The Last Riddle

The blue light from his iPhone illuminated David's face in the dark bedroom—2:47 AM, again. Beside him, Elena's breathing was slow and rhythmic, but he knew she wasn't asleep. They hadn't really spoken in three months, not since the miscarriage that neither of them could name aloud.

David's thumb scrolled through emails he'd already checked twenty times, a zombie moving through the motions of a life that no longer fit. Work emails. Spam. A notification from his mother asking if they were still coming for Sunday dinner. He couldn't answer that either.

Elena's voice came from the darkness. "You know what you are?"

He kept his eyes on the screen. "What?"

"A sphinx without a riddle."

The phone slipped from his fingers. He turned over. Elena was propped on one elbow, her face half-shadowed, eyes ancient in the way only grief can make them.

"What does that mean?"

"You guard nothing. You ask nothing. You just sit there like some stone creature in the desert, waiting for something that's never going to come."

David felt something crack open in his chest—a fissure, finally, after months of solid ice. "I'm scared, El. If I say it, if I say any of it, I won't stop."

"So don't stop." She reached across the space between them, her hand finding his in the dark. "Start with her name."

The phone buzzed against the nightstand—a work email, something urgent about Q3 projections. David let it buzz.

"Rose," he said.

And then they were both crying, not prettily, but ugly and desperate, two zombies coming back to life at last.