Some Things Never Change [SHAWN MENDES]

October 21, 2022

"Let's go out to lunch," I suggested.

"Are you trying to distract me?" Ceci asked, looking up at me with her big brown eyes. We were on the sofa and her head was on my lap as I played with her hair.

"Definitely," I grinned. "I can think of several ways to do that, but I just heard your stomach growl so eating should be the first order of business."

"I could really go for some calamari tacos," she said wistfully.

"We're not in L.A. and I don't know of any places here that have them. Wanna fly back to Cali for a few days? You know I'm willing."

As much as Toronto was my true home, I really missed our west coast house. We were back in Canada as the wedding drew closer, but the plan was to spend a month in Los Angeles after our honeymoon, returning here just in time for Christmas with our families.

"I don't think we'd get there on time for lunch, so I'll settle for sushi instead," she said as she sat up and stretched, wincing slightly, which meant her shoulder was bothering her.

"Want me to get you some Advil?"

"No. I'm fine. It always hurts for a few days after physical therapy. By tomorrow I'll be back to normal."

We went upstairs and got changed out of our pajamas. Once we were dressed, we went down to the parking garage and took a short drive to our favorite Japanese restaurant. Normally we would have walked, but the sidewalk outside the entrance to our building was flooded with the paparazzi who wanted pictures and a statement following today's sentencing.

This was why I was distracting Ceci. I knew that if we sat around the condo waiting for a phone call from the prosecuting attorney, she'd go a little nuts.

The trial had been difficult for us, especially since we both had to take the stand to share what had happened. Jake and the two other guards had also testified, plus there was security camera footage, so there was no doubt that Sanders had been the shooter. The murder charge was the tricky one. Ceci's doctors testified, but his attorneys also called in expert witnesses who made a pretty good case for the possibility that the fetal death could have happened up to ten days before the shooting. Apparently the hormone the pregnancy test measures stays in your body, so the fact that she'd taken the test the day before was irrelevant.

His defense team also tried to say he was insane, but all the psychological exams showed that he knew right from wrong. There was strong evidence that he'd been plotting the crime for years, and a wall of his bedroom was covered with pictures of me, many of them drawn on or ripped so that they were distorted. The guy definitely was crazy, but not so crazy that it excused what he'd done.

Ceci's testimony had been emotional, and when she talked about losing the baby, you could hear the sound of crying in the quiet court room. Our families were there to support us, so of course they were in tears, but I noticed that even some jury members had to wipe their eyes. On the following day when the jury returned from chambers and announced that he'd only been found guilty of the two attempted murder charges, she'd fallen apart. The prosecuting attorney had warned us that was the likely outcome, so we weren't unprepared. It still hurt that there was no justice for our baby.

The most difficult part for me was being in the courtroom with the man who had shot her. There's not a violent bone in my body, but I wanted to hurt him. Badly. Eric and I sat up one night during the trial drinking scotch and he shared that he felt the same way. That made me feel slightly better.

"I talked to Andrew yesterday," I told Ceci while we waited for our food. "We'll issue a short joint statement after the sentencing."

"Once this is behind us, we can focus a hundred percent on the wedding. I came up with some new ideas for the table decorations."