The phone call I made was not to a moving company. It was to the one man who had guarded Rosalind’s trust with me for over a decade, my attorney and closest friend, Sullivan Reyes. I read him the notary seal number, the name Bradley Thorne, and the two forged words at the bottom of the page. Sullivan went quiet for a moment, the way a man does when he realizes the fight just became personal.

Then he said something that turned the countdown around entirely. “Franklin, a power of attorney can’t transfer a property that isn’t held in your name alone. Did Preston know how the house was actually titled?” I set down my machine oil cloth. Because the answer was no. My son had forged a signature to sell something he did not understand at all, and that single gap was about to swallow him whole.