“Well, hello, Jim. Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration. What can I do for you?”

Jim looked around to see if anyone else was there. As he had surmised, there was no one. And yet Bob Vance (Vance Refrigeration), who was sitting in his own office at Vance Refrigeration, had felt the need to introduce himself. This was especially strange because Jim had actually already started the conversation by saying “Hello, Mr. Vance” a few moments previously. He briefly wondered what Phyllis saw in this man, before remembering the way Bob Vance had looked at Phyllis the last time he’d been up in the Dunder Mifflin offices and thinking that it might actually be more of a matter of what she saw him see in her. Not that Phyllis didn’t deserve the devoted love of a good man, of course. She was like an aunt to Jim, the first friendly face he’d seen at Dunder Mifflin besides Pam’s and a welcome respite from Dwight’s intensity when they went on sales retreats. But in between bottles of Cab Sav and shots of tequila in the mountain lodges of the Poconos (back when the budget hadn’t been quite as tightly controlled and Michael had really gone all out for their retreats) he’d heard enough sob stories from her about how hard it was to find someone that he was definitely happy for her (and besides, he’d reciprocated with his own stupid thoughts about Pam enough that he owed her a willing ear even if he hadn’t felt that way). So he couldn’t begrudge her the love of this very strange man in front of him, even if he did feel the need to introduce himself every time they met.

“So, uh, Mr. Vance…”

“Oh, call me Bob. Vance. Vance Refrigeration.”

“Sure, uh, Bob. So tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day…”

“Indeed it is, Jim, and I, Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration, am quite aware of that fact.”

“I thought you might be. Uh…this is a little awkward, but I’ve, um, seen how you treat Phyllis on days like this…” Visions of Phyllis’s birthday flashed through Jim’s head, with her desk entirely barricaded from the rest of the office by the endless deliveries of Whitman’s Samplers, so much so that she’d practically had to eat her way out of the building.

“What are you implying, Jim? That I, Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration, have not been treating my Phyllis well? Do I need to step up my game? Have I not been doing enough?”

“Oh, no, no no!” Jim gesticulated wildly with both hands, trying to make it entirely clear to Bob that he didn’t mean anything like that in the slightest—vaguely worried, in fact, that if Bob Vance tried to “step up his game” they would all die of asphyxiation as the presents squeezed out the oxygen upstairs. “I meant only that I know just how much you care for her and how visibly and emphatically you tend to display that affection on major holidays.”

“Oh.” Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration was silent for a moment, which Jim took as a sign he should go on.

“So, um, if it’s not too much of an imposition, I was wondering…are you planning to get Phyllis a lot of presents tomorrow, like usual?”

“Of course, Jim. Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration never does things by halves.”

“Great, great. So, um, I know this is really presumptuous of me…” Just spit it out, Jim, he though to himself. “But, uh, could I ask you a favor? It’s not about the presents per se, but about the, um, cards you send with them.”

“What kind of favor?” Bob Vance leaned back in the Vance Refrigeration chair in the Vance Refrigeration office and smiled kindly at Jim. “You know, Jim, Phyllis likes you. And that means I like you. So anything I, Bob Vance, or Vance Refrigeration can do for you, we’ll do.”

“Uh, thanks.” Jim nervously rubbed the back of his head. He really needed a haircut. Why was he thinking about that? Oh, right, because he didn’t really want to think too carefully about why exactly he was about to ask the favor he was about to ask. “So, um, I have this idea…”

After he explained it, Bob Vance laughed uproariously (he really was a friendly man once you got past the strange verbal tic, Jim reflected) and assured Jim that he’d be happy to make the minor change he’d requested. Jim thanked him effusively and slipped back upstairs, hoping that no one had noticed how much time he’d spent “getting his phone from his car.”

**

The next morning was Valentine’s Day—Jim was glad that Bob Vance always had his presents delivered to Vance Refrigeration the night before and then sent up his own employees on the actual day to do the deliveries as dressed as “delivery guys,” out of fear that someone would mess up an order, thus meaning that he could actually do the changes Jim had requested—and Jim made sure to get to the office bright and early. He and Bob Vance had set up a signal—Jim would ring Vance Refrigeration as a “wrong number” once everything was in position—but just in case he wanted to make sure he got everything started on the right foot.

