The Riddle Between Us

The spinach between his teeth had been there since dinner. Elena watched it caught in the flash of lightning across the bay windows, a small green monument to how long it had been since she'd wanted to kiss him anyway.

Thunder shook the house. The cable flickered out, leaving them in darkness punctuated by storm-light.

"You gonna fix it?" Mark asked, not moving from the recliner where he'd sat for twelve of their sixteen years together.

"The cable's out. Everywhere."

"No. Us."

The word hung between them like the bronze sphinx they'd bought in Egypt—that trip where they'd still held hands, still made love in hotel rooms with thin towels and street noise. The sphinx had sat on their mantel ever since, its riddle unanswered. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? What happens to love when you stop asking questions?

Elena crossed to the window, watching an orange fishing trawler fight the waves. She'd packed her bags yesterday. Hidden them in the trunk of her car, along with the atlas she'd marked with routes to places Mark would never visit.

"Remember what you said about the sphinx?" she asked, not turning around. "That its riddle was really about time eating us alive?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"I think it was about how we become monsters to each other. Slowly. Without noticing."

Another lightning strike illuminated her face—lined, tired, still beautiful in a way that made his chest ache. He stood up slowly, knees popping, and crossed to where she stood. The spinach was gone from his teeth. He'd cleaned it while the room was dark.

"I can answer the riddle, El."

She turned. The orange glow from the boat's navigation lights caught the silver in her hair.

"It's not time," he said. "It's that we stop being riddles to each other. We become things we've already figured out."

Elena's hand moved to her pocket, where her car keys waited. Outside, the first real rain of the storm began to fall, washing the windows clean.