Riddle of the Empty Room

Elena sat at the kitchen table, counting out pills. A multivitamin, calcium, D3, B12 — each a tiny promise to a body that felt increasingly foreign to her. Outside, Baxter — their golden retriever — scratched at the glass, wanting in. She'd stopped letting him sleep in the bedroom months ago, when the silence between her and Mark had grown too thick for company.

"You're spiraling again," Mark said from the doorway. He held a sphinx-shaped candleholder she'd bought in Egypt, back when they still went on trips. Back when they still touched each other without it feeling like a negotiation.

"It's Thursday. Thursday is vitamin day."

"Every day is vitamin day now."

She didn't look up. "Maybe if you'd been taking them, you'd have —" She stopped. Some wounds didn't need reopening.

The fertility specialist had said it could be either of them. Either. Neither. Both. Mark had refused testing. Said some things weren't meant to be solved. But Elena needed answers the way she needed air. She needed to know why her body refused them.

Baxter whined, a sound that cut through everything.

"Let him in," Mark said. "He doesn't know why you're angry."

"I'm not angry."

"You're furious. You think I don't want to know."

"Don't you?"

He set the sphinx on the table between them. The riddle wasn't what walks on four legs in the morning — it was what happens when two people want different things from the same life. The sphinx's painted eyes watched them, ancient and unimpressed.

"I want to be happy," Mark said quietly. "However that looks."

"And if it looks like adoption?"

"Then we adopt."

"And if it looks like child-free?"

"Then we travel. We get a bigger dog. We figure out who we are when we're not waiting for something that might not happen."

Baxter scratched again, more insistent. Elena stood up and opened the door. The dog barreled in, knocked over the vitamin bottles, sent them rolling across the floor like panicked thoughts scattering. She knelt in the mess, burying her hands in his fur, and for the first time in months, she cried.

Mark's hand found her shoulder. His touch was tentative, careful. Real.

"Okay," she said. "Okay."

The riddle had no answer. Or maybe the answer was that you stopped asking.

She'd pick up the vitamins later.