The Riddle at Sunset

Margaret sat by the hotel pool, the water turning from turquoise to something deeper as the sun dipped below the horizon. She held her iPhone like a talisman, its screen illuminating her face with a cold, artificial glow. Three unread messages from David. She couldn't bring herself to open them.

Across the water, a massive stone sphinx watched from the edge of the resort grounds—a grotesque addition to the landscape, its limestone face eroded by decades of desert wind. Margaret had made fun of it when they arrived three days ago. Now it felt appropriate. The riddle of her twenty-year marriage had finally become unsolvable.

"There you are."

David's voice from behind her. She didn't turn. The cable-knit sweater she'd bought him for Christmas last year hung loosely on his frame. He'd lost weight since the diagnosis. They both had.

He sat on the adjacent lounge chair, close enough that she could smell the gin on his breath. He set down his drink—a sunset-colored cocktail with a slice of orange floating on top, already oxidizing brown at the edges.

"I'm sorry about earlier," he said.

Margaret finally looked at him. His phone sat face-down on his chest. The tether that connected them had been stretched so thin over the years—children, careers, disappointments, silences. Somewhere along the way, they'd forgotten how to speak to each other without an intermediary.

"The sphinx asks a question," she said quietly, nodding toward the statue. "Before you pass, you must answer her riddle."

David smiled faintly. "What's the riddle?"

"That's the problem, David. We don't even know what the question is anymore."

He reached for her hand across the divide between their chairs. His fingers were warm. She let him hold it. The orange slice in his drink had finally sunk to the bottom.

Maybe the riddle wasn't about solving anything. Maybe it was about sitting in the uncertainty together, letting the sun set on what they'd been and not knowing what would come next. The pool's surface rippled in the evening breeze, distorting their reflections until they were unrecognizable.

"I ordered dinner," he said. "They have that fish you like."

Margaret squeezed his hand. "Okay."

Sometimes, the sphinx lets you pass without an answer. Sometimes, you just have to keep walking into the dark together, riddles be damned.