Riddles at Sunset

Marcus adjusted his sunglasses, watching the light fracture across the hotel pool's surface. Orange sunset bled into the water, turning it into something almost violently beautiful—the kind of beauty that hurt to look at when your marriage was dissolving.

"Your vitamin D levels are critically low," the doctor had said that morning, as if low vitamin D was the reason Elena had stopped touching him six months ago. As if supplements could fix what three years of IVF and silent dinners had broken.

Elena sat beside him on the lounge chair, one foot dipping into the pool. She'd always been the sphinx between them—enigmatic, unreadable, posed with questions she refused to answer directly. The riddle wasn't what had gone wrong. The riddle was why they kept pretending something might still go right.

"I'm going back to Chicago on Tuesday," she said, not looking at him. The water rippled around her ankle.

Marcus nodded. He'd known this was coming. Had felt it in the bed they shared like strangers, in the way she flinched when he reached for her hand.

"There's a sphinx," he said suddenly, pointing toward the resort's garden where an Egyptian statue crouched amidst tropical flowers. "Ancient riddles. Secrets. You'd think after all these years, I'd know the answer."

Elena finally turned to him. Her eyes reflected that impossible orange light, and for the first time in months, she looked vulnerable. Not unreadable. Just tired. So deeply tired.

"The answer," she said quietly, "is that some riddles don't have answers. Some things just are."

She stood up, water dripping from her foot onto the concrete. One drop, then another. Marcus watched them darken the stone, thinking about vitamins and deficiencies, about all the things the body needs that it can't produce on its own. About how some losses can't be supplemented.

"Order room service," she said, already walking away. "Get something with actual nutrition this time."

Marcus stayed by the pool as the last of the orange light surrendered to gray. The sphinx watched him from the garden, smiling its stone smile, keeping its secrets. He didn't move. He just watched the water, finally ready to hear what it had been trying to tell him all along.