what was I doing? What was the most terrible girl on the planet thinking, as she stood there? I was thinking about how happy I was that my daddy was not sick and dying or how lucky I was that he was not getting a new wife.

Then my stomach lurched. Wait a minute, what could make my mom and dad cry like this? What could have happened, that was making two adults who had spent most of the last three years in a constant state of war, cry like this?

Then, came the impact to my system that made me stagger and fall flat down on my butt. "Suzanne." The name rang in my head over and over again. "Oh no, Mrs. Adams is dead."

I jumped back up. I screamed at the top of my lungs, grabbing the black jacket that he was wearing, "Where's Kelsey? Daddy, where's Kelsey?"

I have read in my dad's stories, that there are moments when words cannot capture the expression on a person's face. Instances, when sentences and paragraphs are unable to clearly describe another's body language to the reader. The news of a death is most certainly one of those times. Since I am a writer's daughter, I will at least paint for you as best I can, the look that settled on my dad's face as I spiraled into the realization that my BFF was now gone.

His eyes were tear-soaked and red from crying so hard. His nose was running slightly, he kept sniffing, trying to keep from...