The Riddle of Remaining

The mediation room smelled of stale coffee and the clementine I couldn't stop peeling, my fingers stained with citrus oils. Sarah sat across from me, her navy dress perfectly pressed, while the lawyer droned on about asset division. Behind us, through the window, a baseball game flickered on a bar TV—someone sliding into home, safe or out, I couldn't tell.

"Remember our trip to Egypt?" she asked suddenly, cutting through the discussion of retirement accounts. "The Sphinx guard wouldn't let me touch it because I wasn't wearing appropriate sleeves. You gave me your jacket."

I remembered. The limestone creature had watched us with worn eyes, its riddle already answered millennia ago. Ours remained unsolved: how does love calcify into resentment? How does a shared mortgage become a weapon?

"You always hated baseball," I said, surprising myself. "But you came to every game my brother played."

"I hated that you loved it more than you loved hearing about my day."

The mediator cleared his throat. "Perhaps we could focus on the house?"

The orange segments in my hand looked like a torn-apart thing, something once whole now separated. I thought about how Sarah had saved the orange peels once, made them into a sachet for our closet. How long ago? Three years? Before the promotions, before the late nights at the office became permanent, before we learned to live like strangers in the same bed.

The baseball game on the screen went to commercial. A sphinx in a luxury car advertisement asked if we were ready to be legendary.

"I don't want the house," Sarah said. "I just want to know when you stopped seeing me."

The room went silent. The smell of orange hung between us, sharp and bright as the day we met.

"I never did," I said, and believed it. "I just forgot how to look."

Outside, summer was ending. The baseball season would wrap soon. The sphinx would keep its secrets, and some riddles, we were learning, don't have answers at all.