Of course, for his sins, he had to wait an agonizing half an hour for Pam Beesly to walk through the door and slide behind the reception desk, but it was worth it for the surprised look she gave him when she sat down, turned her chair, and realized he was already in his seat.

“Oh!”

“Hey, Pam.” He sauntered over to her desk and tried to play it cool, feeling all the while like he was the most transparent man in the world (he often felt that way, but usually it was because he was afraid Pam looked right through him, not even noticing he was romantically interested in her—today he was paranoid for exactly the opposite reason). He popped a couple jellybeans in his mouth to cover the nerves.

“Hi, Jim.” She didn’t seem particularly excited, but then again he was aware of her feelings on Valentine’s Day—she said that she thought that it was a bit of a fake Hallmark holiday that was still a little depressing because you never knew whether to take it seriously and go whole hog or not, but he was pretty sure she actually loved it—and he knew Roy’s feelings too—it was just a scam that wasn’t worth attention. Usually he’d leave it at that, but with his big plan in place he was feeling frisky.

“So, Beesly, any big plans for V-Day?” Oh god did I really call it V-Day? What am I, a frat bro? He cringed inwardly, but she didn’t seem to notice.

Instead, she just sighed. “No, Roy and I decided we shouldn’t do anything too big. It’s just an excuse to spend money, right? And money’s tight, now that we’ve set a date and we’re supposed to be saving for a wedding.”

“Yeah.” He knew they’d set a date. He’d been there—Katy had even made him make a terrible toast, which was a good fraction of why he’d broken things off so brusquely with her that very night, even if he had to admit they’d never been going anywhere anyway—and it was that which had gotten under his skin and made him come up with this insane plan of his for today. After he’d chickened out of giving her the Christmas card he’d written, he’d realized he needed a plan that was out of his own hands, one where someone else would do the work after he’d prepared the ground. Otherwise he’d just keep chickening out until some giant blowup or until she was married, whichever came first. And he couldn’t afford that. He needed to do something now. And so he was.

“So, Halpert, any big plans?” She was smiling at him, which always made his heart flip and his knees go weak—there was a reason he always leaned on her desk—and the arch of her head told him she knew she was deliberately imitating his phrasing and intonation. His heart swelled; how could she not know there was something here? But he played it cool, or as cool as he knew how anyway.

“Nah. Just a little lonely-hearts thing Mark and I throw every year on the big day for all us single folk to wallow in our sorrows and play some poker. It’s gonna be a little weird this year, actually, since Mark’s got a girlfriend, but it’s a tradition now, so…” He shrugged. “The show must go on.”

“Is, uh, is Katy going?” She didn’t look at him when she asked, just twirled her little necklace and pretended to file some papers. He knew she was pretending because she hadn’t actually gotten any new papers to file since she got there, since he’d been taking up her attention, and she always filed as the last step before leaving the office each day.

He had not, however, realized that she didn’t know he and Katy had broken up. Well, no time like the present. He knocked the desk a couple times to get her attention and rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, no. We…we kinda broke up.”

“Oh!” Her hand went to her mouth and her eyes finally met his. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Don’t be. Wasn’t going to work out anyway.” He grabbed a couple more jellybeans just to have something to do with his hands. “Anyway, it’s been like a month, so…”

“Jim Halpert!” She slapped his arm playfully. “How did I not know this? We are best friends.” The way she said it was nice, almost thrilling, because it was like it was a pure fact of life that they belonged together (even if not in the way he thought they did), but the words themselves always made his heart sink and this was no exception. “You’re supposed to tell your best friends when things like that happen so that they can express the proper sympathies at the proper times.”

He grinned at her ever-so-slightly mockingly. “And what, exactly are the ‘proper sympathies’ in this case?”

“Hmm…” She drummed her fingers on the table and he watched them, wondering what it would feel like to capture her hands and entwine them in his. “That depends. Were you the dumper or the dumpee?”

He rubbed the back of his neck again. “Do we have to define roles?”

“Jim.” She cocked an eyebrow at him in a way that he knew instinctively meant “stop stalling.”

“The dumper,” he sighed. “And she was pretty pissed—I was her ride home, and she sat glaring at me for the whole twenty minutes back from the…” Shit, I was going to say “dock.” I need to be more careful. Pam can’t know it was the booze cruise.

