Pam broke down.

Well, first she hid, because she had a feeling that if she just broke down right there in the parking lot, someone was going to come and find her, and right now she didn’t want to be found.

No, not someone. Jim. Always Jim, who had been in the office for approximately fifteen seconds and had already noticed that something was wrong with the situation upstairs when Michael wouldn’t have figured it out if she’d gotten the party planning committee to put up a big sign (in anything but green, of course) that said “this is a big problem” with sparkling lights. Hell, she could have started a grease fire in the kitchen and Michael would probably not have noticed something was wrong until Dwight dragged him out through the smoke yelling about how his superhuman strength allowed him to walk as fast carrying Michael as anyone else could alone.

Neither of them, of course, would notice the real problem with a grease fire in the kitchen, which is that there wasn’t a stovetop to cook grease on.

But Jim probably would.

And she really didn’t want to be seen right now. The heavy weight of being perceived was just…not something she could stand until she’d gotten her feet back under her (literally, since she was currently curled up in a side corner of the foyer, thankful that Hank was on a union-mandated smoke break even though he didn’t smoke. Since Hank was a building employee, not a Dunder Mifflin employee, he was unionized, the lucky bastard). So she needed to avoid Jim. And she also needed to get out.

That left one option.

“Mom? I know we weren’t planning to celebrate Chanukah together until later in the holiday, but could you or Dad come pick me up?”

She was right, she noticed, about Jim—he didn’t find her, but she did see his shoes pace back and forth in front of the coat closet she’d found to hide in after Hank came back from his break, and there were several texts on her phone that she supposed that she ought to respond to once she had the bandwidth to do so.

But it wasn’t him she needed right now. Right now, she needed the beat-up old Honda pulling into the parking lot and her dad behind the wheel, the stupid candle-themed hat that her mom had knitted for him sitting on his head like every Chanukah (even the one when it had been in late November and 75 degrees—thanks climate change).

The great thing about her dad picking her up was that he was comfortable with silence. More comfortable with silence than with speech, if she was honest, but right now that was a relief. He didn’t ask where Roy was, or why she needed to be picked up. He didn’t ask why when she asked (in a brief break in the silence) to swing by her house on the way. He didn’t even ask when she bundled a huge package the size of a human being into the back of the car before they headed towards her childhood home.

Well, now she knew how her dad would act if she ever needed to bury a body.

Of course, the silence couldn’t last. They arrived home soon enough (even though she usually thought of it as a long drive, long enough that she rarely went home without a major reason) and her mom and Penny surrounded the car, doing exactly what she’d been afraid Jim would do: asking how she was doing, worrying about her, fluffing their feathers like chickens pecking at the problem.

She smiled at her dad, who reached over and squeezed her shoulder. Bill Beesly wasn’t a very vocal man, but sometimes that was exactly what she needed.

“Mom, Pen, I’m fine.” She tried her best to make it sound true. “Roy’s just being an idiot.” OK, that was true.

“What did he do now?” Penny grabbed the life-size package and yanked it out of the back. “Ooh, is this his body? Did you finally off the oaf?”

“No, Pen.” She rolled her eyes.

“Hmph. I suppose you didn’t.” Penny squeezed the package. “No rigor mortis anyway. Roy’s probably not this squishy.”

“Give me that.” Pam grabbed the package back and hugged her sister with the other arm. “It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you too. Now come in and give us the hot gossip while Mom finishes the latkes. She grated a whole extra potato for you, you know.”

“I’m honored.”

But even the familiar routines of lighting candles, saying blessings, and scarfing potato latkes as fast as they could be fried couldn’t fully put the situation out of Pam’s mind, and having put Roy’s idiocy into words for Penny meant that she could no longer deny just how angry she was with him.

After dinner, she decided it was best to bite the bullet.

“So you’ve probably noticed Roy’s not here.”

“Yeah, but you said you didn’t dump him, so whatever it is going to be boring.”

“Penelope Beesly!”

“Fine, fine, I’m so sorry Pam, please, do tell us what’s going on.”

“Penny.”

“What? It’s not my fault it sounds sarcastic.”

Ah, sisterly love.

“Where is he, then, dear?” Her mom looked around as if Roy was simply hiding in the wainscotting, ready to pop out at any time.

“California.” She immediately corrected herself. “Well, probably the airport right now, but Santa Monica soon. With Kenny.”

“And let me guess, he didn’t tell you beforehand?” Penny raised a hand to forestall their parents. “Sorry, I’ll be good.”

“No, you’re right, though I don’t think he thought it through beforehand either.” She told them the story about how she’d only found out from a transaction alert on their credit card, how Roy had reacted, and how she’d reacted to his reaction and so on. It all came out, and she found herself feeling almost as if she were a hanukkiah of complaint, with one day’s worth of frustration lasting for eight. When she finally wound to a halt, she found herself worrying that she had, after all, overreacted, because for a long moment her family was entirely silent.

And then…

“That asshole forgot you were Jewish?”

To everyone’s shock, even his own, that was the normally silent Bill Beesly.