Judge Mercer heard her.
“So let’s discuss the injuries.”
Daniel had submitted a photograph of my bruised wrist as evidence that I was repeatedly injuring myself.
I explained that the photograph had been taken on March eighteenth at 6:42 p.m., but metadata from the family cloud account revealed another image taken forty-seven seconds earlier.
That earlier photograph showed Vanessa gripping my wrist.
Her fingers were visibly digging into my skin while I tried to pull away.
Curtis suggested Vanessa might simply have been stabilizing me, so I took out a flash drive.
“Then perhaps the video will provide context.”
Vanessa’s expression finally changed.
My house had six security cameras, and Daniel knew about them.
What he didn’t know was that after my husband Robert became ill, I had replaced two cameras with models that automatically uploaded their footage to an encrypted server.
Daniel had disconnected the obvious hallway camera.
He never discovered the smaller camera concealed inside the smoke detector.
The courtroom watched as Vanessa cornered me in the hallway with papers she wanted me to sign.
“Sign it.”
“No.”
“It’s just temporary access.”
“No.”
“Daniel is trying to help you.”
“He can help me by getting out of my house.”
Vanessa grabbed my wrist and twisted it.
“Stop fighting us.”
Daniel then walked into the hallway.
Instead of stopping his wife, he looked at me and spoke calmly.
“Mom, you’re making this worse.”
The video ended.
Nobody spoke.
Then I played another recording showing Daniel blocking my path while demanding to know where Robert’s original trust documents were stored.
When I refused to tell him, he shoved me hard enough that my shoulder struck the wall.
Before I had even regained my balance, Daniel began creating his excuse.
“Mom, why did you step backward like that?”
Judge Mercer’s expression changed.
He understood exactly what Daniel had been doing.
But the worst recording was still waiting.
It came from Robert’s office, the room I had kept almost untouched since his death.
And that video was about to show the court exactly how the injury above my eyebrow had really happened.
