Sphinx in the Goldfish Bowl

The corporate retreat in Miami was Elena's idea of hell. She stood by the pool, a vodka tonic sweating in her palm, watching her coworkers pretend to be team building. Another hat tipped her way—Jack from accounting, already drunk at 2 PM. She managed a tight smile and turned toward the hotel lobby instead.

That's where she saw it: a massive aquarium, and inside, a single goldfish swimming in endless circles. She felt like that fish lately—trapped, visible, going nowhere.

"Riddle me this," came a voice behind her.

She turned to find Marcus, the company's sphinx. Director of Operations, inscrutable, married to his work. His dark eyes held hers longer than appropriate. "The goldfish has a seven-second memory," he said. "Lucky bastard."

"You wishing you could forget?" she asked, surprised by her own boldness.

"Some things. Others, I'd remember better if I'd never known them at all."

Their affair had started that afternoon, a feverish mistake in his room. Three months of stolen moments, hotel bars, whispered lies. Now it was over. He'd accepted the transfer to Chicago without telling her until it was done.

She touched her stomach, where the morning sickness had started. The vitamin supplements on her nightstand mocked her—prenatal vitamins she'd bought on impulse yesterday, alone in a pharmacy at midnight.

"You're wearing your hat," Marcus said now, noticing her pulling the brim lower. "Hiding again."

"Just practical," she said, though her palms were sweating.

"You know what the sphinx asked?" His voice dropped. "'What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?' The answer was man—crawling as infant, walking upright, then with a cane. But I always thought the real riddle was simpler: how do we become the people we never intended to be?"

The goldfish kept swimming.

"Maybe," Elena said, "we don't become. Maybe we just are."

She walked away without looking back, leaving him standing there with his unanswered questions. Outside, the palm trees swayed in the wind. She would not tell him about the vitamins. She would not be the woman who trapped a man with a child he never wanted.

Some riddles, she decided, were better left unsolved.