The Riddle of Dead Hearts
Elena sat in her parked car, rain hammering against the windshield like accusations. She checked her phone again—no missed calls, no messages. Just like every other night for the past three months.
She felt like a zombie moving through her own life. Not the flesh-eating kind from movies, but something worse: the corporate variety, hollowed out by spreadsheets and quarterly goals, shambling through days that blurred together in an indistinguishable gray haze. Even her marriage had become automatic. David would ask how her day was, and she'd give the same rote response, neither of them really listening.
Outside, lightning fractured the sky, a jagged wound of white that momentarily illuminated the apartment window on the third floor. She could see David's silhouette against the flash—motionless, waiting. Always waiting.
He'd become a sphinx to her lately. Silent, inscrutable, posing riddles she couldn't solve. The change had started gradually, then accelerated after his mother's death in February. Now he spent hours on their balcony, staring at nothing, withdrawn behind a wall of grief she couldn't scale.
Another flash of lightning. This time she thought she saw something different in his posture—the slope of his shoulders, the way one hand pressed against the glass. Not sphinx-like mystery at all, but something far simpler and more devastating.
He wasn't posing riddles. He was waiting for her to stop being a zombie and actually see him.
Elena killed the engine. The rain suddenly felt cleansing rather than punishing. She'd been treating their marriage like another task to complete on autopilot, when what David needed was someone willing to sit in the dark with him and just be present.
The sphinx's riddle wasn't something you solved alone.
She stepped out into the storm, letting the rain soak through her blouse, and headed toward the building. Behind her, the car's interior light flickered out, leaving only darkness behind. Ahead, lightning struck again, and this time she walked toward it.