“Jim.”

She sits up quickly and wraps the blanket around her shoulders like a shawl.

He fixes her with a quizzical look, the one he usually reserves for the cameras whenever Dwight or Michael say or do the things that make them Dwight and Michael. His head tilts to one side and a slow, amused smile teases his lips.

“Pam.”

His tone is joking, almost mocking.

“What…”

She starts to speak but the rest of the question never makes it out. She’s just noticed something. Something big. Something important. Something she should have noticed by now, its delay in coming slightly frightening her.

She doesn’t know where she is.

She quickly scans the room, taking in her surroundings. This is not her room. Gone are the dull, white walls. Gone are the tacky curtains Roy insists they hang because they were a gift from his mother. Gone is the cheap brass bed that she’s had since college and the giant television that takes up the entire dresser-top. All of these things, all of the features that identify her and Roy’s bedroom as belonging to them (all the things she hates) are gone. Instead, she sees pale blue walls and thin white curtains that match the comforter she has draped around her shoulders. Her old bed and garage sale dresser have been replaced with a mahogany sleigh bed that matches the dresser, which matches the night tables. It’s the room she's always wanted but Roy has always said they shouldn’t bother with. She’s never been in this room before but it feels oddly familiar.

“Are you okay?”

His voice breaks the silence in the room and cuts through the thoughts rushing through her mind. He moves towards her and she instinctively recoils, though she’s not sure why. She regrets immediately, though, when she sees the hurt in his eyes and the concerned look on his face.

“No! I – I don’t know what’s going on!”

She can hear the confusion and slight panic in her voice as she manages to get out her first full sentence.

Jim moves towards the bed and sits next to her, handing her the forgotten mug of tea. He chuckles at the wary look she gives it before taking a tentative sip, as though she thinks it might be poisoned.

“What’s going on? Okay. Well, Maddie and Ben have been up for about an hour and have already eaten and turned the kitchen into a disaster. Seriously. Stuff everywhere. It’s being condemned as we speak. Now they’re watching television. I let you sleep in since I know you had a long day yesterday.”

Her mind races as she tries to decipher and digest the things he has just said. His casual tone and ease of manner make her think, not for the first time, that there’s something she isn’t getting.

Maddie and Ben?

She struggles to come up with even the slightest clue as to who they might be. She thinks of all the people he has ever mentioned, anyone who might be close enough friends to be spending the night at what she can only assume is Jim’s house.

Unable to come up with a single person, she lets her newest question escape.

“Maddie and Ben…?”

She only manages a few words before her mind shuts off again, trying to figure it out, willing him to explain.

“Have already eaten. Yes. They’re watching television, but you might want to hurry before they get into the rest of the pancakes.”

 He takes a sip of his coffee, watching her out of the corner of his eyes. As he lowers the mug back towards the hand resting in his lap, the sun glints off the thick, brushed white gold band resting on the fourth finger of his left hand. Pam’s eyes widen as they zero in on it.

 What?! When did he… 

Pam’s jaw drops and her breathing stops. Jim is married. And she is engaged. To Roy. Yet she is sitting here, in his house, in his bed, while two people she’s never heard of are downstairs watching television.

There are so many things wrong with the scene that she can’t pick just one to focus on. The searing heat of tea hitting her bare foot wins out at she realizes she’s just dropped her almost full mug on the bed.

Jim is back with a towel before she realizes he’s gone and quickly dabs at the angry red mark the tea has left on her foot, ignoring the widening circle of light brown liquid seeping into the sheets.

Pam reaches for the towel and attempts to clean the ruined sheets, sputtering apologies as she blots at the stain.

Her actions are halted as Jim puts one on top of hers and the other on her shoulder. Her eyes fly to his as he reassures her.

“It’s okay. We have plenty more tea and I was getting sick of these sheets anyway.”

The easy grin on his face and joking tone in his voice are too much for her and she casts her eyes downward, towards her hands. Towards where his hand still rests on hers.

She freezes. What she sees makes her throat close, her breathing stop, and her heart pound. It’s probably the tenth time this morning she’s felt that way but it doesn’t get any easier, any less terrifying.

Any less confusing. Because there, on the ring finger of her left hand, is the most beautiful ring she has ever seen.

It is not Roy’s ring. A white gold band, it contains one large square-cut diamond hovering above her finger, five tiny diamonds on either side of it, embedded in the band. It’s accompanied by a slim, simple white gold wedding band that matches the one currently on Jim’s ring finger.

It is definitely not Roy’s ring.

Her breathe comes in quick, short bursts and she thinks she might be having a panic attack as her eyes dart wildly around the room.

That’s when she notices it, looking so innocent. An unassuming silver frame in bright contrast to the dark wood on which it sits. It looks so natural sitting there, in a place of honor, on the bedside table in its simple frame.

The photograph is in black and white and was taken on a beach. Her arms are around his shoulders and his are around her waist. They are gazing into each other’s eyes, the water glittering behind them. Her strapless satin white dress reaches all the way to the sand and her long, loose curls dance on the breeze. He has already taken off his tuxedo jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, his tanned forearms a sharp contrast to the crisp whiteness of her dress.

Next to this photograph, set slightly further back, is a smaller but otherwise identical frame. The picture in this frame is in color and features two small, smiling children and one giant green blob that appears to be wearing some sort of jersey. The children have their arms around the blob, matching grins on their faces. The one on the left is a girl of about four wearing a Phillies baseball cap. Pam can see that her hair was perhaps once tied back, but a tangle of wild, light brown curls have escaped and are flying in the wind. Her bright greens eyes twinkle with obvious excitement above a familiar nose dotted with freckles.

The child on the right is a little boy, about two years old, also wearing a Phillies cap from which escapes a mop of reddish-brown hair. Deep green eyes peer back at her as she takes in the familiar curve of his jaw. She thinks she can see a baseball field behind his shoulder and vaguely realizes that the green blob is a mascot of some sort.

Maddie and Ben.

It’s not a question. She knows these children.

The ghost of a memory flutters through her mind but drifts away before she can grasp it.

She knows these children.

But she doesn’t know why or how or even when.

She can feel the beginning of tears prickling the backs of her eyes as a lump rises in her throat. Everything is so strange, so different, yet so familiar.

The tears threaten to spill over and run down her cheeks when she looks at Jim, who is still resting one hand on her shoulder and one hand on her hands, now tightly folded and sitting in her lap.

Noticing the look on her face and the tears in her eyes, he lets the hand on her shoulder slide across her back to the other side as he brings his other arm around her, firmly ensconcing her in his embrace. He gently strokes her hair and whispers in her ear.

“Hey. Pam. Really, are you okay?”

The concern in his voice is so genuine, so sincerely worried, so Jim, that she lets her arms make their way around him, hugging him back.

She blinks back the tears and whispers her reply.

“I don’t know. I don’t know where I am. I don’t remember…” She trails off, not able to finish, not really sure how to put it into words.

His hand rubs a slow, soothing circle on her back.

“I think maybe you’re still dreaming a little bit.”

She sighs, wondering if it might be true, though the red, angry welt on her foot, a reminder of her spilled tea, begs to differ.

“Yeah. Maybe I am.”