Chapter 18 - AARON TAKES THE STAND
Aaron did not panic.
He became stubborn.
He had spent years filming weddings.
He knew metadata.
He knew backups.
He knew how cameras stored time stamps and file structures.
Most importantly, he had uploaded proxy copies of the footage automatically to a cloud editing account during the reception.
Nobody knew.
Not Derek.
Not Vanessa.
Not even police at first.
The cloud copies carried server timestamps created minutes after each clip was recorded.
Long before the cannon became evidence.
Long before anyone could have modified the files.
The defense challenge collapsed.
Then Aaron found something better.
His camera recorded continuously during the service hallway sequence.
The frame before Derek opened the cannon.
The frame after.
No cuts.
No missing data.
No opportunity for replacement.
At the hearing, Aaron testified calmly.
Derek stared at him from the defense table.
They had been friends since college.
Aaron never looked away.
“Why did you go to police?”
the prosecutor asked.
Aaron thought for a moment.
“Because everybody laughed.”
The courtroom became quiet.
He continued.
“I laughed too.”
“I thought Claire was overreacting.”
“Then I watched the footage later and realized Derek prepared the cannon before he fired it.”
“I kept thinking about how easy it was for all of us to decide something was funny because the person who got hurt was the only one saying it wasn’t.”
I lowered my head.
Aaron’s voice tightened.
“So I stopped laughing.”
That testimony mattered more to me than I expected.
Not because it proved Derek’s guilt.
Because someone admitted he had been wrong.
The hearing ended with the major charges moving forward.
Patricia’s conspiracy case moved forward too.
Vanessa formally separated from Derek.
She returned the wedding gifts.
She sold the jewelry he bought her.
She moved into a small apartment.
Then she did something I never expected.
She resigned her temporary Bellamy voting rights voluntarily until the case ended.
“I don’t trust my decisions right now.”
she told Harold.
It might have been the first responsible decision she made in years.
Three months later, Derek accepted a plea agreement shortly before trial.
He admitted deliberately modifying the cannon.
He admitted forging my proxy.
He admitted conspiring with Victor.
He refused to say Patricia ordered the injury.
Patricia went to trial.
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And during her testimony, she blamed everything on one person.
My mother.
