I worked with a woman named Susan for almost seven years.<\/p>\n
She was 54, quiet, and never talked much about herself.<\/p>\n
Every afternoon, she ate the same sandwich at her desk. She never came to office parties and always declined invitations to go out after work.<\/p>\n
Some coworkers joked that she probably spent every evening watching television with her cat.<\/p>\n
I laughed along sometimes.<\/p>\n
Susan never reacted.<\/p>\n
Last month, she announced she was resigning.<\/p>\n
On her final Friday, our director gathered everyone in the conference room for a small farewell.<\/p>\n
After a few speeches, he looked around and asked, “Does anyone here actually know what Susan does outside this office?”<\/p>\n
Nobody answered.<\/p>\n
Then he reached into his bag and pulled out a hardcover book.<\/p>\n
I recognized it immediately.<\/p>\n
It was the latest novel from one of my favorite mystery writers.<\/p>\n
The director smiled.<\/p>\n
“Susan is the woman who wrote this book.”<\/strong><\/p>\n I honestly thought he was joking.<\/p>\n Then Susan confirmed it.<\/p>\n She’d been publishing novels under a pen name for nearly ten years.<\/p>\n Her books had sold hundreds of thousands of copies.<\/p>\n She was leaving because her publisher had offered her a new contract, and she finally wanted to write full-time.<\/p>\n I couldn’t believe it.<\/p>\n I’d read three of her novels without realizing who wrote them.<\/p>\n After the party, I apologized for the jokes.<\/p>\n Susan smiled.<\/p>\n “You never asked what I liked doing,” she said.<\/p>\n She wasn’t angry.<\/p>\n But I haven’t forgotten those words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I worked with a woman named Susan for almost seven years. She was 54, quiet, and never talked much about herself. Every afternoon, she ate the same sandwich at her desk. She never came to office parties and always declined invitations to go out after work. Some coworkers joked that she probably spent every evening …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10696,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10694\/revisions\/10696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}