Most kids who grew up with two parents, in a nice neighborhood, surrounded by nice things and good people turned out okay. They'd amount to good things, go to college, get a degree, find love, start a family, and set the foundation for a beautiful life.
Evan Merridew started out on that track. Given the adult he grew up to be, one might've been surprised to learn that he hadn't faced any physical abuse in his childhood. His own parents weren't as rich as Evan himself later came to be, but they were still considered to be comfortable members of the upper class. Evan was an only child, and a spoiled one at that.
Evan had a really close relationship with his mother, Kathleen Merridew. His father, Charles Merridew, on the other hand was probably the least affectionate person Evan had ever known. He never laid an ill-intentioned hand on Evan, but he also never hugged or kissed his son either. He talked to the boy about school, attended all his baseball games, paid for everything Evan ever wanted. Evan did love his father as much as he did his mother, but the prospect of receiving affection from his father made young Evan's stomach churn. Evan always thought it to be unnatural for a boy to be close with his father, as his own father clearly believed too.
Aside from the absence of emotional affection, Evan and his dad had a positive relationship. His dad cared for him a great deal, and Evan knew that. He worked his ass off to provide his son with a good life. He rewarded Evan with gifts and toys everytime he came home with a good report card. He showed up at his every parent-teacher conference, every game, every award ceremony, every birthday party, and every other critical moment in Evan's young life.
Of course, Evan's mother also showed up for him just as often. His parents had loved each other dearly, and constantly talked to Evan about how impactful and important a stable, healthy relationship was for a family. They both agreed that they couldn't ever have done it without each other, that it was only because of the love they shared that they could provide Evan with the life they had given him.
Perhaps, it wasn't necessarily a good thing for Evan to constantly bear witness to his parents' seemingly perfect relationship. They set an incredibly high standard for him, and failed to inform him that most relationships weren't as seemingly perfect as theirs was. Evan believed in true love and romantic eternity. He planned to marry for love alone, to someday start a family as wonderful and whole as his own.
But in spite of that, Evan Merridew was a bully at his school in their small town just outside of Baltimore, Maryland. He got a sick satisfaction out of picking on other kids, particularly the smaller and weaker ones. Those he chose to befriend shared a similar, twisted view of the middle school social hierarchy. He thrived on popularity, on knowing that most of the kids in school would never be enough to be like him, that those he deemed to be lesser than he was would spend their entire high school careers wishing they could be one of him and his cruel friends. It was always better to be a perpetrator than a victim, and in Evan's mind, there wasn't a third role to play.
Evan might've been a tough, mean kid at school. In fact, he would've dropped dead out of sheer embarrassment if any of his classmates saw the way he was with his mother. There was no place he'd rather be than with her; watching a movie in her arms, talking to her about his day, laughing with her about any and everything. There was nothing Evan wouldn't have shared with his mother if it wouldn't have made her disappointed in him. He knew she would be if she knew what kind of person he was at school. But he couldn't explain it to her; the pressure he was under to either be popular or be victimized by those who were. All she'd see is that he wasn't kind, had taken what she taught him about humanity and disregarded it like trash. He hated the look on her face every time she was disappointed in him. She never yelled at him, not once in her life. It could be argued that she never even raised her voice. But that look of disappointment she'd have on her face every time she was upset with him cut through Evan like a knife.
It was better that she didn't know the truth, Evan decided. What his mother didn't know couldn't hurt her. He wanted her to believe that he fell nothing short of the good, respectable kid she raised him to be. He usually got away with the things he did at school, mostly because the kids he'd torment were too afraid to stand up to him or even tell on him, knowing that the repercussions for doing so would be far worse than any punishment Evan and his friends would receive for bullying.
When Evan's mother got sick, he was in the middle of his senior year. It was the most wretched thing he ever experienced. At first, it started out as a simple cold. Evan skipped school for a couple days to help his dad take care of her. Eventually, they realized that it wasn't going to get better anytime soon. Evan was forced to return to school, and he spent every agonizing moment thinking about his mother. One day, he returned from school to discover that his mother's skin was cold as ice. His father was on the phone with their family doctor, who advised him to take his wife to the nearest hospital. It was there that Kathleen was diagnosed with pneumonia. She was young and otherwise healthy, and the current state of modern medicine and technology wasn't enough to figure out exactly why she was experiencing such a severe case of the illness. Usually, it was old people who suffered from this severity of pneumonia as their old, weakened immune systems struggled to fight it.
As Evan's mother remained in the hospital, the boy became even more ruthless at school. His acts of violence became undeniably more aggressive. Kids no longer were forced to suffer his abuse in silence as teachers and other students started to bear witness to the incidents. The parents of other children started coming into the school, enraged, towing their children with black eyes and scathed backs from being beaten and shoved against the concrete, brick walls at recess. Evan was suspended for two weeks, as were a couple of his friends who were present at the time of the incidents. Evan's father was too consumed with his wife's illness to even notice that his son got suspended. Evan would usually pretend to leave for school each morning, and once his father left for the hospital, he'd come back home and lay around all day, thinking about his mom, trying not to cry. Rarely was he ever successful.
Evan's grades had been less than stellar since his mom's illness worsened, but eventually his father came to the school and explained the situation to his son's teachers and the administration. Evan was given leeway and leniency in his completion of assignments and attendance. He started missing a lot of school to be in the hospital with his mom.
A week before Evan's high school graduation, he came home from school as usual. His father wasn't there, but that wasn't unusual. Charles always stayed at the hospital until visiting hours were over. Evan always took the other vehicle and drove over to the hospital after retrieving a snack from the fridge or pantry. He'd spend the rest of the night in his mom's room, talking with her and holding her hand for hours on end. Evan didn't even allow himself to go to the bathroom until after they were kicked out of his mom's room for the night, no matter how badly he had to go.
That day, Evan parked his car where he always did and entered the hospital's ICU where his mom was recently transferred in light of her worsening condition. Immediately, Evan somehow sensed that something was wrong. His eyes found the receptionist's who knew him by name and was usually kind to him. Tonight, she dropped her gaze in an effort to avoid him. Evan glanced across the room and saw a nurse who often attended to his mother, and she stopped abruptly in her tracks when she saw him. She looked tense as she too started to look anywhere else, diverting her gaze. Without speaking a word, Evan rushed through the corridors until he got to his mother's room. Immediately, his ears were filled with the sound of his father's horrific cries. For as long as Evan had known the man (his entire life), he never saw him cry. In fact, Evan had never seen him embody hardly any emotion at all outside of love and affection for his wife.
Evan peered into the doorway and found his father's back turned to him. He was shaking violently as he cried over his wife. Evan couldn't see his mother on account of his father blocking his view. He didn't want to, he really didn't want to, but Evan stepped into the room anyway. He stopped beside his father, finally getting a look at his mother. Her skin was an awful shade of whiteish blue, her eyes closed. She was lifeless, and still as a statue. His father was clasping her hand tightly, holding it to his own face as he sobbed aggressively. He didn't even notice that Evan was standing there beside him.
The tears started to flow silently down Evan's own face now. He knew his mother was sick, and even that it got worse in the last two weeks. But still, it never even crossed his mind that she might die from it. He was completely struck with shock, staring at her lifeless body. He felt his legs shaking beneath him, threatening to take him down like a demolition building. The tears were falling down his cheeks rapidly. His face felt hot and tingly as he stood unmoving, crying silently, staring at what was left of his once lively mother. After battling pneumonia for over six months, it finally took her life.
Charles failed to notice his son's presence until a nurse entered the room, announcing herself, forcing him to turn around. He practically jumped out of his skin when he saw Evan standing beside him, wondering how long the boy had been standing there. Long enough to have soaked the bulk of his t-shirt with tears, his father concluded.
