The Riddle of Days

She counted them every morning—seven vitamins, arranged like tiny soldiers on the kitchen counter. Vitamin D for the bones that already felt ancient at thirty-two. Vitamin C for the immune system that had betrayed her last winter. B-complex for the energy she couldn't seem to summon anymore.

Marcus watched from the doorway, sphinx-like in his silence. He'd stopped asking what they were for months ago, around the time she'd stopped pretending she wasn't terrified.

"You're staring," she said, not turning around.

"I'm thinking," he said, which was what he always said when she caught him looking at her like she was a riddle he couldn't solve.

The papaya sat on the counter between them, imported and expensive, its skin freckled with brown like something dying. She'd bought it because the article said it contained enzymes that could heal what the doctors couldn't name. Another thing to consume in the name of survival.

"My mother called," he said. "She wants us to come for Christmas."

She finally turned. "What did you say?"

"I said I'd ask."

The papaya's flesh revealed itself under her knife, startlingly orange against the gray morning light. It smelled sweet and faintly of decay—that particular lushness of things that had traveled too far to survive.

"What did you want to say?" she asked, knife hovering over the fruit.

"That we might not be together by then."

The words landed between them like something delicate that might shatter. He'd never admitted it before—not the possibility of ending, not the fact that he thought about it daily.

"Is that a riddle?" she asked. "Or an answer?"

"It's a question," he said, stepping forward to take the knife from her hand. "One I keep asking myself."

Outside, the city woke up in gritty waves of traffic and morning light. Inside, she watched him finish cutting the papaya, his hands precise, unhurried. The vitamins stood silent witness on the counter. Seven small answers to mortality, and none of them the right one.

"Eat," he said, sliding the plate toward her. "While it's still sweet."

She took a bite. It was. And beneath it, something else—the faint, earthy taste of things that refuse to stay fresh forever.