Riddles in the Ash

The corporate logo stared back at her—a stylized sphinx, its enigmatic smile promising wisdom it never delivered. Elena swirled her drink, watching the ice melt like her patience. Three hours into the mandatory retreat, and she'd already decoded the real riddle: her marriage had been dead for months.

"You look like you're plotting murder," Marco said, sliding into the seat beside her. He was the office fox—nimble, adaptable, always landing on his feet. Last year's restructuring should have gutted him. Instead, he'd emerged vice president of something nebulous.

"Just thinking about how Keith managed to turn 'synergy' into a verb," she said.Keith—aka the bull—had spent the entire morning charging through presentations, goring anyone who questioned his metrics. Elena's hand had cramped from taking notes she'd never read, her palm pressing against the page until ink stained her skin life.

Marco signaled the bartender. "You know what the sphinx asked Oedipus? What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?"

"I know the riddle, Marco."

"But do you know the answer?" His fingers brushed hers—accidental, electric. "Man. Crawling as an infant, walking upright, then with a cane. The tragedy isn't the answer. It's that the sphinx threw herself off a cliff once he solved it. Some truths destroy the keeper."

Elena remembered David's face that morning—blank, indifferent—when she'd finally said the words. He hadn't argued. Hadn't cried. Had just nodded, like checking off a completed task. That was the burden she'd been carrying, the bear that had taken residence in her chest: not that he didn't love her anymore, but that he'd stopped trying years ago and never bothered to tell her.

"I'm leaving David," she said.

Marco's glass paused halfway to his mouth. Outside, the hotel's fake palm trees bent in a wind that smelled of exhaust and desperate hope. "Tonight?"

"Already done. My bags are in the car." She raised her glass, the crystal catching light like something sharp and dangerous. "To riddles with no answers."

Marco hesitated, then clinked his glass against hers. His eyes held something she hadn't seen before—or maybe had refused to see. "To the ones worth asking anyway."