Riddles by the Infinity Pool

The sphinx watched from its marble pedestal beside the infinity pool, its eroded face holding secrets older than Rebecca's marriage. At 47, she'd come to this wellness retreat believing that organic vitamins and sunrise yoga could reverse time, or at least soften its edges.

She'd taken her morning cocktail of supplements—D3 for bones, omega-3 for the heart that felt increasingly brittle—when Marcus's iphone lit up on the cabana table. They never locked phones against each other. Another principle from their therapist: total transparency builds trust.

The message preview made her fingers go cold: "Can't wait for Friday. The pool at your place has such perfect acoustics."

Friday. When he'd claimed he needed to work late at the office.

She slipped into the water, letting the silence envelope her. The pool was supposed to be healing—chlorinated water that cost more per night than her first apartment. Floating on her back, she watched the sphinx's winged form silhouetted against the desert sky. The ancient creature had asked riddles that devoured the unworthy.

Her riddle was simpler: how many vitamin supplements could mask the decay of something that had once felt eternal?

Marcus emerged from their room, smiling, holding two glasses of pressed juice. "Green juice," he said. "Detoxing together."

She thought about the pool at their building. The acoustics. The echo of moans against tiled walls. The vitamins in her system suddenly felt like poison.

"What's wrong?" Marcus asked, and she saw it then—the practiced concern, the slight furrow that was perhaps too perfectly calibrated.

Rebecca thought about the sphinx's destroyed face. How violence had worn it down to something that could no longer speak its riddles aloud.

"Just thinking," she said, treading water in the chlorinated deep end. "About how some things aren't puzzles to be solved. Just truths to be drowned in."