Even after his mother's death, his father failed to show Evan any love or affection. They still continued to have an otherwise good relationship, but they were both devastated by the loss of Kathleen. She was both of their primary lifeline to love, and the house felt horrifically quiet and sad without her.
Evan didn't attend his high school graduation that was held six days after his mother's death. Most of his graduating class heard about the death of his mother when his father informed the school that he wouldn't be there to walk the stage. His school announced his name in his honor anyway, and payed tribute to his mother on behalf of the Merridew family. Later on, Evan's principal reached out and gave Evan and his father a copy of the tape-recorded graduation ceremony. It wasn't until several years later that Evan finally watched it, and listened to the announcement of his own name and the words that his principal spoke about him and his mother. It brought him to tears.
A year later, Evan moved out of his father's house, and out of state. A few years later, he met a woman he was sure he loved as much as his father loved his mother. She was this beautiful, thin, woman with bright blond hair and piercing blue eyes. It wasn't her appearance that captivated Evan, but her spirit. She was one of those girls with little care in the world, not much had ever bothered her. She was happy just sitting among the stars at night. She cared little for things like fancy restaurants and expensive clothes or cars. She constantly expressed to Evan that she wanted nothing more from him than his presence. She was one of those girls who, back in high school, would've been picked on for being weird. She believed she could talk to animals and that there were fairies in the sky always looking out for her. She didn't dress like most girls her age. There wasn't anyone who dressed like her, Evan noted. She was so naturally beautiful, and if she noticed it, she didn't seem to care.
Six years after his mother's death, Evan's dad announced to him that he was retiring. He was the owner of an up and coming company that provides solar energy to homes and businesses across the East Coast, from Connecticut down to Florida. He had planned on expanding to central America before Kathleen got sick, but the business took a back seat during the six months she was ill. Charles Merridew sat his son down and told the boy that he was passing the company down to him. Charles knew that he didn't have the emotional strength to keep running it. He thought it would get easier to keep living and working as time passed after his wife's death, but six years did next to nothing for his emotional recovery.
Evan wanted to explain to his father that he knew nothing about running a company, and that he too was still devastated by the loss of his mother. But he knew that emotional conversations weren't to be had between him and his father. Kathleen rarely came up between the two of them over the past six years. Evan and his dad grew apart after her death. Evan only lived with his dad for a year after the fact, and since then he bounced around between rentals. His dad took care of him financially when he needed it, but otherwise their relationship was strained by Kathleen's death.
Evan knew that he had to take his dad's company. Kathleen too worked for it at some point or another, and Charles and her both had been proud of the work they were doing. Kathleen told Evan that someday he'd inherit the company when Charles and her got old and retired. But Charles wasn't that old six years after her death, and it was a rather early retirement. The company wasn't exactly small anymore, and it was still growing, but Evan wasn't sure his father made enough to retire on. Still, Charles continued to insist that he was done and that it was his and Kathleen's wish that Evan run things when neither of them could anymore.
So in both of their honor, Evan became the owner and CEO of Solight Energy Corporation. The company's logo had the letters of the name in navy blue, but the L in the middle of Solight was bright yellow to represent the energy of the sun, and also to distinguish that the letter was both the L in sol (as in solar) and in the word light. Soon after Evan took control of the company, he offered his girlfriend an entry level job working reception. She happily accepted, overjoyed by the work Evan's family was doing. She was a proud supporter of solar energy. It was working at Solight where she discovered she had a natural knack for business. She was incredible at convincing customers to invest in their business and knew just what to say and to offer to sweeten the deal. Evan was impressed with her, but was just happy that they were working together like his parents did when his dad founded the little company several years earlier, before Evan was even born.
It wasn't long before Evan's girlfriend got pregnant. It shouldn't have come as a surprise given how often they did the deed. They moved in together shorty after she started working with Evan at Solight. Not long after the pregnancy announcement, Evan proposed to her. At first, she reluctantly questioned the timing. She wanted to be sure that the baby wasn't the reason for the proposal. She was a firm believer that babies could be raised happily out of wedlock and turn out just fine. Marriage was a government sham anyway, she also believed. But Evan insisted that he simply wanted to solidify their commitment to one another and of course, to their new addition. She finally accepted the proposal but insisted that Evan take back the expensive diamond ring he got her.
"Don't worry about the price, it isn't hurting me or anything. The company's doing really well, as you know, and a lot of that is thanks to you" Evan assured her as she studied the diamond on finger.
"That's not really the point I'm trying to make" she insisted, turning her hand over again and again as she studied the unnatural look of it on her finger. "It's just not me. It's kinda flashy. I know you have good intentions and I love you for it, but I'd be much happier with something simpler, ya know?"
Evan laughed but took the ring back anyway. He traded it in for a less expensive ring, one with a green emerald in the centre. The band was bronze and much less expensive. But of course, she liked it much better than the shiny diamond one Evan proposed with.
Solight Energy Corporation continued to grow, and was still growing by the time Paige Merridew was born. She was a picture of perfect health, and Evan couldn't get over the beauty in her bright blue eyes. They were exactly like her mother's, and Evan loved that about her. Her hair was so bright blond at birth, it was practically white. Evan too had blond hair but it was a much dirtier and darker blond. His daughter was the spitting image of his fiancé. The only thing that could've made her birth more perfect was if Evan's own mother had been there to meet her granddaughter.
Of course, Charles had been in the hospital waiting room when Paige was born. He was the third person after the couple to hold baby Paige. He met Evan's fiancé's family the day Paige was born too. Evan could see that it saddened his father to see the girl's parents both here for the birth of their granddaughter. It was as hard a day for Charles as it was beautiful. He too wanted nothing more than for Kathleen to be there to become a grandmother.
Shortly after Paige's birth, her parents got married. She was less than a year old, and was the cutest guest at the wedding. By the time the little girl turned four years old, her mother grew even more aware of her gift for working in business. She'd be a good lawyer, many who spoke with her claimed. Eventually, she decided to return to school to pursue a degree in law with a minor in business. She was surprised by how well she was doing in her pursuit of her college degree. She hadn't payed much attention during high school, having been too focused on protesting the heinous conditions of forcing kids to sit in desks for eight hours a day five days a week instead of allowing them to learn and frolick in the outdoors where they belonged.
Evan bore witness to the way law and business school was changing his wife. With each passing semester, she was spending less and less time with little Paige. She continued to tell Evan to just leave her with the nanny after the daycare she attended closed for the day. Evan remembered how important family was to him and his parents growing up, and was less than thrilled about leaving his daughter with strangers all day long at daycare just to bring her home to spend more time with another non-family member. Evan wasn't able to stay home all the time due to the demand of running a company on the rise, but he continued to ask his wife to rearrange her class schedule so that she could be there for Paige.
"I'll try, but I can't promise anything" she'd always say. And every now and again, she'd come home early and care for Paige, relieving the nanny of her duties early. But that didn't last long as she formed study groups at school, joined clubs like debate and chess, and insisted that her class schedule suddenly wasn't fluid anymore.
By the time Paige was six years old and a wonderful ballet dancer, Evan finally admitted that he could no longer recognize his wife. He thought back to the free-spirited, open-minded girl she was when he first met her. He was stunned by the realization that she was nothing like he remembered. She started dressing like the girls she went to school with; in business casual attire, slicking her hair back in buns or ponytails instead of letting it flow freely around her face like she used. She slowly grew obsessed with the prospect of what she was becoming. She was constantly told in her degree that if she played her cards right, she could make a ton of money someday. She never considered money to be especially valuable before, but that might've been because she had never really had it. Her family was middle class, not rich or poor. She hadn't cared much for Evan's money at first, but as she grew closer and closer to her university graduation, she began to regret not keeping the fancy, diamond engagement ring Evan initially bought her. Her college friends laughed at the cheaper, emerald ring that Evan bought to replace the original one, at her request. She told her friends that this was the ring she wore at school and work, because her real one was so big and expensive, she didn't want to risk losing it while wearing it out in public.