“Back from the where?” Of course she noticed. He rolled his eyes.

“Doesn’t matter. I answered your question, Miss Nosey, so answer mine.”

She smiled up at him. “Well, I was going to say that where this happened was pertinent information—the ‘proper sympathies’ definitely involves ice cream and alcohol, more if you were the dumpee, less if you were the dumper, as it sounds like you were” here she paused to stick out her tongue, and he couldn’t help but think how cute she looked doing it “—and we don’t want to get the wrong kind. Like, I don’t know, Fudgey the Whale and Captain Morgan if you were on a boat when it happened, that sort of thing.”

He almost panicked and ran out of the building right then and there. “If you were on a boat.” God, did she know? But she was still smiling up at him, so she couldn’t know. There was no way Pam could know he’d broken up with Katy on the booze cruise and still be smiling up at him with that look that said “you’re in on this joke with me” right now, right? He made himself grin back and respond…time to get the conversation back on the track he’d planned.

“Sure, sure. Well, my schedule’s pretty free, so if you want to drop by with that ice cream and booze…I’m partial to rocky road.” His grin relaxed into a more normal register as he continued. “Anyway, no plans for tonight except the poker game, but I was wondering if you’d like to play a game today.”

“Ooooh, what game? Twenty Questions?” Pam was almost bouncing in her seat—it was adorable—and his grin was now entirely genuine as he smiled down on her.

“No, not Twenty Questions—what are you, fifteen?” His teasing was almost interrupted by the thought of what it would have been like if he had met Pam at fifteen, the year before (he knew) she’d started dating Roy. God, what he would give to have had that happen. But, then again, they weren’t the same people then as now; maybe she’d have hated him. He had the sense that she was the kind of kid who actually paid attention in school, and while he was by no means the slacker then that he was now he’d always been a bit of a class clown. “No, this is a Valentine’s-specific game.”

“What?”

“So, you know how Phyllis always gets, like, a ridiculous number of presents from Bob Vance?”

“Of Vance Refrigeration, yes.”

“Of Vance Refrigeration indeed. So, when his people come up they always have those really flowery cards attached to the presents, and then Phyllis gets embarrassed and throws them all away?”

“Yes?”

“I was thinking…what if instead of letting Phyllis put them in the trash, we get her to give them to  us, and then we convince Dwight that there’s some kind of secret message in the cards that he needs to suss out? It’ll drive him crazy trying to figure out what it is, and you and I can have some fun along the way.”

“Yes, please!” Pam clapped her hands and Jim looked lovingly down on her, not caring for a moment whether she could tell the emotions written on his face. “I’ll make sure to grab the cards from her when I deliver them to her—you work on Dwight. Oh, here he comes now,” she said, looking past Jim towards the double doors of the office. “Shoo, shoo, he’ll know we’re up to something. Shoo!”

“Like I’m not always up here anyway.” Jim took a risk by admitting that, he knew, but he figured she’d already noticed, so what were the odds she’d really connect the dots and figure out why? But he sauntered back to his seat anyway and prepared for stage two of his plan.

**

Ten minutes later, after everyone had arrived (Dwight’s arrival having been followed within moments by most of the rest of the sales and support staff), Jim made his call to Vance Refrigeration, then hung up after apologizing for the “misdial.” He then dialed a customer, did a little business, and waited for the real work of the day—the plan—to begin.

A puffing Vance Refrigeration employee in a deliveryman costume appeared, asked Pam to sign for a giant bouquet of roses, and disappeared through the doors. Pam took the flowers over to Phyllis, exclaimed over them with her, and snagged the envelope with the card neatly as Phyllis put it down and inhaled the scent of the blossoms. She winked at Jim as she walked back to her desk, and he put stage two into action.

“Dwight.”

“Yes, Jim?” Dwight continued typing as he spoke, staring at his computer screen. “Do you have something constructive to inform me of, or are you simply devoted to distracting those of us who have real work to do?”

“Oh, sorry, it’s just…no, you’re right, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“About what?”

“I don’t want to bother you, it’s just…”

“Just what, Jim? Don’t mumble, real salesmen speak their minds.”

