Everyday, Pam dreaded lunch time. She hated to see Jim go into the break room with Karen, hated waiting until the two of them were done talking and eating, hated sitting in there alone with Kevin or Angela or Toby. She started eating lunch at her desk, halfway hoping that Jim might notice and take pity on her, halfway hoping that he might bring his lunch and sit with her behind the desk so they could talk. He never did.

Today, Pam had been watching her computer clock tick towards noon, glancing at it in the corner of her screen. At 11:57, she glared at her computer, then looked up to see a woman walking through the office door, looking slightly unsure.

   “Hi,” the woman said, leaning on Pam’s desk. Pam smiled politely. “Um, I’m looking for—okay, wait, are you Pam?”

  “Yes,” Pam said slowly.

     “I’m Sadie,” the woman said, grinning. She had wide blue eyes and a huge smile, and Pam found herself grinning back. “Jim’s sister-in-law?”

      “Oh! Sadie! It’s really nice to meet you,” said Pam. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Karen move slightly at her desk.

    “Jim’s told me about a million things about you. It’s so nice to finally put a name to a face.”

      “Sadie?”

      Both women turned to see Jim standing awkwardly a few feet away. He smiled, looking from Sadie’s face to Pam’s with confusion. Sadie stepped over to give him a hug.

   “Pam and I were just getting to know each other,” Sadie said. Pam couldn’t help but notice that Sadie barely came up to Jim’s shoulder.

     “Where’s Addy?” Jim asked.

        “Oh, your mom has her for the day. I had to get out of the house. Apparently, newborns alternate between being incredibly boring and incredibly needy. I wanted a day off, so I pumped some milk—”

   “And that is officially more than I need to know,” Jim interrupted.

    “So I need to talk to you about something,” Sadie said. “Are you free for lunch?”

      Pam tried not to pay attention as Jim glanced over his shoulder. Karen was pointedly ignoring him—she had been very effectively pointedly ignoring him for a couple of days now, although Pam couldn’t get Jim to tell her why. Jim threw his arm around Sadie and said, “Sure. I can take you to one of those classy local establishments I’m always raving about.”

   “So, Chili’s?”

  “Absolutely.”

As Jim grabbed his jacket, Sadie walked back to Pam’s desk. “You should come, Pam.”

  Pam and Jim looked at each other for a second before Pam turned away. She started to shuffle a few random memos that she’d been meaning to throw away. “Oh, no, I don’t want to intrude on—”

    “No, it’ll be fun. Come with us.”

   Jim stood next to Sadie, putting his arms through the sleeves of his jacket. “Yeah, Pam,” he said finally. “Come with us.”

  She shrugged with a tiny smile, then grabbed her purse from under her desk. She tried not to let her smile get too much bigger when Jim helped her put her jacket on. And she didn’t let herself turn around to see if Karen was watching, even though there was a part of her that was begging to see if she was.

        “So I want to plan a surprise party for Jonathon,” Sadie said after the waitress had taken their orders.

“He’s turning thirty,” Jim said to Pam, who was still smiling because he had sat down next to her in the booth.

  “And I know he won’t expect it, because he thinks I’m too exhausted to get out of the house and plan anything.”

  “How old is your baby?” Pam asked, forcing herself to pay attention despite the fact that the whole left side of her body was itching to move closer to Jim.

   “She’s exactly a month and four days old,” Sadie said. “And don’t think that I’m one of those obsessive moms who knows their child’s age down to the second. I’ve actually been keeping track of how many days its been since I had a conversation with grown ups about something other than poop.”

Pam laughed. “Sounds like you’ve had a rough month and four days.”

“No, it’s actually kind of fantastic most of the time. She’s a genius. Takes after me.”

“She’s also a giant,” Jim said. “She’s already like two feet long.”

“And in that way, she takes after the Halperts. Her feet are going to be huge, poor thing.”

  Pam loved listening to Sadie and Jim play off each other as they joked about baby Addy, her prodigious poop, and her potential as a basketball player. She let herself watch Jim more freely than she had in months, and she felt the familiar jump in her stomach any time he met her eyes and smiled.

   By the time the waitress came with their food, party plans were well underway. Sadie had already picked a time and a place, although she was having a hard time coming up with a theme.

    “Oh, Pam can totally help you with that. She’s on the party planning committee.”

  “And the Committee to Plan Parties,” Pam added. “We’re very good. We know where to get all the best streamers.”

“Then I will definitely need your help. You know what? We should get together some weekend and get all the decorations.”

    Pam tried not to look surprised at the offer. Sadie noticed her hesitate, though, and said, “I need all the expert help I can get. Also, I can’t tell any of our friends until the very last minute. None of the women in my life know how to keep a secret.”

   “Okay,” Pam said. “I’m in.”

  “So now Jim needs to come up with a fake reason to hang out with Jonathon, and we’ll be ready to throw this thing,” Sadie said.

  “And I will think about that,” Jim said, “after I wash my hands. Damn burger spit ketchup all over me.”

  “Yeah, you got a little bit on your tie,” Sadie said, pointing helpfully. “Messy eater.”

    “Laugh all you want, Sade. You’re going to be wearing baby puke on all your shirts for the next few months.”

