Riddle in the Kitchen

The sphinx moths clustered around the porch light again, their wings whirring like small secrets. Elena stood at the kitchen counter, her ritual unwinding like the day itself. One vitamin D tablet—her daily concession to mortality. One orange, segmented and waiting. She was forty-three, and somewhere between the mortgage payments and the successful career she'd forgotten how to want things.

"You're like a riddle," David had said last night, his voice thick with wine and something like accusation. "The sphinx had nothing on you. Ask me a question I can actually answer."

Barnaby, their elderly golden retriever, nudged her knee with his wet nose. He'd been David's dog first, a wedding gift from his sister, but now he followed Elena from room to room as if sensing the marital fault lines widening beneath their feet. She scratched behind his ears, the way he liked.

"At least you're straightforward," she whispered. "Food. Walk. Love."

The sun was setting, painting the kitchen in shades of burnt orange and shadow. In three weeks, David would move out. Their attorneys had already divided everything with the cold precision of strangers. Barnaby would stay with her—David traveled too much now, and anyway, the dog had chosen his allegiance.

She ate the orange slowly, letting the tartness wake something in her. For years she'd been solving everyone else's riddles—her boss's expectations, her mother's disappointments, David's silences. She'd become so good at providing answers that she'd forgotten what her own questions were.

Barnaby whined, nudging her hand again. Elena looked at him, really looked. His muzzle was graying now, his eyes cloudy with age. Someday he'd be gone, like the marriage, like her twenties, like all the things she'd taken for granted.

"Okay," she said aloud. "Okay."

She didn't know what tomorrow would bring. But for the first time in years, she wanted to find out.