Jim looked around him theatrically and leaned over the desk to whisper. “Don’t you think it’s strange that Bob Vance always sends up Phyllis’s presents with elaborate cards, but she almost never reads them? It’s almost like there was some secret code in them…but that’s silly, right? No one really uses codes in real life.”

Dwight sighed and turned his attention to Jim from the computer. “Oh, Jim, Jim, Jim. You are so naïve. There are many uses for codes in real life. Fact: most codes are designed by the military, but used by civilian operators. Fact: I am trained in over fifty secret code methods, none of which you have clearance to know or the capacity to understand.”

Jim smiled to himself and continued earnestly. “Thank God, Dwight. I’m worried Bob might be using a code somehow to get Phyllis to send him free stationary—how else do you think he can afford all those fancy cards? Do you think you could decode it if he did?” He leaned back, projecting uncertainty. “Or…do you think he’s using a code you don’t know?”

Dwight scoffed. “Unlikely. I doubt Bob Vance is an experienced operative. I am sure I can decode any code he might choose to use.” He glanced at Jim. “Do you have access to the raw data?”

“To what?”

“The cards, Jim. Do you have access to the cards?”

Jim exhaled. The fish had taken the bait. “Yes. Pam is collecting them as Phyllis discards them. Do you think you could take a look after we get them all?”

Dwight nodded. “Absolutely. I would be glad to contribute to extirpating this kind of fraud. Dunder Mifflin cannot afford its employees to be secretly passing out free handouts.”

Jim nodded. “Exactly my thinking. Thank you Dwight. I’ll make sure Pam gives you the notes as she receives them.” He IMed Pam and sat back. This was going to be fun to watch—as long as he could count on Dwight to be…Dwight.

**

Pam wasn’t sure what Jim had told Dwight about the cards, or what he expected him to get out of the cards, but she made sure to take note of the inscriptions as she collected them and prepared to deliver them to Dwight.

The dominant feature on each card was a giant superscript initial letter, almost in the style of a medieval illuminated manuscript, followed by the rest of the message in a standard calligraphic hand. She doodled models of the illuminated letters as they passed through her hands on a spare sheet of her notebook, admiring the detailed illustrations.

The first one was pretty simple: Phyllis: I love you, Bob Vance (Vance Refrigeration).

The second was equally so: All my love, to Phyllis, Bob Vance (Vance Refrigeration).

The third as well: My dearest Phyllis, please be my Valentine, Bob Vance (Vance Refrigeration).

The messages only got a little more intricate throughout the day, but Pam felt her interest in the prank overwhelming her usual feeling of annoyance at the sheer quantity of Phyllis’s presents. She barely even bristled when Roy stopped by and revealed that he had no actual plans for them tonight, just “the best sex of her life” (hah!) and lazy kiss. She wasn’t happy with him, but he just wasn’t first and foremost on her radar. She was too busy trying to figure out what Dwight would make of the other messages that had passed through her hands:

Be my Valentine, Love, Bob Vance (Vance Refrigeration)

Every time I see you, I love you, Love, Bob Vance (Vance Refrigeration)

Every day you are more beautiful, Love, Bob Vance (Vance Refrigeration)

At this point she kept doodling the letters but stopped reading the final inscriptions, as they were all some variation on “Love, Bob Vance (Vance Refrigeration).”

Say you’ll be my Valentine, dear Phyllis (LBVVR)

Love is in the air, Phyllis is so fair (LBVVR)

You are everything to me, dear Phyllis, be my Valentine (LBVVR)

Just say you’ll be my Valentine, Phyllis (LBVVR)

I love you more each day (LBVVR)

My heart is yours, and all of me as well (LBVVR)

Love, love me do, you know I love you (LBVVR)

Of all the hearts, in all the world, know you have mine (LBVVR)

Verses of love, and blue skies above, mean Phyllis is here, and always is dear (LBVVR)

Everyone knows I love you; I hope that you love me (LBVVR)

Somebody loves you (and it’s me) (LBVVR)

Yesterday I loved you, tomorrow I will more (LBVVR)

