The Riddle at the Edge

Margot stood by the apartment complex pool at midnight, the water's surface like crushed diamonds under the moon. She clutched her father's old fedora—the hat he'd worn to every chemotherapy appointment, the one that still smelled of peppermint and something medicinal.

Three weeks since the funeral. She'd been taking his vitamin supplements religiously, as if swallowing them could somehow preserve whatever pieces of him remained inside her genetic code. As if being fifty percent of him meant she could somehow metabolize his absence.

The pool gate creaked. Julian.

They hadn't spoken since the night she'd told him she wasn't ready for marriage, wasn't sure she'd ever be. He'd looked at her like she was a sphinx—inscrutable, guarded, impossible to read. Then he'd packed his things in silence.

"Couldn't sleep?" His voice carried across the water.

"Never can anymore."

He sat beside her, careful to leave space between them. The smell of chlorine and night air. "I came for my book. Left it in your mailbox."

"Oh."

"I read somewhere that Egyptians built the sphinx facing the rising sun," he said, apropos of nothing. "Always looking forward, never back. But riddles need answers, Margot. Sometimes you have to turn around."

She fingered the hat's brim. "He wore this to every treatment. Like armor. Like if he looked like himself, he couldn't be dying."

"I know."

"I was scared, Julian. That's the riddle. I was scared to choose anything permanent because everything ends. My father proved that. Love ends. People leave."

"Or you could say: everything ends, so what matters is what you choose while you're here."

The water lapped against the pool's edge—a rhythm, a heartbeat. She took off the hat and set it between them. An offering. A bridge.

"I don't want to be inscrutable anymore," she said. "I don't want to be a riddle."

Julian's hand found hers in the darkness. His palm was warm, his fingers threading through hers like he'd been waiting months for this moment.

"Then answer the question, Margot."

"What question?"

"The only one that matters." His voice dropped to something almost reverent. "Do you want me to stay?"

She thought about vitamins and sphinxes, about her father's hat and everything she'd been swallowing instead of saying. She thought about how the pool reflected the stars, how grief could be a mirror or a window, depending on which way you turned.

"Yes," she said. "Stay."