Riddle of the Sphinx

Maya sat on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the pregnancy test balanced on the sink like some fragile verdict. The second line was faint, barely there—a ghost of possibility. She'd been trying for three years, swallowing fistfuls of prenatal vitamins every morning like prayer, and now this uncertain answer.

Her iPhone vibrated against the tile—Ethan calling from his conference in Chicago. Again. She let it go to voicemail. He'd been distant lately, his texts shorter, his voice tinny and rushed when he did call. Maybe he'd met someone else. Maybe he'd just fallen out of love with their desperate project of making a family.

The cat—a regal Egyptian Mau named Sphinx—sat in the doorway, watching her with ancient, knowing eyes. They'd gotten Sphinx together their first year married, back when they believed love conquered all reproductive challenges. Now the cat seemed to hold all their secrets.

Maya turned on the faucet. Water rushed into the tub, drowning out the phone's persistent buzzing. She'd read somewhere that water remembered everything—every tear, every prayer, every body that had passed through it. There was comfort in that idea, somehow.

She reached for the bottle of folic acid on the counter, her hand trembling. Was it even worth it anymore? Ethan's silence had grown louder than his words ever had. Last month she'd found him staring at his phone in the middle of the night, screen illuminating his guilty expression.

The bathroom door creaked open. Sphinx padded in and jumped onto the counter, knocking the vitamins into the sink. The bottle spiraled down the drain as Maya watched, paralyzed.

"Well," she whispered to the cat, "that answers that riddle."

Her phone lit up with a text from Ethan: "We need to talk."

Maya turned off the water. The silence that followed was the loudest thing she'd ever heard.