Meanwhile, Evan's company continued to expand and grow. His wife was clearly overjoyed by the amount of money they were making, and continued to talk to Evan about how much Solight could make in five years, ten years, twenty years.
"We could buy our own private jet!" she pondered with awe and excitement. "We'd never have to use a public airline ever again!"
Of course, Evan too was considering the prospect of making more money as Solight continued to soar into the spotlight of solar energy companies around the country. Solight was the biggest solar energy company on the east coast by the time Paige turned seven. Though, Evan knew that his daughter didn't care about money or solar energy or even having enough money to afford the most expensive dance program in the city. All that mattered to Paige was having two parents who loved her and showed up at her recitals. When she was five and sometimes when she was six, her mother was there in the stands. But by seven, it was incredibly rare for her mother to get away from her work and be there for Paige. Evan, however, never missed a single recital.
Solight was doing incredibly well, far better than Charles could've predicted. He was proud of his son for taking hold of the company after the tragic loss of his mother. He told Evan that he knew he could do it, though Evan hadn't believed him until recently. He was sure that he couldn't have done it without the support of his wife and daughter. Evan soon bought a big white house in the middle of rural Dalton, Georgia. It was only a town over from the office where he ran Solight Energy. His wife, of course, adored the beautiful white infrastructure of the large house and the massive, open-concept rooms. She fantasized about the both of them continuing to expand on their businesses and income, and one day being able to build a giant guest house and swimming pool in the stupidly large backyard. What Evan was fantasizing about was raising his family here, providing them with a financial stability that would ensure they'd never have to worry, and that his daughter would be able to go to any college she could dream of someday.
Shortly before Paige's eighth birthday, her mother graduated from university. Both she and Evan were in the crowd that day, clapping and cheering loudly as she crossed the stage for her certificate. Shortly after the ceremony, the Merridew family had dinner at the university with the rest of Paige's mom's graduating class. They stayed rather late while the woman talked with her friends about their prospective career paths. Evan felt Paige tugging on his blazer, and glanced down at the little girl.
"When are we leaving?" she wined with a bored frown on her tired face.
"Once mommy's ready to go" Evan informed her as he clutched her little, stubby hand.
"But why do I have to come to mommy's things when she never comes to mine?" Paige whined boredly, but her comment stirred up an anger inside Evan. He failed to realize how much Paige was really picking up on, and how saddened she was by her mom's constant absence from her life. Evan didn't know what to say to her now. He didn't understand why his wife acted like her career was more important than her daughter any more than Paige did.
A couple months after her graduation, Paige's mother discovered that she was going to be a mother again. She threw up for the third morning in a row, and was confused by the lack of symptoms she had for the common cold Evan continued to insist she must have. Finally, she took a pregnancy test in the bathroom of the job she acquired working at a small law firm, and was horrified by the surprise that it was positive.
"What the hell are we gonna do?!" she shouted as she paced frantically through the living room after Paige had gone to bed that night.
"Why are you freaking out? You know we can afford it" Evan pointed out much more calmly than his wife was being.
"That's not the point, Evan!" she stopped to screech at him. "We don't have time for a baby! I don't even have time for Paige!"
"You can make time" Evan admitted, the suppressed anger he'd been feeling toward her lately bubbling to the surface a little. "Your job can't deny you maternity leave" he added.
"Maternity leave?" she questioned forcefully, raising her eyebrows in disbelief at him. "I can't take a fucking maternity leave right now, my career is quite literally just beginning! You have any idea how much I'd lose out on if I were to take a year long absence from the workforce so early in my career?"
"No!" Evan retorted hotly, "and I don't really care, and neither should you! This is our family we're talking about! The baby's gonna need a mother, and so does Paige!"
"What exactly are you implying? You think I'm a shitty mother?" she dared him to admit.
"I never said that!" Evan snapped in frustration, letting his head fall into his hands as he dropped his elbows onto the kitchen counter.
"You might as well have" she replied in a sassy tone, turning on her heels and walking out under the archway. Evan heard the click, click, click of her stilettos as she walked aggressively up the grand staircase. A moment later, he heard the master bedroom door slam shut hard, echoing loudly in light of the open-concept, high ceiling. Evan rolled his eyes and shook his head as he hoped that Paige hadn't heard the door and woken up. Thankfully, it seemed that she hadn't.
Evan continued to built Solight up into a nation-wide company that soon became available to businesses and homeowners in all fifty states. His wife continued to work toward her career as a corporate lawyer, and she was promoted rather quickly. Paige continued to dance and play the flute, and Evan was usually the only one in attendance at her concerts and recitals. Several months before she turned nine, Paige's baby brother was born. Paige remembered meeting him for the first time, but all Evan remembered was how antsy his wife was to get back to work as soon as she could. She was forced to take two weeks off to recover from the birth, but was back in the office the first day she was medically cleared.
Because Solight was growing as quickly as his wife's career was, Evan didn't have the option to take time off to care for baby Jack either. So as much as he didn't like it, he was forced to comply with his wife's request to hire an around the clock nanny. His wife would constantly bring up that they could afford it, but that was never Evan's point. He was growing frustrated with her, that she didn't even understand why the two of them were always at odds with each other when it came to work-life balance.
Evan's heart broke as he watched his wife turn into someone he didn't recognize. He thought back to the young girl he fell in love with shortly after his mother's death. He thought about the values she once held and let go of, about the strange yet beautiful way she looked at the world. None of that fit the image of the woman he was married to now. He remembered how careless she'd been about material possessions and how invaluable they once were to her. She hadn't even wanted the ring he bought her when he proposed, but recently she mentioned that she wished he kept it.
In spite of it all, Evan was still stupidly in love with the woman. He couldn't rid himself of the thought that she was still the same person he fell for years ago, even though she didn't resemble that person anymore. She was the mother of both his children, the woman who's body he memorized every curve and crevice of, the woman he planned out the rest of his life with. It was everything his own mother had ever wanted for him; a nice house, a beautiful family, a hopeful career in front of him. He wondered what his mom would think of his wife now, and what he would've thought of her when Evan first met her. Although, he knew his mother would've loved her back then. She was one in a million, Evan knew, but recently she had turned herself into one of the million; a diamond among stones who let the material world rub the shine right out of her until she too was lost among the simple stones.
Evan hoped that his wife would do better with Jack than she did with Paige. He didn't know why he was surprised when she never came around, when her maternal instincts never kicked in. It was clear to Evan that she felt little to no connection to Jack, or even to Paige. She continued to pay attention to Paige when her nine-year-old daughter demanded it, but she only held her newborn boy maybe a handful of times in the first year of his life.
Evan and Paige were forced to watch in pain as the woman became more distant from them. Paige talked often about how much she missed Mommy and wished she was around more often. Evan was angry at his wife for putting him in the position to have to console his daughter every time she failed to show up for her. Even when Paige did see her mother, she was usually on the phone, holding up a dismissive hand in front of Paige when she'd try to interrupt the conversation.