There was only about an hour left in the day, and she was starting to wonder when Jim was going to have her drop them off with Dwight. She could see that Dwight was wondering the same thing, as he looked up like a bloodhound getting the scent every time another bouquet was dropped off. She was almost disappointed when one garland wasn’t for Phyllis (of course, it still wasn’t for her—it was for Oscar—but she had almost mistakenly added the card to her Phyllis-list before she caught herself). She wondered how many more were coming, and when she would know—she assumed Jim would tell her, but how would he know? She hadn’t seen or heard him get in touch with Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration, and he had stayed in the office for both lunch and his break (as had Dwight, salivating over the possibility of a code to crack). She saw another Vance Refrigeration employee struggle through the doors, this one with two plants, one in either hand, and rushed to help him by propping them open. He nodded his thanks, put the pots down, asked her to sign, and walked back out with an audible sigh. She mustered her courage to penetrate the castle of thorns that surrounded Phyllis’s desk by now, congratulated her friend (“he really outdid himself this year,” Phyllis sighed) and slid the two cards onto her pile: the exceedingly simple U + Me = Valentine? (LBVVR) and O lovely Phyllis, do you love me too? (LBVVR).

Immediately she got an IM from Jim: Showtime?

She grinned, grabbed the stack of cards, and walked over to Dwight’s desk, doing the “pretending to be casual” walk she had perfected while helping in Jim’s pranks over the years.

“Here you are, Dwight.”

“Keep your voice down!” Dwight snapped. “You never know who could be listening.”

“Um, OK.” She winked at Jim. “When will you know if there’s a code?”

“There’s always a code, Pam.” He patted her arm absentmindedly as he started flipping through the cards. “And besides” his eyes snapped up to hers. “I was watching those delivery men, and they were acting extremely suspiciously. I am sure we will find some malfeasance.”

Jim rolled his eyes at her and she scowled at him, trying not to break. He winked and she had to turn away from Dwight and walk back to her desk just to keep her composure. What had he planned? Was it just to drive Dwight crazy looking for a nonexistent code? Or had he somehow found a way to insert a code into Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration’s cards? Or (craziest thought of all) was there actually something to the theory he’d told Dwight?

She finished her day’s work slowly as she kept an eye on Dwight, doodling a little more on the sketches of the fancy illuminated letters and watching Jim’s leg bounce with nervousness. Something was definitely up.

**

Jim’s leg was going crazy, because this was the one part of his plan he couldn’t entirely count on. He thought he knew Dwight well enough, and had planned things cleanly enough, for it all to go off as he hoped, but now it was out of his control, and it was driving him crazy.

He repressed the urge to either go talk to Pam (an idea for later, if the plan went as he hoped) or ask Dwight how the decoding was going (which would only slow things down—usually a feature rather than a bug, but he was relying on Dwight right now, which was itself a scary thought). He just sat there, pretending to do work, and watching Dwight surreptitiously—so, actually, like most days in his experience.

Finally (finally) Dwight started in his seat and began flipping the pages rapidly. He looked up at Jim with an expression of disgust, snorted at him, packed up the pages, and walked rapidly to Pam’s desk.

“Pamela, I will thank you not to participate in Jim Halpert’s childish pranks,” he said in a loud voice as he thumped the cards down on the reception desk. “This so-called code was nothing more than a simple acrostic, without even a Caesar cipher to its name, and in no way worthy of my skills. In addition, Pamela, if we should ever find ourselves in a life or death situation in which a real code is at stake.” He turned to glare at Jim, then returned his focus to Pam. “You would do well to deliver the documents in the correct order.” He took two pages and showed them to her, then slammed them back into the pile. “You transposed the last two cards.” He turned and walked back to his seat. As he sat down, he fixed Jim with an equally impressive glare. “And Jim, I will thank you not to involve me in your business any further. You have distracted me from my work quite enough for one day.” Jim could almost swear he heard the uptight salesman mutter something that sounded like “and good luck, not that you deserve it.”

Well, that went exactly according to plan, except for whatever that last thing was, Jim thought. He kept himself in his chair only by force of will. Now I just need to wait on Pam.

**

Pam looked over at Dwight, still in shock from the abruptness of his reaction, and wished she could have heard whatever it was he muttered to Jim right at the end. Apparently Dwight had found something in the cards, whatever it was, and hadn’t liked it. Apparently it was “simple.” Apparently she’d messed something up in the order? But the order had been just as she had received the cards, and she hadn’t done anything to do—except Dwight had said the last two, which had come at the same time, so she supposed it was possible they were supposed to go in the other order. But what was the message? How could Dwight tell they were out of order? Was there some actual code buried in there? Dwight had seemed so sure of it. “A simple acrostic”—what did that mean?

