The Riddle of Midnight

Maya stood before the bathroom mirror, removing her contacts. Her eyes, without their corrective shells, were vague pools reflecting the miniature sphinx statue on her vanity—a relic from her grandmother's travels, its stone face worn smooth by decades of touching. She'd always hated how the sphinx seemed to know something she didn't, its enigmatic smile mocking her uncertainties.

The phone buzzed. Mark.

She'd been calling him her friend for three months, though they both knew better. Their Friday night "friendship" began at the office holiday party, his hand lingering on her waist during "All I Want for Christmas Is You," ended in his apartment with his cat, Bacon, watching them with judgmental eyes from the bookshelf.

Now Mark was married to someone else. The wedding was last month. Maya had sat three rows back, watching him recite vows that once could have been hers, could have been anyone's really—that was the point, wasn't it? Vows were just pyramids built on sand, impressive until the tide came in.

"Bullshit," she whispered, and the word felt like prayer.

Her coworkers threw that word around constantly—bull market, bullshit, bullshit—but they never understood what it meant. They moved through their days like cattle, oblivious to the slaughterhouse waiting. Maya had stopped explaining.

Bacon the cat had died last week. Mark told her through tears that surprised her—she didn't know he still cried, didn't know Bacon was old, didn't know she cared until the message appeared and her stomach hollowed out. She sent a polite condolence text. Three paragraphs she deleted, then: "I'm sorry."

The sphinx stared back.

"What?" Maya asked it. "What's the riddle?"

The riddle was why she kept answering when Mark called, why his voice still made her chest ache, why she was standing in her bathroom at midnight, phone in hand, contemplating decisions she'd already made a thousand times before.

"It's not about answers," she told the sphinx. "It's about learning which questions matter."

She plugged in her phone. Mark could wait. Tomorrow, she'd quit her job. Tomorrow, she'd book the ticket to Egypt she'd been dreaming about since college. Tomorrow, she'd find the real sphinx and demand the answer to the only riddle that counted: how to live without being afraid.

But tonight, she'd sleep. The sphinx would keep its secrets. The bullshit could wait until morning.