The envelope on the counter wasn’t just paper; it was a death sentence.
I stared at it, the fluorescent lights of the diner humming that low, electric buzz that usually comforted me, but tonight, it sounded like a flatline. Outside, the wind screamed against the glass, a living, angry thing clawing to get in. Highway 70 was disappearing, swallowed whole by the kind of whiteout snowstorm that turned the Colorado mountains into a graveyard. But the cold seeping into my bones didn’t come from the storm. It came from the letter.
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