The Riddle of Empty Shelves

The vitamin bottle sat on her nightstand, a daily reminder of everything she couldn't fix. Just one pill, supposed to solve the deficiency that made her tired, hollow, perpetually on the edge of tears. But no amount of Vitamin D could replace what she'd lost.

She stood at the sink, running the water cold, letting it overflow onto her hands. The mirror reflected a woman who looked like her but felt like a stranger. Forty-two years old and still unable to bear the weight of her own choices.

The sphinx statue watched from the corner of the bedroom—a paperweight from that trip to Cairo, years ago, when they were still happy. It had been his joke: "Something mysterious for my mysterious girl." Now it was just limestone, cold and unreadable, like the silence between them that had grown too wide to cross.

She thought about the bear again. Not the animal, but the way he'd used to hold her when she couldn't sleep—the way he'd bear the weight of her fears without complaint. "You're carrying too much," he'd say, his hands strong against her back. "Let me help."

But she hadn't. She'd kept it all inside, let it rot them from the core.

The water was still running, wasting, like everything she couldn't save. She turned it off and dried her hands on a towel that still smelled faintly of his cologne. The sphinx seemed to be asking its ancient riddle: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? But her riddle was simpler: How do you survive yourself?

She swallowed the vitamin without water, dry and defiant. Tomorrow she'd call him. Or maybe she wouldn't. Maybe that was the point—that some riddles don't have answers, only the bearing of them.