Riddles in the Deep

The pool at 2 AM was a different universe. Clara slipped into the water, the silence so absolute she could hear her own heartbeat. Swimming had become her meditation, the only time her mind stopped circling the same relentless questions.

She'd found Leo — an elderly golden retriever with milky eyes and a gentle disposition — wandering the neighborhood three months after Marcus left. Now he waited by the patio doors, watching her with that Sphinx-like patience dogs develop when they've seen too much. The sphinx statue in the garden corner, acquired during their anniversary trip to Egypt, seemed to mock her with its permanent smile. Riddle me this: how does a ten-year marriage dissolve in a single conversation?

Clara flipped at the wall, pushing harder, lap after lap, until her muscles burned. The physical pain was preferable to the alternative. Leo had been Marcus's anniversary gift to her — "A companion for when I'm working late," he'd said. Now the dog was her only witness to the hollow spaces he'd left behind.

She surfaced, gasping, and found Leo standing at the pool's edge, tail thumping a slow rhythm. The sphinx loomed beyond him, stone eyes fixed on some infinite distance. The ancient riddle: what walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? The answer was man, but Clara had always wondered about the in-between times — the messy, liminal spaces where you're neither whole nor broken, neither married nor single, neither living nor merely existing.

"You know something, don't you?" she asked Leo, water streaming from her hair. He wagged his tail, offering no answers, only the warm, solid certainty of his presence. Some riddles weren't meant to be solved, only endured.

She climbed out, dripping onto the concrete, and pressed her forehead against Leo's shoulder. Tomorrow she would call the divorce lawyer. Tomorrow she would figure out who she was without him. Tonight, she let the dog hold her up.