A car door closed outside. Malcolm looked at his phone. "That'll be Grant. I told him he could look at the living room before the crew comes." Arthur moved toward the window, expecting the sleek gray sedan the consultant drove. But the person walking up the porch steps was a Black woman carrying a blue binder and several manila folders. She wore a charcoal-gray blouse, black slacks, and the patient expression of someone who had come to do difficult work.
Arthur went to the door before Malcolm could stop him. "Morning, Ms. Harris," he said.
"Good morning, Mr. Bennett." Simone looked past him at the packing boxes. Her eyes sharpened. "I see we arrived just in time."
Malcolm approached with the tape still hanging from one hand. "Who are you?"
Simone stepped into the living room only after Arthur invited her. "I'm Simone Harris. I represent your father."
Malcolm blinked. "Represent him for what?"
She set the folders on the edge of the open cardboard box, carefully avoiding the photograph of Elaine. Then she took out a page with a raised seal at the top and held it where both men could see. "For the emergency order that was entered yesterday," she said. "It concerns this house, the proposed sale, and the person claiming the right to sign on your father's behalf."
"You went to a lawyer?" Malcolm asked. He looked at Arthur with an expression that was half fury and half disbelief. "Instead of talking to me, you went and got a court order?"
"I talked to you," Arthur said. "You brought boxes."
Simone waited until Malcolm faced her again. "The court has temporarily prohibited any transfer of the property, any use of the disputed trust documents, and the removal of your father's belongings without his consent. A hearing is scheduled, and the other parties will have an opportunity to respond. This is a temporary protective order, not a final finding about everything that happened. But the sale cannot proceed as planned."
Malcolm shook his head. "Grant said he checked the trust. He said I was the next trustee."
"You are named as a successor trustee," Simone replied. "That designation matters only if the conditions in the trust are met. Your mother has died, but your father has not resigned. Nor has any court determined that he is unable to manage his affairs. The papers you showed Mr. Holloway cannot change those facts."
She opened the blue binder to a copy of the original trust agreement. Arthur remembered sitting with Elaine in an attorney's office ten years earlier, drinking bad coffee while the attorney explained why they should keep their house out of probate if one of them died. The words had seemed dry and distant then. Elaine had insisted on reading every page. "If anything happens to either of us," she had said afterward, tapping the folder, "I don't want strangers guessing what we wanted."