The Riddle at the Table

The spinach salad sat untouched between them, wilting under the restaurant's harsh fluorescent lights. Elena picked at her appetizer, watching Thomas across the table. He hadn't looked at her once since they sat down.

"You're quiet," she said, not really a question.

Thomas adjusted his fedora—affectation, really, none of them wore hats anymore—and shrugged. "Work. You know how it gets."

She didn't. Not anymore. After fifteen years of marriage, she'd stopped knowing where he went for those long weekends, those "business trips" that always seemed to coincide with her sister's visits to the city. The phone calls he took in the garage. The encrypted messages on his laptop.

A spy, her mind whispered. Not the glamorous kind. The sad, domestic kind.

"I saw your messages," she said softly.

Thomas froze, his wine glass halfway to his lips. "What?"

"With Sarah. The restaurant receipts. The hotel charges." Elena's voice didn't waver. She'd practiced this conversation in her head a thousand times. "You think I'm stupid, don't you? That I don't notice anything because I'm just the wife who cooks dinner and walks the dog?"

At the mention of Buster—their golden retriever, currently waiting at home—Thomas's face cracked. Something like guilt flashed across his features, quickly replaced by defensiveness.

"It's not what you think—"

"Then what is it?" Elena leaned forward, her voice rising. "Because I've been asking myself that question for months. And you know what I've realized? You're like the goddamn sphinx. Nothing but riddles and silence."

Thomas looked away, staring at some point over her shoulder. The restaurant noise swelled around them—laughter, clinking glasses, the ordinary sounds of people who weren't falling apart.

"I'm leaving," he said quietly.

Elena laughed, a harsh sound. "You're leaving? After all this, you're just going to walk away?"

"What did you expect?" Thomas finally met her eyes, and she saw the exhaustion there. "For us to keep doing this? This—" he gestured vaguely between them "—whatever this is?"

The spinach on her plate had gone completely limp. Like them.

"I expected you to love me," she said.

Thomas stood up, placed some cash on the table, and walked out. Elena watched him go, his hat still pulled low, his secrets still intact. She signaled the waiter for another glass of wine, and wondered when exactly—between the dog walks and the grocery runs and the silent dinners—she had become the stranger in her own marriage.