The Riddle After Dark

The baseball game droned from the television mounted above the patio bar—ninth inning, two outs, and Dean couldn't have cared less. He watched Sarah across the pool instead, tracking how the pool lights caught the sharp new angle of her bobbed hair. She'd worn it long their entire twenty-year marriage, until the divorce was final. Then she'd cut it all off, as if she was shedding something.

Their daughter Maya floated in the water with friends, oblivious to the careful distance between her parents. Dean nursed his drink, counting the freckles on Sarah's shoulders, remembering how they'd gotten there—that summer in Greece, climbing to the Parthenon at dawn, young and foolish enough to believe love could conquer anything.

"Mr. Henderson?" A voice pulled him back. One of Maya's friends stood there, holding something wrapped in a towel. "Maya said you know about cats. This one's not moving right."

The sphinx cat inside the towel was hairless, wrinkled, ancient-looking despite being only a kitten. Dean checked its breathing, its gums. "He's fine. Just overheated. Sphinx cats can't regulate their temperature like the others. Keep him cool and hydrated."

The girl nodded and hurried away with the creature.

"You always were good at fixing things," Sarah said, sliding onto the stool beside him. She smelled like chlorine and expensive wine. "Even when you couldn't fix us."

"Some things don't have fixes." He signaled the bartender for another round.

She turned her wedding ring around her finger—she still wore it, something he'd never asked about. "The riddle of the sphinx, Dean. What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, three in the evening?"

"Man. We crawl, we walk, we use a cane."

"What about the part after dark?" Her eyes searched his. "When there's nothing left to count on?"

The baseball crowd roared—someone hit a home run. But Dean was thinking about hairless cats and Greek ruins and how some riddles have answers, while others just have silence you learn to live with.

"After dark," he said finally, "we remember what we used to be. And we pour another drink."