As for Jack, every time the family got a new nanny, the woman was surprised by baby Jack's lack of separation anxiety from his parents. In fact, Jack seemed not to care at all when either of his parents were in the room. He'd find happiness in Evan's arms, but sometimes he even cried and reached for the nanny on rare occasions when his mother held him. The daycare Jack attended was impressed and relieved that the boy hardly ever cried. He was the only baby they cared for who didn't get excited when his mom picked him up. On his registration, the nanny was the primary emergency contact listed for him. His father was secondary, and his mother was listed third. The daycare knew that the family was rich, but still wondered why it was so rare for the boy's own mother to come get him at the end of the day.
Most of the time, his mother didn't even call Jack by name. She'd often refer to him as 'the baby' and sometimes Evan would watch her have to think about it for a second before she could recall what his name actually was. The day of Jack's second birthday, she didn't even know it was his birthday. This didn't surprise Evan because she didn't remember on his first birthday either.
Evan couldn't remember the last time he really saw his wife happy. He knew that she loved him, but was seemingly detached from the rest of her family. She constantly referred to the kids as annoying and didn't bother to remember specifics about either of them. She did with Paige at first, but by the time the girl m reached first grade, her mother's concern had dissipated almost to nothing.
One day, the woman burst through the doors of the house with a beaming smile on her face. Evan and Paige were both there waiting for her while the nanny was putting baby Jack down for the night.
"Evan!" the woman screamed as she entered the living room, tossing her things carelessly on the counter. "Guess what! Guess what!" she screeched joyfully like a child. Her excitement was rubbing off on Paige who had an intrigued look on her ten-year-old face as she tried to immerse herself in the conversation she wasn't directly included in.
"What? What's going on? You're gonna wake up Jack, the nanny's trying to put 'im down" Evan answered as he stood from the couch, Paige in tow closely behind him.
"I got a job offer!" she squealed excitedly, "nearly double my current salary!"
"Wow" Evan tried to fake the level of excitement his wife was exhibiting, and it was clear by the look on Paige's face that she was losing interest. "That's great. What company?"
The company name she gave Evan wasn't one he recognized. When he asked her about it, she finally fessed up that it was on a different continent. Evan simply started to laugh.
"What's funny about it?" his wife questioned, a confused look on her face.
"Well obviously you can't take it, but I guess it's good to know that you're worth that much already" Evan responded as his laughter subsided.
Paige continued to look back and forth between her parents as the conversation progressed.
"Like hell I can't take it, I have to. Don't you get it, Ev, this could set the stage for a lifelong career!"
"You aren't serious" Evan lowered his voice as he began to consider that his wife was, in fact, serious.
"Of course I am! This is the opportunity of a lifetime! You understand that, don't you?" she questioned as if it were completely obvious.
"Well sure it is but there will be other jobs. What about me? Solight? The kids? Our whole worlds are here, we can't just uproot the life we've built and move halfway across the world" Evan argued carefully.
"Why can't we? This is double my salary, Evan. We don't even need Solight. You can sell it, start fresh in Europe. Imagine how amazing it'd be to live and build a life out there!"
"Do you even hear yourself? I'm not going to sell my father's company for the first big job offer you get. I'm not going to take Paige out of the only home she's ever known and loved, away from her school and her dance program. This is her life, and mine. You can't expect us to pack up and move just like that" Evan countered as his anger began to increase.
"And you can't expect me to pass this up because of some little dance class and a house that isn't even worth a fraction of what I could be making next year" his wife retorted rather hotly.
"Not everything's about money! There are more important things in life than money!" Evan shouted, barely noticing the way his daughter flinched at the sound of his booming voice. "The woman I married, she believed that too" he added flatly.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she finally lowered her volume too, matching his frustrated tone.
"Forget I said it. But I'm still not going to change my mind. I won't let you uproot our lives" Evan safely decided to refocus the argument.
"Well I won't let you stop me from changing mine" she added, her voice soft but still stern. "I'm going to Europe, with or without you" she declared, turning away and abandoning Evan and Paige in the living room before Evan could get another word in.
Evan was certain that the woman was bluffing. He was married to her for christ's sake. They had two kids here, and Evan's family company they both worked for and loved at one point in time. Surely, she'd come to her senses between now and the time that she was to leave for Europe.
But to Evan's surprise, things between him and his wife continued to spiral downward from there. They were arguing even more often than they had been, and she was still hell-bent on going to Europe. Evan continued to fight for the kids, for the life they built here in Georgia. But his words continued to go in one ear and out the other. All she could see was the fancy job and the salary jump, and there wasn't a damn thing in the world Evan could do to open her eyes long enough to see everything else around her.
But still, Evan continued to try and convince her to stay. He forced her (usually against her will) to spend more time with Paige and Jack. But Paige could sense how disinterested her mother was, and she had to constantly teach her mother how to properly care for her brother. She didn't even know what foods Jack would and wouldn't eat, or how to mix the formula for his milk. She even got him sick after using the wrong stuff, claiming she had no idea that formula expired and blamed the nanny for leaving it in the pantry. Eventually, she finally snapped at Evan for forcing her to take care of the baby she had no experience caring for. She snapped at him because Paige didn't even like her, and the girl was clearly just as unenthusiastic about spending time with her mother as she was about spending time with Paige. Evan pointed out that it was her own fault Paige didn't feel comfortable around her, that she made no effort to connect with either of the kids since she graduated from college.
Not long before she was scheduled to leave for Europe, she finally brought forth the prospect of divorce. She saw that Evan was broken up by the mention of it alone, but continued to point out that they couldn't stay married living on different continents. Evan fought it for as long as he could, but when he could no longer deny that she really was leaving, he had no choice but to accept that the relationship was ending and sign the papers.
Evan couldn't stop wondering where he went so wrong. He thought about his own parents' relationship, about the way his father held his mother's hand until the last moment of her life. He had hoped that his own marriage would've ended the way theirs had. This, winding up a single father of two young children, wasn't part of the plan. Evan never imagined that it could be, not after being raised by two parents who were more in love with each other than with life itself.
Evan continued to play the events of his life over and over in his head. He wondered if he let his wife give up the baby like she wanted to, then maybe it wouldn't have turned out this way. She loved Paige once upon a time, enough to show up for her when she could. She was overjoyed to meet the girl when she was born. She was also once so in love with Evan, that nothing else mattered to her. Evan was starting to believe that it had all been too much for her; the family, the pressure he put on her to be there for Jack when he was born. Of course she pushed back, and ran toward the first job that offered her an out after Evan demanded she take a year off for maternity leave.
After she moved away, Evan became depressed. He was experiencing the heartbreak of his lifetime, waking up everyday hoping and praying that his ex-wife would call and say she was coming home. But she never called, and she never came home.
Eventually, Evan's sadness developed into anger. He was angry that his parents provided him with the perfect example of what a family should look like, and that he failed to attain it. He felt that he failed his mother, who would surely be frowning at him from the grave. He hated that she wasn't here to comfort him, to tell him that it wasn't his fault that his wife left, that his children didn't have a mother anymore, that he was alone and full of regret.
Evan never admitted it aloud, but he continued to attribute the divorce to Jack's birth. Evan was convinced that if his wife hadn't gotten pregnant again, they never would've gotten divorced. It was the pregnancy itself that started this chain-reaction of horrible events. It was the first domino of many that left his children orphans and him a single parent. He began to secretly wish that Jack had never been born. When the nanny wasn't around, he started forcing Paige to attend to the boy's needs so he wouldn't have to. Evan continued to provide for the both of them because he knew it was the right thing to do, the thing his own parents would've done. His wife might've been willing to abandon her children, but if Evan was sure of one thing it was that he was nothing like her. He had to prove that he was better than her, the better person, the better parent.
And all he had to do to make that happen was to stay.
