Poolside Riddles

The corporate retreat was exactly the kind of performative bonding activity that made Elena question every life choice that led to this moment. She stood at the edge of the infinity **pool**, the desert sunset bleeding into the water like a wound that wouldn't heal, nursing her third glass of cheap chardonnay.

"You're not going in?" The voice belonged to Marcus from marketing—the man everyone called "the **fox**" behind his back, though never to his face. He had a way of extracting information without anyone realizing they'd been hunted until it was too late.

Elena swirled her wine. "I'm good here."

Marcus joined her at the rail. "The CEO keeps quoting **Sphinx** mythology in his keynote speeches. Riddles this, eternal questions that. I think he believes he's some kind of wise gatekeeper." He laughed, sharp and humorless. "Mostly he's just overpaid."

Elena's phone buzzed. Another notification from her husband: "Hope the retreat's productive." The man who had stopped seeing her years ago, who now only remembered she existed when he needed something—clean shirts, dinner, an alibi for his own absence.

Her phone's wallpaper showed Buster, their **dog**, the one thing in her life that still offered uncomplicated love. Buster who would be dead within the month, the vet had said yesterday. Cancer. She hadn't told her husband yet. She hadn't told anyone.

"You okay?" Marcus asked, and for once, the fox's eyes held something genuine. Something almost gentle.

Elena set down her glass. "No," she said, the word foreign in her mouth. "I don't think I am."

They stood there as the desert darkened, neither speaking, and for the first time in years, Elena felt something shift inside—something cracked open, like a door finally pushed ajar.

The next morning, she would call a lawyer. She would book a solo trip. She would hold Buster every single day he had left. But tonight, under a sky suddenly brilliant with stars, she simply breathed.