She looked down at her sketchbook. Wasn’t an acrostic something spelled out by the initial letters of something else? She remembered studying something in English class about acrostic poems, where the name of the author or something like that was made up of the first letters of each line. She had copied out all those beautiful letters from the cards…maybe they had some kind of simple code that Dwight had cracked?

She’d put the letters into her sketchbook in the random corners of a page, so she wasn’t sure exactly what they might spell out. But if it was really that simple that Dwight could do it…and if it made him that annoyed to be involved…she had to figure it out. She grabbed scissors and carefully cut out each letter from the page (thanking God she’d done it on the last decorated page of the sketchbook, so that she wasn’t cutting into anything on the reverse) and put them in order remembering at the last minute Dwight’s insistence that she had to switch the last two.

Then she stared blankly at the message that had suddenly appeared on her desk in beautified medieval-style writing:

Pam Beesly, Jim Loves You.

Oh. Oh my.

**

 Jim was up out of his chair before his brain had fully finished processing the fact that Pam had cut out and rearranged something from her sketchbook and then started crying. He was at the reception desk, leaning halfway over it, before he could see that, as he’d suspected, Pam had figured out the message after the extremely obvious clues Dwight had left her.

What he hadn’t suspected was that she’d start crying.

Well, he’d known it was a possibility, but it wasn’t his favorite option by any means, and he was starting to panic.

He wanted to reach out to her—wanted, actually, to run around the desk and hold her—but her tears were a shield against any expression of emotion on his part, because…well, because they weren’t tears about something in her life, or something Roy had done, or the time Kelly had accidentally thrown her lunch in the trash (because it “smelled”). They were tears he’d made her shed, and he felt awful.

He was about to stand up and walk away—walk out of Dunder Mifflin, maybe go stick his head under a cold shower and start looking up ways to disappear—when her hand snaked out and grabbed his wrist. Her head came up slowly and he looked into her eyes and saw …he didn’t know what. Because he wanted to say he saw love, and hope, and desperation, but he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just seeing his own reflection in her tears.

“Did you do this?”

He couldn’t tell if it was an accusation or an opportunity, but he couldn’t lie to her, not in that moment, not really ever.

“Yes.”

“How?”

Of all the things he’d expected her to ask, a description of his methods was not one. But in for a penny, in for a pound.

“I asked Bob Vance…”

“Of Vance Refrigeration.” There was his Pam, and that moment of familiarity gave him the strength to go on.

“Of Vance Refrigeration, yes, if I could…if I could have a favor. If he could send these cards I’d had made for him instead of the ones he’d planned to use. Because I could see what he and Phyllis had, and I wanted to…take a chance and see if I could have it too. If we could have it too. After that,” he shrugged “it was easy.”

“So you mean it?”

He looked back into her eyes, still uncertain if he was seeing what he thought he saw or simply projecting. “Of course I mean it.”

And then Pam was kissing him, and he couldn’t see anything else at all.

**

She’d just kissed Jim. Not for the first time. No, she remembered the Dundies, so she couldn’t pretend this was entirely a new experience. But it was close enough to a new experience, given that a) she was sober, b) he was actually kissing her back, and c) she had no intention of pretending this one hadn’t happened. Because if he was willing to give her this enormous, thoughtful gift—not just the message, but the prank on Dwight, the relieving of the tension she always felt when Phyllis got a million gifts and she got nothing, and most personal of all, the beautiful art on the cards he had to have had made just for her—the only gift she could give him back was to admit that she felt the same way he did. That even though she’d said yes to a wedding date to another man a month ago, she was in love with Jim Halpert, just as he was with her. And it was everything.

She knew she’d have to deal with Roy. She knew it was going to be messy, and awkward, and maybe even awful, but she also knew a better option was out there, and she was going to seize it with both hands.

As she was presently doing, in fact. Because both her hands were on his face, and his tongue was in her mouth, and everything was right in the world.

She even thought she heard Dwight mutter something like “Congratulations.” But she must have imagined it. After all, she was giddy with happiness.

It was the best Valentine’s Day ever.