Evan's resentment toward Jack did not play out well in their relationship as Jack continued to grow up. On the other hand, Evan somehow managed to maintain an overly positive relationship with his daughter. Still, he was heartbroken by the divorce and his relationship with Paige inevitably suffered as a result. But he invested so much in her and loved her in spite of it, and that was something Evan couldn't ignore. He still supported and showed up for her when she needed, but he was distant. Paige was old enough to know why, and to know that there was nothing she could to do help it.
Jack and Evan never bonded. Though, Evan did support Jack the only way he knew how; with resources only money could buy. He put the boy in baseball, and choir, and any other extracurricular activity he wanted to do. Really, Evan was just glad that Jack's school and extracurricular schedule kept the two of them apart. Even at six years old, Jack could sense the tension between the him and his father. He watched Evan embrace Paige but never him, and eventually he started acting out.
At first, Evan dismissed it and insisted the nanny and the school figure out a way to deal with Jack. That was what Evan was paying them for, he point out regularly. But Jack continued to come home with shitty report cards and behavioral reports that were less than stellar. Evan grew angry with Jack simply because the boy's behavior forced him to pay attention to the child he resented. He started striking the boy just to shut him up.
At first, it worked. He'd smack Jack hard every time he did something stupid, came home with a bad grade, or was reported for picking on other kids at school. Then Jack would go quiet, run and hide somewhere in the house and Evan wouldn't see him for hours, or sometimes longer if their schedules didn't align. Evan hoped that Jack would stop acting out once he realized that the consequence for his actions would be a physical and unpleasant one. But for some reason Evan didn't understand, Jack continued to act out anyway. In fact, it got worse. Evan continued to physically punish the boy for his behavior, but even with time, the violence did nothing to improve it.
Evan knew that punishing Jack with physical force wasn't working and most likely wasn't going to. But still, he continued to do it because it became an outlet for Evan's pent up anger around the divorce. It helped Evan to release the rage and pain he felt, inflicting it on the person he deemed somewhat responsible for his anger in the first place. Eventually, Evan was so used to striking Jack that he couldn't have stopped doing it if he wanted to. It was a reflex, a knee-jerk reaction to the boy's inevitable indecent behavior. It wasn't like Jack didn't deserve it, Evan believed. He only ever hit Jack when he did something wrong, which was often.
The first time Paige witnessed the abuse was the only time that Evan second-guessed himself. He remembered slamming seven-year-old Jack against the wall, shouting in his face, when he heard the sound of someone entering the room. Evan turned assuming it was the nanny, but was stunned to silence when he saw his fifteen-year-old daughter staring in horror, unable to move, pain-stricken by the sight of them.
Evan apologized to Paige later that night, but didn't promise her that it wouldn't happen again. The next time Paige bore witness to the abuse, she simply hurried out of the room before Evan noticed her and pretended she hadn't seen it. Eventually, she was as used to it as Jack was. Evan knew that the abuse was difficult for his daughter to watch, but by the time he really thought about it, it would've been too late to reverse the effect it would've had on her anyway.
Evan's work at Solight provided the Merridew family with a good life, at least in the financial sense. The company wound up in the top three solar energy companies in the entire country, and Evan was working toward the prospect of expanding even beyond the states. His work kept him busy, as busy as he wanted to be. Though, he was sometimes forced to leave in the middle of the work day when Jack's school would call and request Evan pick him up. By the time Jack was nine years old, he'd been suspended twice already. The administration continued to stress to Evan that Jack wasn't just misbehaving, he was outright violent. Other parents were demanding he be expelled, and raised concerns over the other kids' safety, that Jack's mere presence in the classroom was a threat to the other children. Jack would lash out at the smallest of things, sometimes even completely unprovoked. Jack even admitted to body slamming another classmate against the classroom wall simply because he was bored.
Naturally, the school raised the issue around where Jack's violent behavior was coming from. Kids don't just act the way Jack was acting for the heck of it, he surely learned it from somewhere, Jack's principal pointed out. But Evan continued to insist that he had no idea what would make Jack think it was okay to hit another person. He argued that maybe it was something he saw on TV or in a video game. He told the administration that he worked so often, he wasn't around Jack enough to say for sure what could be causing the behavior. Only the first half of that claim was really true.
Evan maintained a respectable attitude under the roof of the elementary school. But by the time they gotten into the parking lot, Evan could've just about beat Jack senseless. He would shout violently at the boy the whole ride from the school to the house, screaming about how inconvenient it was to have to come to the school to get him again, about how Jack was nothing but a mere nuisance, that Evan was ashamed and disgusted by his behavior. Evan continued to act like he had no idea where Jack's aggression was coming from. He lied to the school, the nanny, and even to himself. It might've been harder to lie if Evan cared enough to really think about it. But he didn't, and Jack knew it too.
In spite of Jack's violent behavior, the boy somehow managed to make friends at school. Eventually, Evan started relying on the parents of Jack's friends to get him to and from school, baseball practice, choir, birthday parties, play dates etc. Jack was an honorary family member in a couple different friends' families in his early elementary years. It wasn't that Jack was such a delight to have around, but more so that the parents of his friends pitied him. They knew that Evan was the owner and CEO of the Solight Energy Corporation, and that he wasn't around much for Jack at all. Paige too made lots of friends in high school and sometimes spent more time at their houses than at her own.
Jack and Paige were much closer to one another in their younger years. When Jack was just little, between the toddler age and second grade, Paige was his primary confidant. She was in her middle school years at the time, and a lot of the responsibility to care for Jack had fallen on her shoulders. Evan was still around most evenings, but he continued to leave Jack's care to Paige when he could. The two siblings were close until they both started making more friends at school and through extracurriculars. At that point in time, they started relying more on their friends than each other. It wasn't long before they weren't spending any more time with each other than they were with Evan.
As Paige continued through the trenches of her teenage years, she started to become more and more annoyed with Jack. The two of them were fighting more often than they got along. Evan got sick and tired of listening to them bicker and would usually resort to banishing them to opposite ends of the house. Jack would get in trouble every time he and Paige were caught fighting, regardless of whether or not it was he who started it. Evan often jumped to his daughter's defense, which usually warranted physical consequences for Jack. Sometimes, as the two kids fought, Paige would hear the sound of her father stomping his way into the room and she'd instantly regret fighting with Jack. Even when she tried to take the blame for what happened between them, Evan still punished Jack for it. It was too easy for him to blame Jack; a habit and an involuntary reaction that couldn't so easily be broken. It didn't help that Evan had no interest in trying.
About a month or so before Jack's tenth birthday, the boy asked Evan if they could get tickets for this metal band concert that was coming to Georgia as part of their summer tour. Evan dismissed him, claimed that he was too busy to go to some dumb concert he didn't even want to go to. But Jack continued to beg for days, even admitted to saving up his allowance over the last three months in order to pay for his ticket. Evan didn't even have to come, Jack assured him. His friend Joey's dad was willing to take the both of them. Finally, Evan agreed simply because Jack wouldn't shut the hell up about it, and he himself didn't have to go. Besides, having Jack out of the house for an evening was never a bad thing.
Evan came home from work the night before Jack's concert to discover that some of his vintage records were missing from the collection in his office. He hadn't thought or looked through the collection in quite awhile, and had no idea when exactly they went missing. But still, Evan was fuming. He had no real evidence of it, but he was certain that Jack used, lost, or broke them. Of course, Jack insisted that he hadn't. Evan beat him for it anyway, and when he failed to beat the attitude out of Jack, he revoked his permission for Jack to go to the concert. Alas, he finally made Jack as angry as the boy had made him. Jack started begging, then screaming, then smashing things. Evan dragged him by the arm up to his bedroom and locked him in there for the remainder of the night.
