She wasn’t expecting Roy’s mom to call.

Well, not this time anyway.

It’s not like she hadn’t talked to Mrs. Anderson, or Mrs. A as she always called her. After all, Roy made her call everyone to tell them it was off, and so she got to bear the brunt of the disappointment from his whole family as she told them one by one that she couldn’t marry him. Wouldn’t marry him. Wasn’t marrying him on June 10 or any other date.

Mrs. A had actually been the most understanding of them all. She’d sighed, she’d asked why, she’d even cried a little on the phone (or else there was some very conveniently timed static, but Pam knew what she’d heard). But she’d been much nicer about it than most of Roy’s family: his grandmother had asked snappishly if “she didn’t think she had an obligation to follow through on her word,” his father had yelled at her, his aunt had hung up abruptly and then called back to curse. Mrs. A had listened. She’d asked Pam what she wanted (and, unlike her son, she’d realized along the way that Pammy had turned into Pam—and unlike her husband and his mother she hadn’t called her “Pamela” as if using her full name would somehow make her reconsider). They’d even had coffee the week after, partly to help Mrs. A “know what to tell Roy” but also because, as she said, “I see why you’re doing this—and I want you to know I don’t blame you.” It had been nice, though short. You couldn’t really stay friends or whatever they were with a woman when you’d left her son a month before the wedding day. Not because either of them didn’t like the other—if there was any woman she was closer to than Mrs. A, it was only her own mother or her sister—but because you had to give each other space: Pam space to explore her new life and Mrs. A space to be a good mother to Roy. And at that coffee they’d agreed it would be a bad idea to keep in touch too closely, lest Roy should get the wrong idea. Loving his mother like family—even loving him like family—didn’t mean she wanted to marry him, or would ever take him back.

So she really hadn’t expected to hear from Mrs. A again unless they bumped into each other on the street—maybe at Jo-Ann or Michaels or one of the smaller craft stores, or at Walmart or Wegmans or somesuch. It was a real surprise to hear her on the phone, so much so that she almost missed what she was saying.

“Roy’s where?”

“I’ll tell Darryl.”

“Yeah, thanks Mrs. A. I know.”

So apparently Roy had gotten himself arrested for drunk driving, and being the thoughtful person that he was, he’d called his mother to bail him out. Only the Andersons were on vacation in Colorado (with Kenny, which Pam personally thought made it less vacation and more punishment, but they had raised the boy), and Roy totally forgot, so they didn’t get Roy’s message until Mrs. A called their home phone to check for messages.

Then she’d called Pam, full of apology, heading off any expectation that Pam herself should bail him out or pick him up, but certain that she’d at least know someone who would. Which, of course, she did. She dialed the warehouse line and passed the responsibility off to Darryl before taking a very early lunch. She ignored Dwight’s astonished “Pamela! It is 10:17!” and pushed through the double doors towards the stairwell.

She didn’t need this.

It wasn’t just the reminder that Roy was apparently not actually a completely functional human being without her (not your fault, not your fault, not your fault she repeated to herself, reiterating what Izzy and Penny and her mom had all told her). It wasn’t even that Mrs. A, for all her expressed willingness to let Pam live her own life without Roy, had still called her for his emergency. It was that she felt trapped. She’d made all these big moves (breaking up with Roy, moving out, changing her wardrobe, painting again) and it still felt like nothing had really changed.

Or rather, one big thing had changed—no Jim—and no matter what other change she made it didn’t seem to matter. Nothing could go right while that was still wrong.

But she couldn’t think of anything to do about it. She’d felt awful when she’d told the whole office about her break-up and seen everyone (after peppering her with questions of course, for what felt like an hour but was honestly more like five minutes) rush to their computers at the same time. The thought had flashed through her head: “they’re emailing Jim.” She’d tried to get ahead of them but hadn’t known what to say, so she’d ended up sending him a nearly blank email with the subject line “No Wedding” and the body just saying “Call me?”

But he hadn’t responded.

No email, no call, no nothing.

She hadn’t been able to think about much else for weeks. She wasn’t going to reach out again. The ball was in his court (was that how sports metaphors worked? She’d ask Jim…or Roy…but….no). And now this thing with Roy just made her realize how much she was, not out of control, but not in control either. Everything was just off, and everything sucked.

But hey, at least she got to eat something for lunch other than chicken or fish for once.

She felt a little bad about thinking of that as a silver lining—but not much.