Sighing, she leaned over to lie on her side, head propped up on her hand next to the headstone. "And so, I guess that's what happened immediately after you went. The rest of this I guess it about me and how I ran.

"Like I said, Scranton was haunted with memories of us, and I couldn't take it. I love you so much, Jim, but I would have lost my mind being constantly beset with my dreams that were now impossible. The life I had wanted with you. The house with the terrace, the winter wedding, the children I would never have. I never spent another night in my apartment. I gave away all my furniture, all of my kitchen stuff, everything except for the things that still had a little bit of you connected to them. A couple boxes were all I had. Your mom gave me some things from your apartment after she and your brother cleaned it out – I couldn't go, not after losing it back at the office.

"Your mom… we've kept in touch over the years. She'll call on occasion, to say hi, to say she saw one of my paintings somewhere. You know, at first she blamed me a little… I mean, how couldn't she have? It was my ex-fiancee who had killed her son. I was blaming myself too, and I know, I know, you told me not to, but like I just said. If you had never loved me, if we had never gotten together, if I had just stayed with stupid Roy or by myself or something you would still be alive today. Somewhere without me. I don't feel guilty for loving you anymore, Jim. I got a letter from your mom a few years after it all happened, around this time of year when you're on our minds more than usual, and what she said helped,"

Dear Pam

How are you? It's been very nice this year here in Dunmore, we had such a mild winter this year, like the season is being kind to us after the heat of last summer. Joshua and Haylie are having another baby this fall – isn't that wonderful? Joshua says that if this one is a boy he's going to name him after Jimmy. I have to admit, it made me cry a little when he told me.

I feel like I need to confess something to you, Pam. When Jimmy died, a part of me blamed it on you. I know that is a horrible thing to tell you after all this time, but I think I need to, to ask for forgiveness. I know there were times where it showed, where I was cold to you, where I could have comforted you more. But a couple days ago I was going through some things in the attic, and I found a picture and a letter that he had sent me when you and he went on that trip to San Diego. It was just a picture of the two of you together at seaworld, and the letter was short. But he told me in it, "Don't tell Pam this, I think it would freak her out, but I really know that she's the one. Mom, I'm so happy." And the picture just showed this to me: the smile he had, and not looking at the camera, but looking at you.

Pam, please forgive me for feeling like he should not have been with you, because you made him happier than I had ever seen him before. You made my little boy happy and that's important. And I love you like the daughter that I should have had.

I'm going to visit Jimmy's grave tomorrow, and I'll leave an extra flower there for you.

Love,

Larissa Halpert

"Oh, and by the way, Josh and Haylie did have a son, and they did name him after you. He tends to go by James, though; I think your brother didn't have the heart to have a new Jim around.

"So, I left Scranton in October of that year, a few days before your twenty-ninth birthday. I didn't know where I was going, but I needed to go. I felt so lost… without a purpose, without a plan. So my mom and dad gave me a good sum of money, and I took what I could from my savings and what I had from selling most of my stuff, and I went to Europe. I know, very bohemian, very much like a good old tragedy. And I went from town to town, historical site to castle, to see where people had been long ago and where people were planning to keep going into the future despite the past still living among them.

"I began to gravitate to art galleries and shows. I even went to the Lourve! And I began to paint again; pictures of the ancient streets of Paris and Rome, the seas at night, and gothic cathedrals. Soon I realized that I was making a portfolio for myself, and one day I woke up and finally had a plan. I wanted to be a real artist. But I wanted to go to school, I wanted someplace I could throw myself in and lose myself… to drown out my memories in colors and charcoal. I applied to a few programs and I somehow got accepted to the art program at USC.

"Before I left Paris to move to Los Angeles, I remember looking at myself in the mirror, and saw the same face that I had seen my whole life. I decided that I didn't want that person to be around anymore; I wanted see a new person in that mirror, a new person who was mysterious, who was fashionable, who had never experienced loss as deeply as I had. I cut my long hair off… dyed it black, bought new clothes with the last of my Euros and threw away my old clothes. When I arrived in LA, I wasn't sweet little Pam Beesly anymore, I was Pamela B., future artist and world-traveler.

"Ah… you'd laugh at me so much right now… but really! I pulled off that identity for years! Through the whole bachelor's program, through all of my gallery shows, through the master's degree. It was like… six years of that. And I really cut ties with anyone from Pennsylvania, save your mom who I didn't have the heart to not talk to, and my own family, though I never came back to visit during the holidays. I'd always say that I had too much to do, another show, working on another project.

