After Before and After

Phase 4: Chapter 102

"I wanted you to hear it from me first" Paige Merridew insisted with a great deal of caution. She stood a good several feet away from Evan Merridew in the latter's third floor hotel room. There was big king bed centered between them, a barrier the younger Merridew strategically utilized as a safety net. Before, she never would've deemed such an action necessary. Before, Jack was her father's only target for physical violence. Before, Evan had loved his daughter dearly as the little sliver of his ex-wife that she had left behind. But the tales of before no longer represented the current situation.

The current situation was this: Paige's testimony, a public declaration of truth, one that was forbidden to be discussed by any member of the Merridew family out loud. When Paige spoke of Evan's treatment of Jack in a court of law, she waved a magic wand that turned the present into the past. Her life was now separated into two parts, her testimony an axe that split a log in half. The first half was the before; Merridew family secrets known only to those who shared their last name, fake smiles and ugly truths hidden behind shiny, expensive possessions. The second half was the now; the permanent damage that had been done to Evan's relationship with his daughter, the sting of betrayal that, to Evan, felt unsettlingly similar to the betrayal Paige's mother inflicted on his family fourteen years ago.

After being informed by her father that he intended to take Paige out of the will as soon as the trial was over, regardless of what the verdict was against Jack, Paige had to make a plan. She immediately found her way to a bank and opened up an account her father didn't know existed, using her absent mother's maiden name as her last name so Evan couldn't find it. Then, she began making small cash withdrawls (small by Merridew standards anyhow) from her current joint account with Evan and documenting fake receipts in case he asked about it (which he never had before, but it wasn't 'before' anymore). Paige slowly began filling her new untraceable bank account with the money, a savings account that would carry her for the first little while after the trial. Then, she called up a friend from nursing school on a nearby payphone so Evan couldn't find the call (in the event that he may try), and asked if she could get her a job interview to work as a nurse at the medical center in Dalton ("it must be in Dalton" she had said, "within fifteen minutes driving distance from our neighborhood or Jack's school" she insisted). On Labour Day weekend, Paige drove back to Dalton to take the interview, and had breakfast with her friend who helped prep her for it the day before. She then went to the job interview, and returned to Savannah feeling like it went quite well. And about a week later, her friend received a call informing her that Paige would have a job as soon as the trial was over and she was back in town. Paige requested the call go to her friend instead of her own phone, for the same reason she called her friend from the payphone.

All the while, Paige was keeping all but two people in her life in the dark about all this. Of course she never would've been able to do it on her own having grown up ignorant and privileged. Her help came from Jeffery and Laurie Langley, who she'd been having dinner with once a week for the past several weeks since deciding to testify against Evan. As two adults with strong heads on their shoulders and a world of meaningful experiences to share, Jeffery and Laurie were the perfect people to help Paige devise her plan. They even helped her come up with the idea to open the bank account in her mother's surname instead of Evan's, and also to purchase two cellphones in the same name. They currently weren't activated, but would be as soon as the trial comes to an end. Paige would keep one for herself and give the other to Jack, stressing how important it was he keep the phone a secret from Evan and only call her on it, nobody else, not even Ralph. In the event of an emergency in which Jack needed to reach her while living under Evan's roof, he could. The call would go through and keep going through at any and all hours, regardless of where Paige was or what she was doing.

The third and perhaps most devious part of the plan involved collecting evidence to build a criminal case against Evan in the event that things go awry. Paige posed as her and Jack's mother on the phone and requested to have all Jack's hospital records faxed to her new secret number. The phone she would later pass onto Jack would in time be flooded with text evidence with date and time stamps everytime Jack texted her to tell her about an incident, and she planned to record all calls Jack would make to her. She also contacted all Jack's schools, posing as their mother, to get the reports regarding Jack in case she needed that evidence too. She was already carrying a tape recorder around with her everytime Jack and Evan were in the same room outside of the courthouse, and had audio evidence of some of the abuse already.