Rain had been falling since dawn.
By the time the funeral began, the stone courtyard outside the Whitmore estate looked like a sheet of black glass. Chauffeurs hurried beneath umbrellas. Expensive shoes disappeared beneath the hems of designer coats. Black cars arrived one after another, each carrying another powerful friend, business associate, or distant relative of the Whitmore family.
Inside the enormous funeral hall, everything was perfect.
Too perfect.
White roses covered the walls. Hundreds of candles burned beside a polished wooden coffin. A string quartet played softly near the entrance.
And in the middle of it all stood thirteen-year-old Noah.
He was wearing a borrowed black suit that was slightly too large for him.
His sleeves covered part of his hands. His shoes had belonged to a cousin who was several sizes bigger. He kept pulling nervously at the collar because he had never worn anything so formal before.
But Noah barely noticed his clothes.
He was staring at the coffin.
Inside was supposed to be his mother.
Claire Whitmore.
For six days, everyone had told him she was dead.
A car accident.
That was the official explanation.
Claire had supposedly lost control of her vehicle on a mountain road late at night. The car had gone over a barrier and fallen into a ravine. The wreckage had been destroyed by fire.
There had been almost nothing left to identify.
That was why the funeral was closed-casket.
At least, that was what Daniel Whitmore had told everyone.
Daniel stood several feet away from the coffin.
He was Claire's husband and one of the richest men in the country.
At fifty-one, Daniel had built a business empire that stretched across technology, real estate, transportation, and private investment. Newspapers regularly described him as brilliant, disciplined, and almost impossible to surprise.
Today, however, he looked exhausted.
His face was pale.
His eyes were red.
And he had barely looked at Noah since the boy arrived.
Noah didn't understand why.
Claire had always told him that Daniel loved him.
Maybe not in the way a father loved his son, she had once admitted, but enough.
"Give him time," Claire had said.
Noah had tried.
But there was something about the funeral that made him uncomfortable.
The flowers were wrong.
His mother hated lilies.
Yet dozens of lilies surrounded the coffin.
The music was wrong too.
Claire loved piano music.
The quartet was playing violins.
Even the photograph beside the coffin bothered him.