The Riddle in the Water

Margaret kept the goldfish in a cut-crystal bowl on her desk, right beside the family photos she'd stopped updating three years ago. The fish—she called him Leonard—circled endlessly in his small kingdom, while she drafted press releases for a pharmaceutical company that made its fortune selling happiness in thirty-milligram tablets.

"You're like the sphinx," her ex-husband had told her once, drunk at a Christmas party. "All riddles and silence, guarding secrets nobody wants to solve anymore." She'd been wearing her favorite hat that night—wide-brimmed, velvet—something to hide behind. She hadn't worn it since.

The office was empty when her phone buzzed. Her brother, calling at 2 AM. When she answered, he said only: "Dad's gone."

Margaret stood up. Her legs were running before her mind could catch up—down the corridor, past the cubicles where her colleagues would soon arrive with their coffees and their complaints about the bull their manager was full of today, and tomorrow, and forever.

She reached Leonard's bowl. The goldfish surfaced, his mouth opening and closing in silent prayer, or perhaps accusation. How long had he been swimming in circles? Five years? Six? She'd rescued him from a carnival booth where he'd been a prize no one won. Now he was the only living thing that saw her cry.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, pouring him into the empty water pitcher she'd brought for exactly this purpose, though she hadn't admitted to herself until this moment that she'd been planning it.

The sphinx had asked her riddle at last: What do you do when you realize you've been waiting your whole life for permission to leave?

Margaret walked out of the building carrying a fish in a plastic pitcher, wearing no coat, no hat, nothing to hide behind. The security guard watched her go. Somewhere in the distance, a bull lowed from the stockyard near the train station. She kept walking toward the sound of something real.