The Riddle of Us

Marcus stood in the kitchen, the morning light cutting through the window like a judgment. In his palm: a vitamin D supplement—the size of a small promise, the color of failed optimism. His doctor had said it would help with the fatigue, the bone-deep exhaustion that had settled in sometime during his third year at the firm. But Marcus knew the truth. No supplement could fix what was actually eroding him.

Elena sat at the island, motionless as a sphinx, her coffee untouched. For weeks now, she had become this creature—enigmatic, silent, watching him with eyes that held riddles he couldn't solve. When she spoke, it was in fragments. "Have you ever wondered," she'd asked yesterday, staring at their wedding photo on the fridge, "if we're just solving the same problems in different configurations?"

He'd taken the vitamin instead of answering.

Now, water dripped from the faucet—a slow, rhythmic counting down of something. PLINK. PLINK. It had been leaking for a month. Marcus kept meaning to call the plumber. Elena kept meaning to ask why he hadn't. The dripping had become another form of communication between them, a language of avoidance.

"I'm going to Egypt," she said.

The vitamin stalled halfway to his mouth. "What?"

"To see the sphinx. It's been eroding for thousands of years, and we still don't know its original face. underneath all those layers, there might be something completely different. Something we got wrong."

Marcus flushed the vitamin down the toilet.

The water swirled, taking it away. Not a solution. Just a different configuration of the same problem.