The Last Questions

The retirement party dragged toward midnight, cheap wine and forced laughter filling the conference room where Mara had spent fifteen years answering phones that never stopped ringing. Now her phone lay dead in her purse, alongside a resignation letter she'd drafted and rewritten seventeen times.

She escaped to the balcony, needing air, and found the CEO's husband there—Marcus, the man everyone whispered about. He stood smoking in the moonlight, looking less like a corporate spouse and more like a **fox** who'd raided the hen house and found it surprisingly empty.

"They're inside discussing your legacy," he said, exhaling smoke. "As if legacy is something you can package and sell."

Mara leaned against the railing. "I'm leaving tomorrow. Greece." She'd booked it on impulse—an apartment overlooking the Mediterranean, where she planned to spend her **swimming** through deep water until her limbs remembered how to move for herself instead of someone else's timetable.

Marcus nodded slowly. "I left my firm three years ago. Worst **dog** of a marriage you can imagine—she only married me because I looked good on arm. Now she has the CEO spot and I have this." He gestured with his cigarette, embers tracing dying arcs against the sky.

She'd heard the rumors. His wife carried the company like a wounded **bear**, mauling anyone who threatened her dominance. Marcus had been her accessory, then her prisoner, then her ghost.

"Why stay?" Mara asked.

"For the view." He flicked the cigarette over the edge. "You know what riddles me? We spend our lives becoming things we never chose. Then one day you wake up and you're the **sphinx**—perched above everything you built, asking questions you can't answer yourself."

He turned to her, really looked at her, for the first time. "What question are you trying to answer, Mara?"

The question hit her before she could stop it: *Who would I be if no one needed me?*

She found herself saying, "I don't know how to want things anymore. I only know how to be what's required."

Marcus smiled sadly. "Start small. Want something impossible. Want to be happy. Want to matter. Then figure out the rest in Greece."

Inside, the applause swelled for someone else's retirement speech. Mara found her hand in her purse, touching the resignation letter like it might bite her, then Marcus's lighter, flicking it open and watching the flame dance in the darkness.

"Want a ride to the airport?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, the word tasting like her first real breath in years.