On a snowy upstate New York night, I left my resume on the counter of a 24/7 diner. Three hours later, a private number called.
“Does this résumé belong to you?”
At midnight, a helicopter blade ripped through the snow outside my motel window. A man stepped out, claiming to be the grandfather I never knew. He said, “Tonight, we take back everything they stole from you. We start with the name they use to hold you down.”
My name is Zoe Foster. Three days ago, I was a senior risk analyst at HelioQuari Brands. Tonight, I was just a woman in a cheap motel room staring at a snowstorm, wondering how my life had unspooled so quickly. The drive from Boston had been a surrender. I’d left the city limits just as the first serious snow began to stick, pushing my sedan north toward the blurred line of the Adirondacks. Riverforge was a town you went to when you wanted the grid to forget you. It was pine trees, mountains, and weak cell service. After the last three months at HelioQuari—a sprint of acquisitions and regulatory deadlines that had bled into ninety-hour weeks—I needed the silence. I needed the anesthesia of the cold. My body was still vibrating with the phantom hum of the office. The burnout was more than just fatigue; it was an erosion. I felt thin, stretched, transparent. My relationships, my apartment, my health—I had fed all of it into the corporate grinder, and I had nothing left to show for it but a dull ache behind my eyes and a paycheck that barely covered the cost of existing in Boston.
The diner appeared through the curtain of snow around 10:00 p.m., a low flat building buzzing with neon advertising “OPEN 24/7.” It was the only sign of life for miles. I needed coffee. I needed a moment to think that was not my car and not yet a motel. I took the resume with me. It felt stupid carrying a CV into a roadside diner, but it was the only solid thing I had left. It was three pages of proof that I existed, that I was competent. I had spent the last week polishing it, tweaking the kerning, agonizing over verb choice. It was my lifeboat.
I slid into a cracked vinyl booth. The diner smelled of old coffee and frying oil. A young waiter, Noah, maybe twenty, nodded at me and poured a cup of dark liquid without asking.
“Just coffee?” he asked.
“Just coffee, and a quiet corner,” I said.
I spread the pages on the Formica table. Zoe Foster, 31. My entire professional life distilled into bullet points. I uncapped a pen—a heavy steel one I’d kept form my first real job—and made the final notation in the margin of the cover letter I’d attached: Available for relocation within 10 days. It was a lie. I could be ready in one, but ten days sounded professional. It sounded like I had options, like I was moving towards something better, not just fleeing the wreckage.
I was reading the contractual risk management section for the dozenth time when my phone buzzed on the table. A text. Not from Mason, my boyfriend, who had been conspicuously silent all day. It was an automated alert from my apartment management company in Boston.
ALERT: Your smart lock access code has been successfully changed. Welcome to your new settings.
I stared at the screen. I hadn’t changed my code. I called the management company immediately, but the line clicked to an after-hours answering service. I called Mason. Straight to voicemail. I texted him, my fingers suddenly numb. Did you change the apartment code?
A second text came through. This one was from the building’s front desk security. Ms. Foster. Per your request, your cousin Kira Hale has been given primary access.
My request? The coffee turned to acid in my stomach. The exhaustion evaporated, replaced by a cold, sharp dread. I threw a ten-dollar bill on the table, scooped up my phone and my keys, and bolted, leaving the three pages of my pristine resume sitting next to the half-full cup of coffee. I was halfway to the car before I realized it, and by then the snow was coming down too hard. I couldn’t go back. It was just paper.
Inside the diner, Noah cleared the cup. He picked up the resume, whistled softly at the heavy linen paper. It looked important. He glanced at the door, but my taillights were already disappearing. He shrugged and placed the stack by the antique coffee grinder on the back counter, figuring he’d toss it when he cleaned up.
An hour later, another man entered the diner. He was older, perhaps in his late sixties, and wore a dark gray, perfectly tailored suit under a heavy cashmere coat. He did not look like he belonged in River Forge. He looked like he owned it. He sat at the counter, ignoring the menu.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page to discover the rest 🔎👇
