Author's Note: As everyone knows, in the final episode of season 3, Prue Halliwell was killed trying to save the life of a Dr. Griffiths. In the first episode of season 4, Paige Matthews was drawn to Prue's funeral, presumably as a result of a "find a lost witch" spell that Piper had cast in a desperate attempt to bring Prue back to life. However, Paige wasn't completely uninformed about the family; given up for adoption at birth, she had come to believe that her birth mother was the Halliwell girls' mother, and as a result she had begun hanging out at Piper's nightclub, P3, just to feel some kind of connection. In a conversation with her boyfriend at P3 the night of Prue's funeral, Paige told him what she thought her connection to the Halliwells was and why she particularly liked the club – although, she told him, as a recovering alcoholic, she didn't drink.
When Phoebe met Paige at Prue's funeral, Phoebe asked her how she'd known Prue, and Paige gave a very vague answer. Later, Phoebe asked her directly whether she'd ever met Prue, and this time Paige said no. "Find a lost witch" spell or no, it seems odd that Paige would risk her boss' wrath to run out of work in the middle of the day to attend the funeral of a total stranger, and her conflicting answers to Phoebe do make it seem as though she might have met Prue, although for some reason she wouldn't say so.
Here's the full story.
What caught Prue's attention at first was that the young woman leaving P3 turned her ankle, wavered, leaned on the hood of a car for support. What kept Prue's attention was that a moment later she was walking as though she hadn't even noticed that she'd stumbled, at a diagonal across the parking lot that made her bump gently into another car.
The young woman stopped, swayed her head loosely, spotted her car and crossed to it, fumbling in her shoulder bag. She pulled her keys out, but as she did they seemed almost to leap out of her hand, hitting the pavement a few feet in front of her.
"Crap," she said irritably, but before she could retrieve them Prue had picked them up.
"Oh, no, no," Prue said. "I don't think so."
The young woman extended her hand and said, "Hi. Thanks," clearly not understanding what Prue had just said.
"Thanks for calling a cab? Sure, anytime," Prue said, pocketing the keys.
"Hey! Give those back!"
"So you can go smash someone with your car? I don't think so. Come back inside, I'll get you some – "
"Oh, please." The girl was making a sudden effort to sound sober, and doing a pretty good job. "I live eight blocks from here. It's like midnight. Worst thing that happens, I bang into someone's storefront and kill myself."
"First of all, that's not the worst thing that can happen, all right? Second, you may not care if you get killed, but I do."
"Oh, right. You care a lot." The girl rattled the door handle of her green VW bug and then bounced her fist off of its roof. "Give me my keys, damn it!"
"OK, if you don't believe that I care about you, believe this. My sister owns this club. You kill someone driving away drunk from here, she gets sued, she could lose everything. Do you believe that I care about that?"
Why that got to her, Prue would never know. The girl stared at Prue for a moment, then her expression crumpled and she was suddenly near tears. "I didn't think – I don't want to hurt Piper."
"You know her?"
"I just, no, I mean, I come here a lot. I've seen all three of you guys here. You're Prue, right?"
Prue nodded.
"I'm sorry." Tears were rolling down the girl's face. "I just, it was a bad day."
"So you thought you'd make it better with a car crash?"
"No. But hey, poetic justice. My mom and dad died six years ago today. In a car crash." The girl waved her hand. "Guess who lived."
"Oh my God," Prue whispered. She'd been about to lecture the girl for overreacting because her date stood her up or something.
The girl turned her face away from Prue and wiped away tears, but they just kept coming. "Sorry."
"All right. Let's go somewhere else and talk."
"You don't need to – "
"Listen, you might as well. You're not going anywhere."
"Yeah, but you. Don't you have a date?"
"No. Piper's – doing some research, so I'm going to close up the club. I just came early to listen to the music. We've got time for a cup of coffee."
The girl smiled through her tears. "You know what you get when you pour coffee into a drunk? A wide-awake drunk, that's all. Someone in my AA group said that."
"You're – " Prue quelled the surprise in her voice. "You're in AA, all right, that's good."
"Yeah, won't they be proud of me? Where're we going?"
"Just around the corner here. It's open 24 hours."
A coffee shop around midnight can be dicey in terms of mood, but they were in luck; a group of college kids had apparently just finished some kind of project and were excitedly analyzing over pie and coffee, filling the place with laughter and energy.
At least, Prue thought the cheeriness would help, but the girl's face as she watched them was melancholy. Prue ordered coffee, the other girl coffee and cherry cobbler.
"So you know my name," Prue said. "How about returning the favor?"
"Paige Matthews."
Prue nodded and just looked at her.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't be tying you up like this."
"I've got nothing better to do until closing time."
Paige looked over at the laughing students. "Damn. Sure blew my one-year-sober brag. Just a few weeks shy of it."
"Do you have – someone at AA, a friend or someone, you can – "
"My sponsor?" Paige smiled a little blearily. "Yeah, I do. And she's great, she really is. It's just, I've called her so much lately. I've been stressed. And tonight I just thought, you know, she has listened to me whine so much, I'm damned if I'm going to screw up another evening for her. I'll just go to P3. I, it, I'm so comfortable there." She looked up at Prue with an odd intensity. "It feels like family when I'm there. I kidded myself that I'd just order soda pop."
"Don't you – Is there someone else you can talk to?"
"I have an aunt and uncle, and they're nice, but they're older, and they live a couple of hours from here."
"Brothers? Sisters?"
"No." Paige drew a breath. "I think, sometimes I think – "
The waitress arrived with their order. When she'd left Prue said, "Sometimes you think–"
Paige laughed brokenly. "Oh, you know. Who'd want a drunk for a sister anyway? This cobbler looks great, want a bite?"
"No, thanks. You know, sometimes it's hard to admit to your friends that you're having a problem, but you'd be surprised – "
Paige was shaking her head. "My college friends were, you know, drinking buddies," she said. "And I just started a new job. Probably not the best career move to call someone there and say, 'In God's name, talk to me so I won't get drunk!'"
Prue found herself in a very unusual state: speechless. In her entire life, she'd never been as alone as this girl.
But she had felt as alone. A little over two years ago, she remembered as though it were last night, curled in the corner of her bedroom, she could still feel the sting of her nails sinking into her own arms, the pain of a jaw clenched so tight she was afraid her teeth would break, praying for sleep, for unconsciousness, please God –
"Sorry for bringing you down," Paige said. "I'm usually a funny drunk."
"Listen," Prue said forcefully. "You're going to promise me something, all right? You're going to promise me that the next time you feel like you don't have anyone to call, you'll call me." She opened her purse to get at her business card holder. "My cell phone number's on this card. I always have the phone with me. If there's no one else, you call me. Anytime."
Paige picked up the card and looked at it longingly, even as she said, "I'm not going to bother a stranger – "
"We've met, remember? Hi, I'm Prue Halliwell. OK, we're not perfect strangers."
" – weeping all over people. I ought to be able to do this by myself, just gut it out."
"It's the hard way. It's damn near impossible. You need support."
Paige looked at her speculatively, and even in the slightly sodden gaze Prue could tell that there was real intelligence there.
"All right. I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone else, not even my sisters. Only one other person knows this, and I don't associate with him anymore."
Paige's expression went from speculative to skeptical. "You're not gonna tell me you had a problem with drinking."
"Speed."