Riddles Without Answers

The Egyptian-themed resort had been her idea—some last-ditch attempt to resuscitate a marriage that had been on life support for years. Now Elena sat on the edge of the infinity pool at midnight, watching the water blur into the darkness of the Red Sea, while Daniel slept in their suite, exhausted from yet another fight.

She swallowed the vitamin D supplement the fertility specialist had prescribed, the chalky pill catching in her throat. Three years of trying. Three years of pills and procedures and hopeful smiles that had gradually curdled into something else. She'd stopped telling him when her period came. He'd stopped asking.

A massive concrete sphinx guarded the pool area, its chipped nose and weathered face somehow more honest than anything between them lately. The ancients had believed the sphinx devoured those who couldn't solve its riddles. Elena felt devoured anyway, riddle or no riddle.

The first drop of rain hit like an accusation.

She didn't move. Lightning fractured the sky, illuminating the resort's pathetic attempt at grandeur—painted hieroglyphs, plastic papyrus plants, the sphinx's blind stare. In that flash, she saw everything clearly: the husband who'd become a stranger, the life they'd planned together that was never going to happen, the way they'd both been waiting for the other to say it first.

Thunder rolled across the desert like the end of something.

She'd always hated the story of Oedipus—how he'd solved the sphinx's riddle only to find horror on the other side. What man walks on four legs, then two, then three? The answer was man, but the real question was whether the walking was worth it.

The rain came harder now, flattening her hair against her skull, washing the vitamin from her hand. She thought about telling him tomorrow, over breakfast by this same pool, that she was done. That some riddles didn't have answers you could live with.

Elena stood as lightning struck the horizon, the sudden brightness flooding her vision. For a moment, everything was illuminated—the past, the future, the terrible work of undoing a life. The sphinx seemed to smile, finally, as if to say: you don't have to solve it to survive it.

She walked back to the room alone, leaving the riddle behind her in the rain.