When Pam arrived at The Comedy Roasters to work that afternoon—on an actual website commission, from someone she’d never met before, for real money, based entirely on word of mouth from the touch-ups she’d ended up doing on Katy’s site after their last lunch together—a friendly-looking woman about her mother’s age was standing in front of her painting, sipping something out of a to-go cup.

“Hmm.” Pam did her best to ignore the woman’s contemplative sounds as she placed her order with Michael, but of course Michael being Michael couldn’t let her be.

“Pam!” he hissed at what she suspected he thought was an appropriate volume. Her basis for assuming this was primarily the way his voice was higher-pitched and a bit breathy, like he was whispering, except that it was, in that way, rather like the beverage that she remembered Arthur Dent ending up with on the Starship Heart of Gold in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series that she’d devoured in high school: almost, but not entirely, unlike a whisper. “Look, Pam!” He very unsubtly pointed at the woman’s back as she continued to eye the painting. “Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam.”

“Yes, Michael?” Pam was going to kill him if he kept this up, and then she was going to have to explain to Jim that she’d killed his old family friend, and then they were going to have to flee to farthest Peru or somewhere that didn’t have extradition treaties (Dwight would know, she found herself thinking, and felt horrified to realize that she was perhaps actually friendly enough with Dwight to know that about him). At least they probably had internet there—they had internet everywhere—so she’d be able to complete the commission. And Jim would come with her, even though Michael was his old family friend, because he was Jim and he would always have her back. But it would still be awkward.

“I think she likes it,” Michael added in his whisper-adjacent scream.

“That’s lovely, Michael.” She handed him her credit card. “The tea latte, please?”

“But Pamalamadingdong!” She didn’t even wince, though she did expand her fantasy about fleeing to farthest Peru with the detail of where, exactly, she would dump Michael’s body into the Lackawanna to make sure it wasn’t found until she escaped. “Don’t you want to ask her about it?” At least he took the credit card and rang her up.

Then, as he handed back her card and started to turn to the espresso machine, Michael turned the tables and killed her instead.

“It’s your future mother-in-law, after all! The old Wicked Witch of the West! Do you need me to get a bucket?”

For a brief and panicked moment, Pam thought that Michael somehow meant that this was Mrs. Anderson (she had never been granted the right to call her by her first name even after becoming engaged to her son, much less after finally leaving him). What had she said to Michael? What would she do? This fear was wild in her for that instant even though it was plainly not Eugenia Anderson (on second reflection, perhaps it being Eugenia was the reason she had never been allowed to use it). She was taller and slimmer, and also actually looking at a piece of Pam’s art with something other than a cocked eyebrow and a question about why Pam was wasting her time on it.

The panic receded, or perhaps it was better to say that it transmogrified into something else when she realized who Michael must actually mean. This, then, was Jim’s mother. Of course, Michael would know who Jim’s mother was. He was a friend of the family after all.

“Michael Gary Scott!” The woman turned around, her hands crossed over her chest in an achingly familiar pose that Pam had seen dozens of times. She’d never imagined Jim had stolen it from his mother. “What on earth are you saying to her?” She unfolded herself and stuck a hand out as she approached Pam. “Don’t listen to a word he says, dear. You must be Pam. And I’m Betsy.” Pam shook her hand in a daze. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. You’re quite the artist. Jim showed me some pictures earlier, but I couldn’t really feel the thing until I saw it for myself, you know.” She shook her head. “The primary colors are a bold choice.”

Pam shook herself internally. Talking to Jim’s mother—meeting Jim’s mother without him there—was terrifying in a way she hadn’t expected and that probably had more to do with her own internal triggers than with the woman, Betsy, in front of her, but talking about her art was something she’d been working hard to get good at. This, she could do. “Thank you!” She smiled, and to her slight surprise it felt natural. “I’m not sure bold was what I was going for, but it’s certainly nice to hear.”

“What were you going for?” Betsy steered her to a table and gave Michael a look that Pam’s experience with her own mother suggested to her meant ‘you will do the obvious thing I am hinting at you to do,’ which knowing Michael probably meant it was intended to cover both ‘shut up’ and ‘bring Pam’s drink to us when it’s done.’

It was not a surprise at all that anyone who knew Michael treated him like their child, even when they appeared to be similar ages.

“I was hoping for ‘energetic,’” Pam answered as she sat down across the little table from Betsy. “I started with the red and yellow, because I was thinking of sunrises and sunsets, and the blue just demanded to be included.”

“Sunrise over blue, hm?” Betsy had sat them down where they could both look at the piece. “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning?”

“Something like that.” Pam smiled. “What brings you here?”

“Probably the same thing that brings you here.” Betsy grinned.

“You’re working on a website commission too?” Pam wasn’t sure when her fear had transformed entirely into comfort, but there was something so familiar about bantering with Betsy that she couldn’t help herself—she answered like she would have with Jim.

“No, she’s here for me.” Jim plopped down at the table next to her and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before reaching one long arm over and hugging his mother. “Though now that I’ve said that, she’ll probably start up a website design business just to spite me.”

Pam and Betsy both giggled at the same time, which turned into guffaws, while Jim just rolled his eyes at them both.