The Last Riddle of Us

Sheila found the bottle of prenatal vitamins in his jacket pocket, the expiration date reading like an accusation from three years ago. That's when the running started—not the literal kind, though she'd taken up jogging at dawn, her sneakers hitting the pavement in a rhythm that matched the frantic thrum of her heart. No, this was the quiet, daily running away from the question that had become their apartment's sphinx: what do you do when the future you've been building together suddenly feels like a foundation made of sand?

Marcus was still asleep when she returned from her run, his breathing steady, innocent. He looked like the man she'd fallen in love with in graduate school, the one who could quote Neruda while cooking pasta. But now every gesture felt loaded. The vitamins could mean anything—a leftover from a brief affair, a secret attempt to conceive they'd never discussed, or perhaps nothing at all. She'd become an expert in the art of not asking.

At work, her colleague Leena—sharp as a fox in heels, with a marriage Sheila had secretly envied—caught her staring at nothing for the third time that morning.

"You've been somewhere else all week," Leena said, not unkindly. "Marcus again?"

Sheila almost laughed. Almost told her everything. Instead she said, "Just tired."

That evening, over takeout thai, Marcus set down his fork and said, "I found a apartment in Wicker Park. I think I should move out for a while."

The sphinx had finally spoken its riddle. And she realized, with a clarity that felt like coming up for air after being underwater too long, that she didn't want to solve it anymore.

"Okay," she said, and for the first time in months, she didn't feel like running at all.