At her husband's funeral, another woman knows exactly how to mourn him.
Laura Ellison is expected to grieve Matthew properly: quietly, gracefully, and under the watchful eyes of Wrenford Bay. But while the town studies the widow in the front pew, Laura notices a stranger at the back of the church.
Imogen Vale is dressed in black. She carries white camellias. She weeps like a woman with a private claim on the dead.
At first, Imogen says she was only Matthew's client. Then she begins appearing everywhere Laura turns: at the grave, near the house, inside the gossip of a town already eager to judge the widow who does not cry the right way.
Worse, Imogen knows things she should not know. Matthew's habits. His favourite song. The final warning he gave Laura before his fatal crash.
When Laura searches Matthew's locked study, she finds signs of missing documents, hidden arrangements, and an old family secret tied to the Ellison name. Matthew was not the perfect husband Wrenford Bay remembers. Imogen is not the fragile mourner she appears to be. And Margaret Ellison, Matthew's elegant and controlling mother, may know far more about his death than she is willing to admit.
As sympathy shifts toward Imogen, Laura must decide who to trust, what Matthew was hiding, and whether his accident was ever as simple as the town wants to believe.
The Perfect Mourner is a domestic psychological thriller about a widow, a funeral stranger, a powerful family, and the dangerous social performance of grief.
