Riddles by the Pool

The water was cool against her skin, but the heat in Elena's chest had nothing to do with the Egyptian sun. She swam laps in the hotel pool, back and forth, trying to outpace the notification that had lit up her iphone twenty minutes ago.

A message from Marcus's assistant: *She's asking about the ticket refund. What should I tell her?*

Elena touched the bottom of the pool, pushing off with powerful strokes. Her husband's hat—a Panama he'd bought in Rome on their first anniversary—sat folded on the lounge chair where he'd left it before his "emergency meeting" at the Cairo office three days ago. He hadn't come back to the hotel since.

She surfaced, gasping. Through the hotel fence, the Sphinx stared back at her, limestone features eroded by millennia of wind and patience. The riddle of the Sphinx wasn't about walking on four legs, then two, then three. The real riddle was how you could know someone for fifteen years—share a bed, a mortgage, a life—and not know them at all.

Her phone buzzed again. Another number, not Marcus's. A Cairo prefix.

*Your husband said you'd understand. He's staying with me.*

Elena waded to the pool's edge. The water lapped against her shoulders like an apology she refused to accept. She thought about the first time Marcus had kissed her—drunk on cheap wine at a coworker's wedding—how he'd told her she was the only mystery he ever wanted to solve.

The Sphinx offered no answers. Only the same inscrutable smile it had worn since 2500 BC.

Elena climbed out of the pool, water streaming down her body like tears she couldn't cry anymore. She picked up Marcus's hat, weighed its familiar weight in her hands, and placed it carefully on the lounge chair. Then she picked up her iphone and booked a one-way flight home. Some riddles, she decided, weren't meant to be solved—only survived.