The Answer to the Riddle

I was swimming laps when I finally understood the shape of the silence between us.

The community pool was empty at 6 AM, the water a chlorinated blue that matched exactly the dress Margot wore when I first asked her what she wanted from this life. She'd been taking these prenatal vitamins for six months by then, a small orange bottle on our bathroom counter that felt like a accusation every time I reached for my toothbrush.

"I don't know," she'd said, turning away from me. "I thought I did."

Now, three weeks after she moved out, I was still taking care of her goldfish. Leonard. He was probably depressed too, swimming the same lazy circles in his too-small bowl on the windowsill. Sometimes I wondered if he remembered Margot, or if fish memory was actually that short—three seconds, three heartbeats, and then everything new again. How convenient that would be.

I surfaced from the pool, gasping. My phone buzzed on the deck chair.

"Can I come over?" Margot's text read. "To get the rest of my things. And the cat."

Buster was curled on her pillow when I let myself into the apartment. He regarded me with sphinx-like judgment, as if he knew I was the reason his human was gone. Margot had always called him her familiar, her tiny orange keeper of secrets. Now he was just mine, temporary and resentful.

I made coffee and waited, listening to the refrigerator hum, Leonard's filter bubble, the clock ticking through hours that felt like days.

When she came, she looked different. Thinner. She'd cut her hair.

"You're swimming," she said, noticing my wet hair and gym bag. "Since when do you swim?"

"Since you left," I almost said, but didn't. "Since last week."

She moved through the apartment like a ghost, gathering her life into cardboard boxes. Books. Clothes. The orange bottle of vitamins. Leonard's fish food.

She paused in the bedroom doorway. "You know what my mother used to say about the sphinx riddle?"

I shook my head.

"She said the answer wasn't man. She said it was love. Because love changes how you walk through the world, and it changes you, and eventually—" Margot's voice caught. "Eventually you need something to hold you up."

She took a deep breath. "I'm not ready for children. I thought I was, because that's what people do, but I'm not. And I couldn't say it, because I thought you'd leave. So I left instead."

The silence stretched between us, heavy and old.

"I wouldn't have," I said. "I didn't want them either. Not really. I just thought I was supposed to want them. With you."

Her eyes widened. "You never said that."

"Neither did you."

We stood there, ridiculous and hopeful, two people who had ruined a perfectly good thing trying to be people we weren't. The cat wound between our legs, purring like a tiny engine.

"I could get a bigger tank," I offered, gesturing toward Leonard. "For the fish. Maybe he'd remember you, if you came to visit."

Margot smiled, and it was like the sun coming out. "Maybe he would. Maybe I'd remember myself, too."

Later, we went swimming together. The water held us both.