"The only things of my past that I kept close to me, believe it or not, were the pencil sketch I'd given to you the day you proposed, and the engagement ring that I wore on a long chain. I'm still wearing that today, by the way. None of my new friends knew where I had come from, and no one knew about you. But it's easy to do that when you keep everyone at arm's length. I told myself that it was part of my new mystique – saying nothing of my past and remaining quietly aloof. But there was more to that… I just didn't want to see it.

"I… I didn't want to get close to anyone anymore. I didn't want to make friends that I would have to leave, I didn't want friends to see that I was broken inside. And I especially did not want to love anyone again. Those first years I spent trying to turn off the part of me that had loved you so deeply, if only so I could not feel the pain that I still felt daily.

"About three years ago now, I met Yusaku. I mentioned him earlier, remember? Anyway, at that time I had a faculty job at USC in the studio art department, working with modern international works, as I had taken to some neo-Japonesque styles in watercolors and ink media… anyway… He was working with the department on a gallery show as a coordinator and contributor. I had known of him already; honestly, I was in love with his work. After working with him for six months, we had forged a very good friendship. Somehow he had weaseled his way closer to me than anyone had been… well, since you. I think you'd like him; he's kind of a nerd, doesn't dress particularly well, but he's kind, he's silly. He never fit in very well back in Japan, his art and his attitude towards life always got him into trouble there, but he found LA very welcoming and comfortable.

"He wanted to be more than friends, and I knew that. But he knew that there was something holding me back, and he began to slowly work his way into the cracks in the elaborate mask that I had been wearing since I came to LA. Jim… gosh, he's really so much like you. So much like you that I almost made the same mistake again. He noticed one day that I looked at the sketch of you playing your guitar almost every day. He noticed that my thoughts went somewhere far away when I looked at you. He asked me who you were, and I lost it. I yelled and told him to stop prying into my life, that there were things about me that no one was ever going to know, that no one should know. He yelled back. He yelled that he loved me, he said that he knew that I was hurting about something every day and that he wanted to help me. I told him to go. And he did. He went back to Japan a week after the fight and I fell into crisis again.

"I was aware of what I had just repeated – I had just told a man who made me feel alive again to leave to protect my own discontent, my secret embarrassment that I was not only deep down a simple girl from Scranton, but that for years now I was living with the pain of loving someone who was dead. I couldn't function after that, I couldn't paint, couldn't keep my cool demeanor that had come so easily before. So I told the university I was going on sabbatical, a trip around the world to study art wherever I could find it. In reality, I was just running again.

"I visited Europe again, then Africa, then India. I tried to immerse myself in art and culture the same way I had after I left Scranton, but nothing seemed to help. Thoughts of you, thoughts of Yusaku, thoughts of hopelessness that I would ever live without being tortured. I harbored grim hopes now and then that a plane would crash, food would be poisoned, or I just would not wake up the next day. You must have known somehow that it was time to step in and set me straight…

She found herself at her old desk back at Dunder-Mifflin. The walls, the computer screen, the phone, everything. She looked up to where he would always stand, and there he was, popping a couple of jellybeans into his mouth, leaning over the partition.

"Hey, Beesly, what's up?"

"Jim?" she said, trying to stand, stammering.

"Nice clothes," he said, grinning a little, "though I think the black hairdye is a little over the top. A little too goth-boho, don't you think?"

"I… I…" she searched in vain for words. "You're… d- d-"

"Dead?" he looked down at himself, dressed in his normal white button-up with a loose tie and wrinkled slacks. "Yeah, I guess I am. But, that's not the issue here right now; I'm not the dead-person of the hour. We're here to talk about you," he shook a long finger in her direction.

"Does that mean, did I-?"

"Technically, no," he said with a shrug, "But I need to tell you something to ponder on. Ready?"

"Um, ok."

"I want you to consider this: while you have done some completely awesome things with yourself these past few years, have you realized that you've been killing who you really are?"

"But I've done this…" she looked down at herself, "to try and keep going, Jim, like you asked me to. It was the only way I could think of to try and get away from the pain."

"There, you said it – 'get away'. You're hiding, you're running, and you're killing the Pam that was everything that I loved." She could see the sorrow on his face,

"What do I do then?" she shouted, frustrated, desperate. "What do I do? I can't forget you, I don't want to forget you, but I'm afraid… I'm afraid the pain will be too much… I'm afraid that if I don't hide you away inside of me that I'll forget you… that I'll lose you again! I can't do that!"

