The Riddle of Empty Spaces

Margaret arranged the pills on her kitchen counter—same order every morning. The vitamin D capsule stood out among the blood thinners and calcium supplements, a small amber promise of bone health in a body that felt increasingly fragile. Sixty-three years of meals and movements and somehow she'd arrived here, alone in a house that once held two people's laughter.

The sphinx statue watched from the garden windowsill, a wedding gift from their trip to Egypt twenty years ago. Daniel had loved the riddle aspect of it—the creature that asked questions without speaking. "We're all sphinxes," he'd said, his hand warm on her lower back. "Guardians of our own mysteries."

Barnaby, their ginger tabby, jumped onto the counter and knocked the vitamin D onto the floor with casual indifference. He was Daniel's cat, really. Daniel had picked him out from the litter, brought him home, and now in the thick of her grief, it seemed cruel that the animal had outlived his true person. Barnaby had taken to sleeping on Daniel's pillow, as if maintaining the warmth for someone who wouldn't return.

Margaret retrieved the vitamin and dry-swallowed it anyway. The pharmacist had warned about taking them without food, but hunger felt optional these days.

Her phone buzzed—a dating app notification. Daniel had been dead fourteen months. The sphinx's stone face seemed to mock her hesitation. When did one stop being a wife and start being something else? Something solitary and unreadable?

Barnaby wound around her ankles, purring mechanically. He wanted fresh water, not comfort.

"You and me both," she murmured, and turned to the sink. Outside, the sphinx kept its eternal posture—part lion, part human, all riddle. Margaret finally understood what Daniel had meant. Some answers required living through the question first.