******* 

Elizabeth Beesley stood in her kitchen, reading the directions off a box of fudge brownies.  She had realized half an hour ago that it was her turn to bring treats to the office tomorrow, so now here she was, trying to bake at nine thirty at night.

"For fudgier brownies, use three eggs," she said aloud to no one, cracking three eggs expertly into her mixing bowl.  She carefully set the mixer on the right speed and went about getting a pan ready to grease.  The phone rang and she waited two rings for Don to get it.  He apparently had decided that CSI could wait a minute, because halfway across the kitchen to pick up, it stopped ringing. 

She stepped back toward the cupboard where the casserole dishes and cake pans were kept, pulling out her best glass pan, the one that had the matching lid. 

"Liz, it's Penny!" she heard her husband call.

"I'll get it in here!" she hollered back, and walked quickly over to the wall extension.  Penny was Don's pet name for Pam, having called her that for most of her life.  Finally, in recent years, Pam had given up resisting the nickname she'd gotten at the age of three for trying to eat the spare change on her father's nightstand. 

"Pam?" Liz asked, hearing a click, promptly followed by the sound on the television getting turned up.  'Does he think if it's louder, he'll better understand what he missed?' she thought.

"Mom," Pam answered, her voice literally shaking.  Immediately Liz felt her stomach drop. 

"Pam, what's wrong?" she asked her only daughter, a strangle hold on the phone. 

"I, um...I-"  But she couldn't manage to get any more out.  Liz listened to her child crying on the other end of the conversation.  It wasn't huge hiccupping sobs, but silent, full of wavering breath.  She was weeping as silently as she could. 

"Pam, what happened?  Is it Roy?"  The elder Beesley felt the icy finger of dread draw across her body.  She and Pam had been as close as a mouth and daughter could be for many years, but she had rarely experienced her like this. 

"No," Pam whispered. clearing her throat.  "It's not Roy."  The way she said it, so definitively, gave Liz pause.  Outside of Roy and her own family, there was only one person Pam cared about enough to be this upset. 

"Is it Jim?"  She asked cautiously, not wanting Pam to become angry or deflective as she had every other time Jim was brought up by her mother.  This is what Liz fully expected.  What Liz did not expect was the complete silence on the other end of the line.  Liz counted to three in her head.  "Pam?" 

"He...he told me he loves me," she answered finally, her voice holding that same slightly hysterical tone it had since she'd first said anything. 

Liz, for her part, was completely unsurprised by this revelation.  She had never met this man with whom her daughter had been friends, but she somehow knew him like the back of her hand.  She knew from the way Pam talked about him, the situations they had been through, that he loved her, had probably been in love with her for some time.  It was a mother's intuition. 

"When, uh, when did this happen?"  she asked, her voice low. 

"About ten minutes ago," Pam answered, sounding agitated. 

"And did you say anything?"  Liz shot out before her brain could catch up to her mouth. 

"No, I didn't know what to say."  Pam said, and for the first time since she'd picked up the phone, Elizabeth heard the fear in her daughter's voice. 

Liz knew what she wanted to ask, what she needed to press, but waited.  Instead, she stated, "Pam, you're getting married in a month." 

"Yes, I know."  The defensiveness in her voice put Liz on edge. 

"Well," she asked her daughter carefully.  "How do you feel about him?"

"Um, I don't know mom, he's my best friend."  Pam responded quickly, a slight shake in her voice, displaying her absolute anxiety in that moment.  Now, Liz had asked her this question before, but the answer had always been the same.  'I'm engaged to Roy, Jim is just a friend.'  She had never even allowed her mother to entertain the thought that Jim felt that way about her.  But listening to her talk now, Liz sensed that not only had Pam suspected how Jim felt about her, but also knew very well how she felt in return. 

Feeling Pam teetering on the edge of something, she offered all she could.  "Jim seems...like a good man, Pam." 

The voice that answered her was very small.  "Yeah, he's great." 

Closing her eyes to her empty kitchen, Liz took the leap, hoping her daughter would follow her.  "Are..are you in love with Jim?"

If Liz thought her last answer was quiet, this one was almost non-existent.  "Yeah, I think I am."  The amount of fear and...sadness in those four words made Elizabeth's heart break. 

"Pam, honey.  I know this is scary.  I know you're confused-"

"Um, I have to go," Pam cut in suddenly. 

"Oh, well call me-" Liz tried to get in.

"I will," Pam answered, voice shaky once more before handing up with a loud click. 

Liz stared at the dead receiver in her hand for a moment before hanging up the phone and stepping over to the island and shutting the mixer off.  She debated actually getting in her car and driving up to Scranton right now, making sure her daughter wasn't going to have a nervous breakdown. 

The first time Pam had spoken of Jim, it had been in passing.  She had merely mentioned that there was a guy at work who had taken her to lunch on her first day.  Eyebrows raised, Elizabeth had asked about this guy.  All Pam had been able to come up with was, "He's uh...tall."

Since that moment, there had been very few conversations that she'd had with her child in which the tall paper salesman hadn't been brought up in some way.  It was either the prank they'd played on a fellow co-worker of how he'd drawn her a cartoon of herself that she kept next to her phone at work.  She would tell her mother about the few times where Jim found himself with a girlfriend and Liz would pretend not to hear the jealousy in Pam's voice. 

Liz had always had a bit of a soft spot for Roy, after taking over a year to initially warm up to him.  He was solid and rather dependable.  He would give Pam a steady life of middle class living in Scranton.  He would be the kind of father that Pam had, distant, uninterested in his children's lives.  Elizabeth had discovered three of four years into her marriage that while Donald Beesley wasn't stifling of harsh, he also never would be the type of partner who would allow her to think outside of herself.  He'd discouraged her from becoming an author, told her she would do better working as an assistant at the district attorney's office.  Liz had married her Roy, and didn't want Pam to make the same mistake without thinking it through. 

Before she could second guess herself, Liz stepped back over to the phone, dialing her daughter's cell phone number.

"Hi, this is Pam.  I can't come to my phone, but leave a message and I'll call you back." 

Beep.

"Hi honey, it's mom."  She lowered her voice a little.  "I just.. I guess I'm worried about you a little, Pam...I- if you feel that way or even think you feel that way about...well, you heed to talk to him.  I know it doesn't seem like there's any easy solution right now, but if you make the right decision, it will all work out okay.  It's just that..." Liz paused to take a deep breath.  "Pam, if I ever had someone who I talked about the way you talk about him sometimes, I would feel like the luckiest woman in the world.  Don't let go of that if you think there's something there.  Call me in the morning, okay?"  She hung up the phone, biting her lower lip nervously. 

"How are the brownies coming, babe?"  Don asked her, ambling into the kitchen.  He dipped his finger into the mixing bowl and brought it up to his mouth, licking the batter off the digit.  She smiled at the man she'd shard her life with for twenty-seven years, his dimples hidden beneath a graying beard. 

"Great," she answered, leaning up to kiss him.  "Do you have time to help me put them into pans to bake them?  I have to run to the store.  I forgot frosting." 

"Oh, can't you just make them plain?  They're going into extra innings right now," he asked, gesturing toward the living room. 

"Oh." Liz said, her face frozen in the same passive manner it had been for a third of a century.  She watched as her husband walked back toward the living room and didn't move again until she heard the creek of his recliner. 

She brought in plain brownies the next morning. 

*******