Riddles in the Sand

The Caribbean sun beat down on the padel court where David's shirt stuck to his back like a second skin. Sara watched from the lounge chair, nursing her third gin and tonic, feeling like something that had shuffled out of a grave - a zombie in a swimsuit, going through the motions of the vacation they'd booked six months ago when they still believed things would get better.

Her hair, usually so meticulously maintained, frizzed in the humidity. She ran her fingers through it, remembering how David used to bury his face in it and inhale, back when they could still touch each other without the weight of everything unsaid hanging between them.

The resort's palm trees stood like indifferent sentinels along the perimeter of the court. Yesterday, she'd visited the fortune teller in the cabana near the beach - an elderly woman with tobacco-stained fingers who'd traced the lines on Sara's palm and whispered something about sphinxes. "You carry a riddle," the woman had said in broken English. "Some questions have answers that destroy the questioner."

David scored a point, pumping his fist in a way that might have been genuine joy or might have been performance art. Their marriage had become a series of gestures - morning coffee kisses, dinner conversations about work, the careful navigation around the empty room where their daughter's crib had stood for three months before the stillbirth. Five years now, and they were experts at pretending nothing was missing.

The palm reader's words echoed as Sara watched her husband high-five his temporary opponent, some vice president from Seattle. She was a sphinx, wasn't she? Guarding a terrible secret: that she didn't want to try again, didn't want to keep subjecting them both to the monthly devastation of hope, but couldn't find the words to tell him.

She swallowed the rest of her drink, ice melting against her lips. David jogged over, grinning, sweat dripping from his hairline, and for a moment she saw him clearly - the man she loved but no longer knew how to reach. Some riddles, she realized, didn't have answers. They only had the choice between remaining silent or speaking the truth and watching everything break.

"You should play," he said. "There's an opening in the next round."

Sara set her glass down and stood up. "I'd rather walk on the beach."

The sphinx's riddle, she decided, would remain unsolved for one more day.