Chapter1

Central New York had its share of dreary weather. That meant to most native New Yorkers that when the sun came out it was a fearsome thing to behold. Enjoying the four seasons in all their glory was why most people stayed. No sooner would the leaves fall, the snow would fly. Just when you had enough of the cold, the trees would begin to bud, and soon thereafter...summer. 

This particular June day, the warmth of the sun seemed to kiss your face as if greeting you. The warm wind whistled through the trees, shaking the leaves from their wet, quiet slumber. The birds were singing, and dogs were barking. Everything was green and bright with life. It didn’t seem right that today Grayson and Lili Wentworth would have to bury their parents.

Lili stared at the ground. “This can’t be happening,” shewhispered.

Grayson took his sister’s hand. “I know…it seems impossible, like we’re going to wake up any minute.” Tears streamed down their faces and the sun dried them as quickly as they flowed. 

Two glossy, black caskets were slowly lowered into the ground side by side. A priest was talking as Lili struggled to pay attention. The warm breeze stirred around them, blowing Lili’s long, blonde hair away from her face. Lili was tiny like her mother. The only commonalities she shared with her brother were their father’s big, brown eyes, and their parents’ compassion. Grayson had a brilliant mind and towered one foot above her. Lili often joked she must have been adopted, as she rarely understood anything her brother said, and she didn’t look anythinglike him. She watched as Grayson tossed a shovel full of dirt onto their father’s casket. He turned to her and attempted to hand her the shovel. Lili returned a torturedlook.

“That’s okay, Lili. You don’t have to.” 

Lili knelt down carefully by her mother’s grave in the same sleeveless, black dress her mother had bought her for a piano recital two weeks prior. She gently tossed the roses that her aunt had placed in her hands earlier that day. One by one she tossed them, as if she were making a bed for her mother. That seemed better somehow for Lili. She could imagine her mother surrounded by roses. Lili turned toward her aunt, and without a word, Emmeline gave her flowers to Lili. Everyone just watched as she tossed those roses over her father’s grave. When she was finished, she knelt there quietly as everyone sniffed and dried their tears. The warm breeze continued to swirl around her in the silence, releasing the aroma of the fragrant roses into the air, a scent Lili would soon grow to despise. Lili would never have a garden full of roses, she was certai