Riddle at the Midnight Hour

The hotel pool was empty at 2 AM, its surface still as glass, reflecting the twisted palm trees and Elena's exhausted face as she sat on the edge, legs dangling in the chlorinated water. Her iPhone lay on the nearby lounge chair, screen lighting up every few minutes with messages she couldn't bring herself to answer.

Three days. That's how long she'd been avoiding David's calls since finding the receipt in his jacket pocket. Dinner for two at La Maison, the restaurant they'd visited on their first anniversary — but the date was last Tuesday, when he'd claimed to be working late.

"You look like you're solving a riddle," came a voice from the darkness.

Elena jumped, nearly losing her balance. A man in his fifties emerged from the shadows, wearing a hotel robe that had seen better decades. His eyes held the weight of someone who'd seen too much and forgotten how to care.

"The sphinx," he said, gesturing vaguely toward the hotel's ridiculous theme decor — a stone sphinx guarding the pool area, mouth frozen in an eternal smirk. "Always asking questions. Never satisfied with the answer."

He sat beside her, not too close. "I'm Marcus. Third marriage ending. You?"

"First," she said. "Maybe last."

"The riddle isn't why they do it," Marcus said, his fingers trailing through the pool water. "The riddle is why we think we deserve better than to be alone."

Her iPhone chimed again. Another message from David: *Please. Let me explain.*

"What if the explanation doesn't matter?" Elena whispered.

Marcus stood slowly, joints popping. "Then you become like old Sphinx over there. Stone. Silent. Waiting for someone who never comes with the right answer."

He walked away without another word, his silhouette swallowed by the hotel corridors.

Elena reached for her phone. The messages had stopped coming. In their place, a single notification: *David has shared his location.* She watched the small blue dot moving away from the city, toward the airport.

The sphinx seemed to laugh at her from across the pool.

She deleted his contact. Then she deleted his number. Then she turned off the phone completely and slid it into her bag, letting the pool's silence fill the space where her future used to be.