      “Ah, ever the supportive brother-in-law. I can’t wait to tell Addy how much fun it is to puke on Uncle Jim instead of Mommy.”

   Jim rolled his eyes as he slid out of the booth. Sadie waited until she couldn’t see him anymore, then leaned across the table and said, “I want to tell you something.”

  Pam leaned towards Sadie, enjoying the conspiratorial feeling she used to get when Jim would lean down to talk to her at her desk.

       “You need to tell Jim,” Sadie said, her voice just loud enough to be heard over the lunchtime conversations going on around them.

  “Tell Jim?”

     “How you feel.”

Pam leaned back in her seat, staring at her hands as they gripped the edge of the table.

     “Look, I’m sorry. I know that we met, like, two seconds ago and I have no right to get in the middle of this.” Sadie waited for Pam to say something, then sighed. “It’s just that—look, you’ve been pretty much all Jim as talked about for a couple of years now.”

   Pam somehow managed to feel horrified and hopeful at the same time.

     “Not to the whole family or anything. Don’t worry. But whenever he and I talk, you somehow manage to come up in the conversation. And I know that last spring, you guys—I know he told you how he felt.”

     “Did he tell you?” Pam asked.

    “He told me that he was leaving Scranton, so I just kind of…figured.”

“He left because of me?”

     “Are you kidding? Why else would he go? It wasn’t just about a promotion, Pam. And I know that he was really sad for awhile, and not just because Stamford is a really shitty place to live. And, look, I want you to know something. Jim is a really, really forgiving person.”

   Pam looked down at her hands again and forced herself to move them from her table to her lap.

      “I don’t know, Sadie,” she said. “I think—it was worse than you think it was.”

    “I saw a couple of really sad Jim faces,” Sadie said. “I know he was hurt. But Pam, listen—did Jim ever tell you that we dated?”

“You and Jim?”

  “In college. We met during freshman orientation, then we had an econ class together, and I pretended to suck at econ so that Jim could tutor me. I was very cunning.” Pam smiled a little.

“What happened?”

    “I married his brother.” Pam stopped smiling. “Not while Jim and I were dating, obviously. But he took me home at Christmas to meet his family and everything, and I met Jonathon, and by the end of January, Jim and I weren’t Jim and I anymore.”

    “Wow.”

  “Yeah. I have to say, it sounds incredibly bitchy even to me. But as soon as I met Jonathon, I was lost. There was no way I could keep dating Jim when I knew I was going to marry Jonathon.”

    Sadie stopped to take a sip of her drink and watch Pam’s face for a minute. Pam didn’t know what she should be thinking or saying. She just knew that while she stared at her hands, which were now busy folding and unfolding the napkin in her lap, Jim had made his way back to the table and was sliding back into the booth.

  “You guys done plotting?” he asked.

    “What?” Pam said, knowing that she looked distracted but not knowing what to do about it.

  “The prank. Come on, I know better than to leave the two of you alone. What did you do?”

  Sadie winked at Pam and said, “Nothing, Jim. We were just having a little girl talk.”

     Pam let Sadie and Jim dominate the conversation on the car ride back to the office. She settled into the back seat of Jim’s car and stared at him in the rear view mirror. Once, he glanced up and met her eyes, and she smiled just a little. It wasn’t much, but now that she knew what it felt like for Jim to avoid her eyes, it felt good to see him looking at her again.

Sadie came back up to the office so that she could watch Jim write down the party’s date in his planner. “He can be a little unreliable,” she said to Pam. “He forgot his own birthday once.”

“Totally untrue,” Jim said over his shoulder.

      “I actually believe you,” Pam said to Sadie. Jim pulled a face before walking over to his desk to find his planner.

“Pam,” Sadie whispered, “trust me. If Jim can forgive me, he can forgive you.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

Sadie smirked. “Liar.”

    At that moment, Michael wandered over. “Paaaaaam,” he said. “Who’s your lovely friend?”

   “I’m actually Jim’s sister-in-law,” Sadie said, holding out her hand. Michael was too busy staring at her breasts to notice. Glancing at Pam, she said, “You must be Michael.”

  “He once taught a computer how to say ‘boobs’,” Pam said helpfully.

“Pam,” he hissed. “That’s—”

    “Horribly offensive?” said Sadie. “Yeah, I agree.”

    Michael started back towards his office, turning around to stare at Sadie’s chest one more time.

   “I just gave birth,” Sadie said loudly to him. “These are full of milk. Are you just dying for a demonstration or something?”

    Michael turned so quickly that he almost ran into his office door. Sadie rolled her eyes and looked at Pam again. “You know, I’ve heard stories, but…”

“Nothing like the real thing,” Pam said with a sigh.

   “So I’ll call you,” Sadie said. “About the decorations.”

   “Oh, yeah, let me give you—“

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get your number from Jim.” And Sadie smiled one more time, just at Pam, before she left.

  “Did you guys have a good talk?” Jim asked.

  “You really want to know what we talked about?”

“Um. Yes.”

    “Girl stuff.” Pam grinned at him as Jim narrowed his eyes at her. “I need to get back to work.”

  “You’re going to tell me someday, Beesly.”

    Pam wasn’t sure she would.