The Riddle of Goodbye

Miriam pressed her thumb against Elena's palm, the skin still damp from their champagne glasses. "You're leaving, aren't you?"

Elena watched a rust-colored fox dart between the resort cabanas, its tail flicking like a flame. Outside, the desert sky bruised purple against the palm trees.

"You always could read everything," Elena said, pulling her hand away. "Like the sphinx, demanding answers I'm not ready to give."

"You've been asking me riddles for years," Miriam said. "Where do you see us in five years? What are we building together?" She laughed bitterly. "Meanwhile, you're already interviewing for that position in Dubai."

The fox appeared again, closer this time, watching them with amber eyes that seemed to hold ancient secrets.

"It's not just the job," Elena said. "It's that you want to solve me, Miriam. You want my life to resolve like a clever riddle with one clean answer. But I'm still figuring out the question."

"You're forty-two years old."

"And still allowed to be unsolved."

Miriam stood up, her chair scraping against the terrace tiles. "You know what the sphinx did to those who couldn't answer her riddle?"

"Ate them alive?"

"Worse." Miriam walked to the railing. "She let them walk away, never knowing if they'd almost had it. Never knowing if they'd been one word away from everything making sense."

Elena joined her at the railing, their shoulders not quite touching. The fox had vanished into the dark.

"Maybe that's the point," Elena said softly. "Some answers aren't meant to be solved. They're just meant to be lived with."

Miriam turned, her face half in shadow. "I don't want to live with riddles anymore. I want answers."

"Then you'll have to find them with someone else."

The fox screamed somewhere in the darkness—a sharp, terrible sound that was almost human. Above them, the first stars appeared, indifferent as sphinxes, silent as the space growing between them where their hands almost met. Tomorrow, Elena would be gone, and Miriam would finally have the certainty she'd demanded, though it would taste nothing like she'd imagined. Tonight, they just watched the palms sway in the wind, two women who knew each other too well, not knowing anything at all.