The Riddle of Monday Morning

David stood at the edge of the padel court, racquet dangling from his grip like a dead thing. Across the net, Elena moved with the fluid grace of someone who hadn't yet been hollowed out by three years of middle management at Morrison & Stone.

"You look like a zombie," she said, not unkindly. She'd said it before. They all had. The Morrison zombies—shuffling through open-plan offices, eyes glazed from too many spreadsheets, too many meetings about meetings, too many strategic initiatives that went nowhere.

"It's the quarterly review," David said, though that wasn't entirely true. Sarah's pills weren't working anymore. The doctors were sphinxes, really—smiling enigmatically, speaking in riddles about neurochemistry and patience, while his wife dissolved like sugar in cold water.

They played in silence after that. The ball cracked against the glass walls. David's mind was elsewhere—on last night, when Sarah had looked at him across the dinner table and asked, "Do you still love me, or are you just waiting for me to get better?" The question hung between them, heavy and unanswerable. Like something the sphinx would ask, with its lion claws and human face and wings that could carry you to heaven or drop you from the sky.

Afterward, while Elena showered, David slipped into the pool. Swimming had always been his meditation—the world narrowed to the rhythm of breath, the drag of water against skin, the blue silence that muffled everything else. He thought about Sarah's question. Did he love her? Or had he become a zombie too, going through the motions of devotion?

When he emerged, shivering, Elena was sitting on a bench, towel-drying her hair.

"My brother killed himself last year," she said suddenly. David froze. "He was a lot like your wife, I think. Everyone kept saying it would get better. The doctors were sphinxes. He got tired of riddles."

She stood up, shouldering her bag. "Don't be a zombie, David. Whatever that means for you."

David drove home, water still clinging to his skin, and found Sarah sitting on the back porch watching the sunset. She looked small against the sprawling sky, translucent as morning dew. But when she saw him, she smiled—a real smile, the first in months.

"I made dinner," she said. "Nothing fancy. Just... I wanted to."

Maybe that was the answer to the sphinx's riddle. Not love as a feeling, but love as a practice. Not staying afloat alone, but swimming toward each other, even when drowning seemed easier.

"I'll help," David said, and meant it.