The following day, Evan went to work as usual. He was just about finished at the office for the evening when he received a call that couldn't have possibly been right. The label on the caller ID said Whitfield County Jail, and Evan decided to answer just for the kick he was expecting to get from it. But to his surprise, the call was in fact for him. The officer on the other end of the line informed him that they had his almost ten-year-old son in custody, and that Evan needed to get to the station as soon as possible.
Evan couldn't think of a time in his life in which he'd been as mad at Jack as he was right now. He burst angrily through the doors of the police station, and if they didn't have an audience, he just might've ended Jack's life right then and there. The officers informed him that they caught Jack driving a blue sedan registered to the neighbor down the major highway, a road in which the speed limit was sixty miles per hour. Evan's ten-year-old son had been going eighty-four miles per hour when he was pulled over by the cop car he hadn't seen behind him on account of being too short to see out the rearview mirror.
Evan followed the officer into the interrogation room where his son was sitting at the round table. He looked so small and out of place in that big, dark room. Evan realized that this was probably the first of many times Jack would wind up in a place like this, and that he better get used to seeing Jack in the hot seat of an interrogation room. Jack had his head down, and was evidently avoiding his father's gaze as he and the officer entered the room.
"Jack? Your dad is here" the officer informed him, but Jack still refused to look up. Evan and the officer sat down in two of the other chairs at table, staring intently at the forth grader.
"What's he told you?" Evan asked the officer in a low, hushed voice.
"Nothing" the officer admitted, "he said he knows his rights, refused to talk til he had a parent present."
Evan was impressed, and realized that for all the stupid things Jack had done, he wasn't really stupid. Why he otherwise continued to act like he was stupid was beyond Evan.
"You need to tell the officer what happened right now, young man" Evan addressed the boy.
Jack finally lifted his head to meet Evan's eyes. His father saw the cold, hollow look in the boy's deep blue ones. Jack didn't look even remotely afraid, not of Evan or of the trouble he was in.
"And the truth, Jack. Don't you dare tell one damn lie" Evan added slowly and sternly.
"Jack, did you steal your neighbor's car?" the officer chimed into the conversation to ask.
Jack slowly turned his head from his father to look at the officer. He sat silently for a moment before he answered the question.
"No" Jack responded slowly, "I borrowed it."
"You borrowed it?" the officer raised an eyebrow at the unbothered boy.
"I was going to return it if you hadn't impounded it" Jack answered simply.
"Why did you 'borrow' the car, Jack?" the officer asked him.
"Cause I needed it" Jack replied. There was a strange, unsettling calmness about him that made Evan feel both uneasy and embarrassed of Jack.
"For what?" the officer pressed on.
"To get to the concert" Jack answered honestly.
"The concert?"
"I told you that you weren't allowed to go" Evan harshly reminded his son.
"I paid for the ticket, it wasn't your decision to make!" Jack shouted, showing the first sign of emotion since Evan arrived.
"You really think that, you little shit? You're not in charge here, you hear me!" Evan shouted back, matching the boy's heinous tone.
"Excuse me!" the officer piped up, an appalled look on his face. "You both need to calm down."
Jack and Evan shot each other an awkward glare before both turning their heads the other way, looks of defeat on both their faces after being shamed to silence by the authority figure in front of them.
"So Jack, you took the neighbor's car to get to a concert your dad didn't want you going to, correct?"
"Yes" Jack answered flatly, his head still turned away, his arms folded defensively over his chest.
"Do you know how fast you were going out there?" the officer asked him somewhat gently. Jack didn't respond, nor did he move a single muscle.
"Eighty-four miles an hour" the officer said slowly. "The speed limit was sixty, kid. And don't even get me started on the issue of you driving as a minor without a license or even a permit. You're ten years old, Jack. Do you even realize how many people could've been hurt by your decision to get on the road tonight?"
"I'm nine" Jack added flatly, turning his head so that the officer could meet his icy, careless gaze.
"Pardon me?"
"I won't be ten for another month" Jack clarified, not a twinge of regret or guilt in his tone or on his face.
Evan spent nearly half an hour bargaining with the officer in order to get the police to simply let Jack off with a warning. The officer told Evan that it not only spoke to Jack's character, but to his, that his son would do such an outrageously inappropriate thing with no regard for the safety of others. Evan assured him that he'd talk to Jack about road safety and promised that they wouldn't catch his son in the driver's seat of another vehicle until he was fully licensed and insured. After offering to make a sizeable donation to the Dalton Police Department, the prospective charges against Jack were finally dropped. Jack might've been legally off the hook, but the boy had to know he was about to face a punishment much worse than any the police could've inflicted upon him.
Paige came home from her friend's house a few hours later that same night to find her brother practically licking his wounds in the kitchen. More specifically, he was hovering over the kitchen counter with a blood-soaked cloth to his eyebrow. The right side of his face was dripping blood that travelled down his neck and stained the collar of his t-shirt. His face was covered in more than a couple bruises in varying degrees of severity.
"Oh my god" the eighteen-year-old girl's eyes went wide with horror as she studied her little brother.
"It's not as bad as it looks" Jack shrugged dismissively as he pulled the damp cloth from his head to get a look at the mass amounts of blood stained on its white fabric.
"W-What happened?" Paige asked hesitantly. She was afraid of the answer, mostly because she already knew what it was.
"I borrowed Mrs. Finley's car" Jack explained, earning a wide-eyed look of shock from his sister.
"You drove a fucking car?" she questioned in shock and disbelief.
Jack simply nodded as a means of confirmation as he placed the blood-soaked cloth back to his dripping forehead. Paige didn't even want to think about the bruising that was surely forming on the rest of Jack's body hidden by his clothes.
"Are you trying to give Dad a reason to kill you?" she asked, maintaining the awe-stricken tone in her voice.
"He'll find a reason with or without my help. Might as well have a little fun" Jack shrugged as he pulled the cloth away, coming to the conclusion that it was too soaked through to be helping anymore.
Little did Jack know at the time, but the assault wasn't the only thing Evan had planned for the boy's punishment. Military school was something he'd been thinking about for a little while now. It was something Evan deemed to be a last resort, for when the day came that he could no longer put up with Jack. He wasn't expecting the day to come so soon, but he realized that Jack's behavior was only going to get worse if he didn't do something about it now. Next time, he might not be able to get the boy off so easily. Next time, Jack might really crash the car. Next time, he might kill a person or two. There would never be enough money in Evan's pocket to get him out of that situation.
Evan finally realized he couldn't control Jack, in spite of his failed methods in trying to do so. Evan didn't have the time or energy to babysit Jack all the time, to keep him out of trouble, to prevent him from doing something so stupid, he'd tarnish the Merridew name forever. And frankly, Evan simply didn't care enough about the boy to even try. If anyone had the resources to do so, it was Georgia's top military boarding school. The best part about Bainbridge Military Academy was that it was on the opposite end of the state.
Evan was expecting more push back from Jack when he told the boy that he was moving across the state to go to a rigorous military school as punishment for what he did with Mrs. Finley's car. Evan wondered if Jack simply didn't buy into the threat, but eventually he started to realize that the boy was simply indifferent about it. Either that, or he was just damn good at hiding his emotions.
It felt to Evan like a weight off his shoulders knowing that Jack's behavioral issues were someone else's problem now. Unless Jack did something beyond stupid out there (which he very well might), it would be up to the school to deal with. How much trouble could Jack get into at military school anyway? It just might be good for him to finally have authority figures around him constantly, to have a more strict routine. Evan never cared much about Jack's grades or his extracurricular activities. Unless Jack was downright failing, which hadn't happened since he was much younger, Evan wasn't alerted to any problems with the boy's academic performance. In fact, as far as Evan could remember, Jack actually did alright in school.
