Riddle Without an Answer

The orange light of sunset spilled across Maris' kitchen counter where she'd left half a papaya, its black seeds glistening like tiny eyes. She hadn't touched her iPhone in three hours—a personal record since the divorce papers arrived last Tuesday.

"You're like the sphinx," Elias had told her that morning, his voice gentle with the exhaustion of trying. "Silent. Impossible to read."

She'd wanted to scream that she wasn't riddle-proof, that she was simply bearing the weight of a decade's worth of unsaid things. But what came out instead was nothing at all.

Now the papaya sat there, soft and vulnerable, its flesh exposed to the kitchen's growing darkness. She remembered how they'd eaten it on their honeymoon in Kauai, the juice running down their chins, laughing at nothing and everything. That version of Maris would have demanded answers. This one simply let the questions hang in the air, unanswered.

Her phone buzzed—him again. The screen lit up: "Can we talk?"

Maris picked up a knife, cut into the papaya's remaining half. The blade slid through flesh that had become too soft, too late. Some things, she realized, couldn't be savored once their moment had passed. The riddle wasn't about what she wanted anymore. It was about whether she could bear becoming someone new in the aftermath of everything she'd once been.

She deleted the message without opening it, then took a bite of the fruit. It tasted like memory and beginning, bitter and sweet all at once.