The Riddle of Goodbye

The hospice room smelled of antiseptic and wilting flowers—lilies, I think, though the scent was wrong, too sweet for endings. On the nightstand, a goldfish swam in its bowl, orange scales flashing each time it turned, catching the fluorescent light. Marcus's dying request, the nurse had explained. Something alive to watch while he waited.

I hadn't seen him in seven years. Not since I received the wedding invitation and sent back nothing at all. Not since I fell in love with Sarah and decided the only honorable thing was to disappear entirely, betraying the one person who had never been anything but a friend.

"You remember," Marcus whispered, his voice thin as paper. "That summer. The baseball field behind Miller's factory."

The blood pressure cuff hissed. I nodded, unable to speak. We were sixteen, playing catch with a ball we'd stolen from school, the air thick with humidity and mosquitoes and the certainty that we'd be friends forever. He threw a perfect spiral that day. I missed it, and he laughed, and I loved him for it.

"You were the sphinx," he said, and I almost laughed at the absurdity—Marcus, always quoting dead poets, turning our betrayal into mythology. "All those riddles. You never said why."

The goldfish surfaced, gulping air, and I remembered how Marcus had won it for me at a carnival when we were twelve. The plastic bag swinging between us as we walked home, both of us terrified it would die before morning. He gave me the prize because I couldn't throw worth a damn, even then. He was always giving me things I didn't deserve.

"I'm sorry," I said, and it was both true and useless.

Marcus smiled, a ghost of his old grin. "The sphinx asks the riddle. She doesn't answer them."

He closed his eyes. I sat there as the monitor beeped slower, watching that fish swim in endless circles, carrying everything we could never say. Some things, I realized, remain unanswered by choice—not because we don't know the answer, but because speaking it would destroy everything.