Evan could see overtime that Paige was starting to miss her brother. He'd occasionally come home from work to find his daughter talking on the phone with him. At first, she tried to give Evan updates on how Jack was doing down in Bainbridge, but it soon became clear to her that her father didn't care to hear it.
Paige graduated high school a semester and a half after Jack left for military school. Jack came home for the summer, of course, just barely in time to watch his big sister walk the stage and get her diploma. It was the first time in months that Jack and Evan were in the same room together, or even spoke to each other.
Evan experienced zero emotional response to Jack's absence while he was at military school. Not in the first semester, or the following full year he was gone. Jack started at Bainbridge in the second half of his forth grade year. His report cards were excellent and he often bragged about being one of the strongest and fastest kids in his training group. He never talked to Evan directly about it, but Evan was often in the room when the boy was home and bragging loudly to others about his success at military school. Evan did receive a couple minor behavioral complaints about Jack over the course of his first few years at the academy. Of course, this came in the form of emails. He usually sent the academy to voicemail when they called. Most of the reports included incidents of bullying, minor property damage, or a failure to comply with the academy's rules. Evan always mailed the academy a cheque for the physical damages Jack caused and emailed back a few short sentences claiming he'd talk to Jack about respect next time they spoke. Of course, he never did in part because he never spoke to Jack at all while the boy was gone.
It was in Jack's eighth grade year that he was supposed to be leaving the country for the international training program in the U.K. Evan knew of this, and Jack talked about it during the first few weeks of the summer before. Though, he and Evan still didn't talk much at all, even after several months of constant separation.
Considering the occasional misbehavior reports Evan received from the academy, Evan was surprised by the fact that Jack couldn't seem to keep his shit together whenever he was home for summers or holidays. He was almost constantly acting out, doing stupid things, getting into trouble when he was home. His behavior seemed to worsen when he was here, and Evan concluded that he definitely made the right decision about military school. He was simply confused by why his son couldn't manage to stay in line as often at home as he seemed to be able to at school.
Early in the summer before Jack's eighth grade year, he and Evan got into a spat turned violent about the prospect of Jack getting his own car if he were to study for his permit in the coming months. It was less than a year before Jack would turn fourteen, and he pointed out that Evan already bought Paige two nice cars. Evan hotly explained that Paige had earned the gifts Evan had given her; both cars her sixteenth birthday and high school graduation gifts. Jack hadn't done shit to earn more than a good slap across the head, and Evan was appalled by the boy's audacity to even think that his situation was comparable to his sister's.
Jack finally lashed out at his father's apparent favoritism, and Evan of course struck him back, and harder at that. By the end of the quarrel, Evan made the angered decision to kick Jack out of the house. He knew it wasn't something he could legally do, but he also knew that Jack was too proud to fight it. Of course, Jack insisted that he had dozens of friends who he could stay with, and Evan claimed not to care either way. Jack packed his bags, including everything he'd need for his return to military school in a couple weeks, and was out the door of the Merridew mansion before the hour was up.
That early August day was the last time Evan saw his son before he received six missed calls from Bainbridge Military Academy about a month later. He finally called the school back, expecting to receive news that Jack had done something irreparable and was being suspended or even expelled. Instead, he was informed by the academy's Head Officer Bailey that Jack's squadron was missing amid the sudden disappearance of their plane while it was over the ocean. Up until that point in time, Evan completely forgot about the trip to England. If it hadn't been for the plane's disappearance, Evan just might've gone the entire two-month period in which they were to be in England without even realizing that Jack wasn't in the country.
Evan was surprised by how often Jack loomed in his mind after finding out what happened. He also thought constantly about his ex-wife and what she would've made of the situation. She hadn't cared much at all in the last few years they were married. Not about Paige, and certainly not about Jack. But perhaps a situation like this would've been enough to bring out the maternal instincts she never had. Evan considered calling her several times over the course of the five months Jack was missing, but his ego prevented him from actually doing it. He didn't have her number, but he could've found it through the big company she worked for. He wondered how she would've responded to the news, if she would've cared at all. Evan thought about what it would've been like to hear her voice again, even if just through the staticky speaker of a phone. But more than he was curious about her potential reaction to her son's disappearance, he was afraid of being rejected by her all over again. In the end, he was too reluctant to even look for her new number.
While Evan himself might've been mostly indifferent to what happened to Jack and the rest of his squadron, he knew that his daughter wouldn't be. Breaking the news to her was one of the most dreadful moments of Evan's life. He spent that whole day anxiously awaiting the moment he'd inevitably have to go home and talk to her. Naturally, she had a hundred questions and was panicking like he'd never seen her panic before. She was crying, pacing, overthinking right in front of him. Evan knew that he was making it worse for her with his own apathetic response to the situation, but he couldn't bring himself to fake more concern than he felt. Though, deep down, Evan was curious about what happened. He wondered if Jack was dead, or if he was out there somewhere. He wondered if he'd feel something deeper if he knew for sure whether or not Jack was okay or even alive. He'd spent a good portion of the boy's life wondering what it would be like if he didn't have to deal with Jack, and now his wish just might come true.
Evan had to find a way to balance Paige's emotional deterioration over Jack's disappearance with his own opposing response to the matter. It was difficult for him to be there for her and to maintain the emotional distance he always kept between himself and Jack. He knew his daughter needed him to care about her brother for her sake, but Evan wasn't sure how long he could continue to comfort her. Even though his relationship with Paige was evidently better than his with Jack, Evan still wasn't the most affectionate person in Paige's life. The two weren't especially close, at least not like Evan had been with his own mother. Evan felt more comfortable dealing with the people at his office than with either of his kids. He wasn't good at the kissing booboos, comforting them when they had nightmares, or holding their hands when they were afraid of the dark stuff. Evan always kept a safe, respectable distance between himself and the kids, even Paige as she got older. He never really healed from his own mother's death, nor from his divorce. Both losses made affection and connection rather difficult for Evan. It hindered his relationship with his daughter, and severed what little was left of his relationship with his son amid the divorce.
After five months of watching Paige suffer through her brother's absence, Evan was relieved to tell her about the call he received from the academy informing him that Jack was among the recently located survivors. Evan's relief mostly came from the solace it would provide his shaken up daughter, a girl he knew missed and worried for her brother deeply.
Evan simply felt burdened when he was asked to go to Virginia to get Jack out of military custody, and that his return home wasn't going to be as simple as he thought it'd be. Evan decided that he couldn't get away from work to go get Jack, and told the Marine officer he spoke with that Jack could get a ride from one of those many friends he insisted he had the last time he saw the boy. Not long later, he was forced to ask his daughter to go to Virginia in his place after finding out that Jack would be released to Child Intervention Services if he wasn't picked up by an adult relative by the end of the day. Of course, Paige was happy to go.
For Evan, seeing Jack for the first time after the island was a strange experience, for lack of a better word. It wasnt until the morning after Paige went to pick him up at the airport. He was already in bed by the time the kids got home the previous night. Evan reminded himself that seeing Jack now didn't have to be any different than it had been every other year. He'd gone longer periods of time without seeing him. One year, Jack even went and spent Christmas with his friend Roger's family. That year, Evan went eight whole months without seeing him, between the start of school in August and Easter in April. This shouldn't have been different than that, but somehow it was.
The primary source of Evan's discomfort in reuniting with Jack was how much the boy looked like his mother. He had never really realized it before, but it was baffling how much like her he was. When Evan first met her, she was a strange girl. She marched to the beat of her own drum, and played by her own rules. Jack too did a lot of disregarding of the rules in his childhood, and it made Evan's stomach church to look at him for the first time in over five months. Jack reminded him so much of the woman he loved, the old her, and it only made him hate Jack more. So he kept a straight face and appeared unbothered by both Jack's absence and now his return. Evan could see the horrible look in Jack's eyes, and wondered whether it was caused by something that happened out on that island or the obvious way his father didn't seem to care.
