The Riddle of the Sphinx

Mara stood before the sphinx in gallery three, its limestone face eroded into something that looked suspiciously like judgment. She'd been coming to this museum every Tuesday for six months—her daughter's art class ran concurrent with her own personal pilgrimage to gaze at ancient riddles in stone.

"You're back," said a voice behind her. Julian. The fox-eyed curator with the unfortunate habit of materializing when she felt most vulnerable.

"The way the light hits it at this hour," she said, turning. He wore that suffocatingly familiar cologne, sandalwood and something sweet she'd never been able to place. "It's different."

"Everything looks different when you're leaving him." His voice was gentle, infuriatingly so. They'd been dancing around this conversation for months—since the opening, since the incident with the bronze bull and too much champagne at the donor gala. "I should have told you then."

"Told me what? That my husband was sleeping with his assistant? That I was the last to know in a room full of people who smiled and sipped wine like nothing was happening?" Her laugh came out sharper than she intended. "I'm not the one who needs to tell you things, Julian. I'm the one who needs to hear them."

He stepped closer. The gallery was empty save for them and the sphinx's inscrutable gaze. "I wasn't spying on him, Mara. I was watching you."

"Same difference."

"No." His hand brushed her wrist, feather-light. "It's not the same. I stopped looking at him months ago. The thing with the bull—I didn't tell you because I thought you'd leave. And I was selfish. I wanted you here, even if it was just Tuesday afternoons in gallery three."

The sphinx said nothing. Neither did she, for a long moment. The admission hung there like smoke, impossible to wave away.

"I filed the papers yesterday," she said finally.

Julian's expression didn't change, but something in his posture did—a subtle straightening, like a flower turning toward light. "And Tuesdays?"

She looked at the sphinx, then at him. Some riddles answered themselves.

"I suppose I'll need something to do with my Tuesday afternoons."