Riddles at the Water's Edge

The hotel pool was empty at 3 AM, its surface glass-still except for the ripple that came with each flash of lightning. Elena sat on the edge, her legs submerged in water that felt too warm, too artificial, like everything about this weekend.

She'd come to Cleo's wedding alone—a decision that had felt empowering when she booked the ticket, now just felt like proof that she was the kind of person who attended her ex-girlfriend's nuptials sober and solitary. The bride was probably asleep in the honeymoon suite. Elena was awake, parsing through text messages she'd found earlier on her iphone, messages from Cleo to someone named Marcus, dated six months before their breakup.

Six months. The math didn't work, or maybe it worked too perfectly.

Lightning cracked the sky open, illuminating the resort's strange centerpiece: a fiberglass sphinx that grinned at guests from beside the tiki bar. In daylight it was tacky. At night, in storm-light, it was almost malevolent. The ancient sphinx had posed riddles that devoured those who couldn't solve them. This one just offered overpriced cocktails and bad selfies.

"Couldn't sleep either?"

Elena jumped. A man stood at the pool's far end, cigarette cherry glowing in the darkness. Mark—Cleo's brother, the best man. They'd spent the rehearsal dinner making cynical comments about the marriage industry while everyone else toasted true love.

"Something like that," she said.

He walked over, sat beside her without asking. The pool lapped at his pressed trousers. "You found out, didn't you?"

She turned to him sharply. "Found out what?"

"About Marcus." He exhaled smoke. "I thought you might have. The way you looked at her during vows. Like you were solving a riddle." He flicked the cigarette into the pool, where it hissed and died. "It wasn't another relationship. It was another person. She didn't leave you for him. She left you because you wanted different things. Marcus was just—after."

The lightning came again, closer. The sphinx seemed to lean forward, its stone face almost sympathetic.

"She told you this?" Elena asked quietly.

"No. I'm an attorney. I know how people lie to themselves." He stood up. "Also, you left your phone open on the bar during the reception. I wasn't trying to pry."

Elena looked at the iphone beside her, its screen dark, its contents suddenly less damning. The problem wasn't when the messages were sent. The problem was that she was still reading them.

"What did you want?" Mark asked. "That's the riddle. Not what she did. What you want."

She thought about her apartment, her work, the last six months of freedom that had felt less like liberation and more like waiting. Lightning struck somewhere nearby, thunder rattling the pool furniture.

"I don't know," she said.

"Good answer." He offered a hand. "Better than the wrong one."