Though Evan was never really sure if his rejection of the boy actually bothered Jack. If it did bother him, it didn't show. At least, it didn't seem so to Evan. Either way, Jack held his own when faced with his father for the first time after the island. He kept a face as straight as Evan's, and not a hint of emotion came through. Evan knew that he couldn't send Jack back to military school now, but he wouldn't hesitate to if Jack dared to give him another reason to.
Things went back to normal in the Merridew house until the night Ralph Langley was over, several months after the boys' return from the island. Evan studied his son's friend, mentally comparing and contrasting the two of them. He knew that Ralph was one of the ones who had been out on the island with Jack, and it was hard for Evan to pretend he wasn't curious about it. He hadn't met Ralph before the island, but the boy seemed more put-together now than his own kid was even before the island.
It wasn't until he got home after work later that day that Evan's heart was jerked out of place inside his chest. He was stunned to his very core when his daughter confessed that their mother came to the house earlier that evening. Evan's initial response was regret that he wasn't here for it, not just to protect Paige but to see his ex-wife for the first time in twelve agonizing years. He quickly snapped back to reality when Paige broke down, sobbing in his arms, begging him to make sure that she'd never have to see her estranged mother ever again.
Over a decade earlier, Evan made the hardest decision of his life. He refused to follow the love of his life across the world. He chose to put his daughter first in spite of his heart begging him not to. And as he held her now, several years later, he realized he was faced with that decision yet again. The universe was forcing him to choose between the woman he missed and the daughter he spent the last decade protecting. He wanted nothing more than to see his ex-wife again, to hear her voice, to feel her touch, to intertwine his life with hers again. But he knew what it would do to Paige, what it was already doing to her. He held his shaking daughter in his arms that night and once again decided that she must come first. As much as it might've broken his own heart to protect hers, it was a decision he simply couldn't go back on.
Evan shouldn't have been surprised to discover that Jack ran away the morning after, but he was. He spent the night struggling to reign in his chaotic thoughts; the way his wife had such an intense power to tug at his heart strings whenever she felt like it, the audacity she had showing up and traumatizing Paige after abandoning her in her early adolescence. Through all the chaos, Evan forgot about Jack and how he played into it. Or perhaps, he simply didn't realize Jack had a part to play at all. He was an unsuspecting infant when she moved away and abandoned them, too young to even realize what was going on. His mother was so absent from his first two years of life as it was, the toddler was never even sad when she stopped coming around.
Evan never talked with Jack about his mother at all. Even with Paige, she only came up a few times and Paige was always the one to bring her up, not Evan. The man was baffled by the fact that Jack was more reactive to her reappearance than Paige seemed to be. Evan couldn't even picture his son and ex-wife standing in the same room together. The image he formed in his head of it seemed incorrect and otherworldly. Though he had no concrete evidence that Jack ran away because of her, it would've been an awfully strange coincidence if she didn't have something to do with it.
Shortly after Jack went into the wind, Evan did what might've been the hardest thing he'd ever done. He took the security footage from the night his ex-wife showed up and brought it to the local police station. He used it, along with his copies of the divorce papers and full-custody grants from twelve years earlier, as evidence to support his request to take a restraining order out against the woman. He got in front of a judge rather quickly as Evan's claim that she was a threat to the kids' wellbeings and their safety was made clear. Not long later, she would've been served with the restraining order that required her to stay at least one hundred yards away from Paige and Jack Merridew at all times, which also included staying the same distance away from the Merridew residence.
It might not have seemed like it, but Evan was grateful for the Langley family. He knew that Ralph was a good friend, and a better person than Jack ever could be. After meeting his parents at the hospital, Evan realized exactly why his own son and Ralph would never be one of the same. Ralph had two parents who loved him more than money, more than any fancy job, more than life itself. Evan couldn't say the same thing about Jack. He wondered how Jeffery and Laurie managed to make it work with less income and space, while he couldn't keep his own family together with more resources than they ever would've needed. It was almost as if love was more important than anything money could buy, something that his simple-minded ex had forgotten somewhere along the way.
The Langleys managed to alleviate some of the guilt and obligation Evan felt to his son. He knew that he failed the boy, but his mother failed him first. It wasn't fair that Evan was expected to care for the toddler, to pick up the slack where she abandoned it. Evan was relieved that the Langley family found a place in their hearts and in their home for Jack in a way that Evan himself never could. He hated the fact that Jeffery and Laurie could look at Jack without resentment and anger, could embrace and care for him without the weight knowing his existence sent their formerly perfect family into turmoil. Before Jack was born, Evan's family didn't look so different than the Langley's. Like Ralph, Paige had two parents who loved and attended to her every need. What Evan didn't see was that neither Jeffery or Laurie believed that money trumped family. There wasn't a job offer in the world that could've torn them from Ralph, and Evan hated that his own wife hadn't felt the same way.
Evan knew he couldn't do for Jack what Ralph's parents were doing for their child. So he decided to let the Langleys take care of him after he was discharged from the hospital. Besides, he had his hands full with Paige and the call she made to Child Intervention Services. Jack would only get in the way, and Evan knew he'd never be able to keep his hands off the boy, not even considering he was badly injured. Plus, Jack's after care was something Evan simply didn't have the energy to deal with.
On some level, Evan Merridew must've known that what he did to Jack throughout the boy's life thus far wasn't fair. On some level, he must've known that Jack's outrageous behavior was a result of the way he was treated at home. On some level, he must've known that his divorce wasn't all Jack's fault. Though Evan Merridew wasn't sure he had another level. It was beyond him how he himself was raised so well but somehow his life turned out the way it did. Even as he became wealthy in his adult life, it didn't change his perception of money. He always knew that money didn't make a family. And once upon a time, his wife had believed that too. Though, somewhere along the way, she fell into the trance of wealth and success. Evan hadn't seen it coming, and was ill-prepared for the way it shattered his family and his mental health. The unhappiness Evan experienced on a daily basis was proof that money wasn't everything, that being rich with love was more impactful than being rich with money. He wondered if his ex-wife had finally figured that out too when she came crawling back to the Merridew house after all those years. Though Evan didn't want to admit or even believe it, he knew that it was far too late for her. The damage she did to her daughter, her ex-husband, and her family as a whole was irreversible. Sometimes, Evan thought, being sorry wasn't enough. Coming back wasn't enough either. Nothing could be done to make up for not staying to begin with, for choosing a job over her family, for never caring enough to call and check on them in the twelve years after she left. Coming back would never make up for all the dance recitals of Paige's she missed, all the baseball games of Jack's she missed, all the graduations and birthdays, every family milestone, both good and bad. As much as Evan missed her, and he did everyday, he couldn't allow her back into their lives. It wasn't fair to the kids, or even to him for that matter.
So Evan did the only thing he could do for the kids; he filed the restraining order. It was the only genuinely good thing he'd ever done for Jack, whether or not he was actually trying to protect Jack or mostly just Paige. Evan did deliberately choose to put Jack's name on the restraining order too. Evan knew he would never really be able to get over the heartbreak and accept his son the way he did his daughter for the role his birth had played in the downfall of his life. But given the years of pent-up resentment, protecting Jack from his mom was the only thing he could bring himself to do for the boy, even if Jack never knew it. And perhaps, Evan would be more comfortable if Jack never found out. Like the damage the kids' mother had done to the Merridew family, the damage to Jack and Evan's relationship was simply another thing that could never be undone.