The Riddle of Us

The sphinx cat sat on the windowsill, her wrinkled skin catching the afternoon light. Mara watched her and thought about how much they both revealed without trying to—vulnerable, exposed, yet commanding attention in their nakedness.

On the bedside table, her phone buzzed again. Another message from David. She didn't need to read it to know what it said. The same question he'd been asking for weeks: *Are we doing this?*

She'd been avoiding the answer, avoiding the palm reader's storefront on 4th Street where her sister had gotten her cards read last month. *Your love line is fractured,* the woman had told her, *like something broke it a long time ago and never healed right.*

Mara had laughed it off then. But now she kept thinking about it, tracing the lines on her own palm in the dark while David slept beside her, his breathing steady and oblivious.

The cat chirped, demanding dinner. Mara crossed the room and scooped her up, the creature's warmth seeping through her thin shirt. She'd adopted the sphinx on impulse—something about her alien beauty, the way she stared back with ancient, knowing eyes. David had hated her at first. Said she looked like a nightmare.

*That's the point,* Mara had said.

Now the cat was the only thing in the apartment that felt honest.

Her palm itched. She looked at the line again—the one the reader said was broken, then reknotted itself in the wrong place. Like a bone that healed crooked.

David would be home in an hour. He'd ask again. He'd press his palm against hers and say, *We can fix this.* And she'd say nothing, because the truth was too jagged to speak: some things don't heal just because you want them to. Some fractures run too deep.

The sphinx purred against her chest, a rumble that vibrated through her ribs. Mara closed her eyes and let herself imagine the answer, hovering on the edge of saying it out loud.

The cat nudged her chin with a sandpaper tongue. Mara opened her eyes. *I know,* she whispered. *I know.*