The Last Move
We had less than a day, and Lenz, to his credit, moved like a man trying to outrun his own mistake.
He filed an emergency motion that afternoon — a formal will contest, the sealed registry extract attached as evidence, Renfrew's forensic report attached beside it, a request for the court to freeze every account tied to the estate until a judge could review both documents side by side.
"Courts move slowly," he warned us, in the hallway outside the filing office. "This might buy us weeks, not an answer."
It bought us less than three hours.
Priscilla called Georgia's phone directly — not a text this time, her actual voice, tight and fast in a way I'd never once heard from her in thirty-four years of family dinners.
"You have no idea what you're doing," she said, loud enough that Georgia held the phone between us so I could hear. "That old man's registry, that so-called examiner — none of it means anything without a judge who agrees with you, and judges are slower than you think. I have executor authority right now, today, and I intend to use it."
"Priscilla," I said, "it's over. We have the real will."
"You have a piece of paper in an envelope," she snapped. "I have eighteen months of legal power of attorney and a filed, notarized, witnessed document that's been sitting in a lawyer's office for six weeks with nobody contesting it until five days ago. Do you understand how contests like this actually go? They take years. People give up. People run out of money to keep fighting."
"Is that what you're counting on?"
There was a silence just a beat too long. "I'm not counting on anything," Priscilla said. "I earned what's coming to me. Eighteen months, Della. Eighteen months of doctor's appointments and grocery runs and sitting with her at three in the morning when she couldn't sleep, while you two called twice a month and thought that made you close. You don't know what it cost me."
"So you rewrote what she actually wanted," Georgia said quietly, "because you decided you deserved it more than she thought."
The line went dead.
Twenty minutes later, Lenz called with news that made my stomach drop and lift in the same breath: the emergency freeze had gone through, minutes — genuinely minutes — before Priscilla's release request would have cleared. The accounts were locked. But there was more.
"The court clerk flagged something while processing the freeze," Lenz said. "Priscilla Doyle attempted to file a second document an hour ago — a notarized statement claiming your aunt verbally amended her wishes in Priscilla's favor shortly before death, no witnesses named yet. The clerk says the notary seal on it doesn't match any registered notary in the county."
"She's still trying," I said.
"She's out of real moves," Lenz said. "Which, in my experience, is exactly when people do something they can't undo. I'd stay somewhere safe tonight, and I'd keep your phones charged."