"Ah, Pam.. Don't you know? I'm always going to be with you, no matter what. I want you to live, Pam, get to do what I didn't get to. Be yourself with scars and all, be that loving person that I know wants to live again. Go and see that guy you like," he said with a smirk.

"Really? But…"

"It's ok… Pam, I don't want you to never find love again. I didn't want my death the be the death of your heart. I want you to live your life to the fullest again. You can't do that without love."

He had walked around to look at her face to face where she was standing. She knew this was a dream, but she could smell his scent, feel how close he was. She reached out, felt the warmth of his cheek against her skin.

"I've missed you so much," she whispered to him.

"We'll see each other again. It's just not for a while. You've got a lot left to live for." He took her into his arms and wrapped her in an embrace. She felt him real and warm against her, and closing her eyes, held onto him as tightly as she could, hoping to never have to let go.

"I love you, Pam."

She looked up to find herself in her hotel in Kenya, the morning sun creeping through the blinds. She still felt his warmth on her, and she cried. But for the first time in a long while, there was no bitterness in her tears, and she was smiling.

"I know that was you. That had to be you. I've never been superstitious, never made too much of dreams, but it was all too real. And I'm sure you know, then, what I did. I packed up and took the next flight to Tokyo, where Yusaku had gone back.

"I found him, surprised him, even. Oh, if you could have seen the sad paintings, the dark drawings he did in the months that we were apart… I felt for him. They looked a lot like everything I had painted. I told him that I needed help, that he was right – I was broken on the inside, and I was hoping that he could help me put things back together again.

"It was slow. It was hard for me to break down the self-protecting habits I had formed in those years in LA. It took me months to open up about where I was from, longer to give details about my family, where I worked, about my engagement to Roy. But it took me the better part of a year to finally tell him about you. And during this time, I did begin to feel slowly reconciled to myself. I even began to dress differently, I stopped dyeing my hair, and my paintings! Jim, the paintings! Such color I had never thought I could create.

"And Yusaku… once I told him about you, I couldn't seem to stop. All of my happiest memories were with you, and the happier I was with him, the more stories of you would find their way out of me. And the best thing? He's never once tried to make me forget you. I asked him about it once, and he said that he could see that you were a part of my soul, and that if he were to love me that he would need to accept you as a part of me."

She stopped for a moment, wiping a tear from her smiling face.

"And now I'm here. I think this is the last stitch in the wounds from so long ago… Yusaku stayed in New York, he told me I needed to go alone and see you, tell you where I've been since we last were together, to tell you that I'm ok. To thank you for the life you compelled me to. Oh yeah… New York. I took a position at NYU in their art department. I'll be closer now, mom's much happier about that. Yusaku's come with me. He's starting a gallery in Manhattan. We've talked about getting married, but with me this stuff is still baby steps… I think I will if he asks me."

She grasped the ring on a gold chain about her neck, and held it tightly. "I still love you, Jim. I always will. Thank you for everything you've done for me, for the life that you helped me discover and re-discover. I still wonder from time to time where we would have been today if things hadn't happened the way they did, but I try not to. It's not fair to tease myself with what I was robbed of, and I'm doing as you asked. I'm living, Jim, and I'm doing it for the both of us."

With that, she kissed the tips of her fingers and pressed them below the name on the stone. One by one, she blew out the tea lights. Walking back, she knew every time she would come to Scranton, she would see him smiling back at her under moonlit night windows.

Wow, so that concludes my first fic in such a looong time! I have to say, it's great to be writing again. Now, I do need to take a bit of a break before I let another story suck me away from my home and husband. )
One thing I wanted to do here was to give mention to the song that inspired the title of this story. It's called "Night Windows" by the Weakerthans off their newest album. It's probably my favorite song on an already excellent album. Here's the lyrics if anyone is interested:

"In the stick-count for the song of knowing you're gone,
glancing up at where you lived when you lived here,
I see you, suddenly alive and nearly smiling.
Stop and hold my breath and watch the way you used to be.
The full moon makes our faces shine like over-ironed polyester,
then disappears behind the clouds,
and leaves me under empty rows of night windows.
We could walk to where these streets get pulled together—
a blinking line with gravel shoulders squared towards an end.
Where the radio resounds from doppling traffic.
Where the power lines steal esses from the hourly news.
De-pluralize our casualties, and drown the Generals out in static.
We'd turn and watch our city sprawl,
and send us signals in the glow of night windows.
But you're not coming home again, and I won't ever get to say,
"Remember how... I'm sorry that... I miss the way... Could we..."

-SL