The Riddle of Us

Maya sat across from Daniel at their corner table, the silence between them thick enough to choke on. Three years together, and suddenly he'd become a sphinx—impassive, inscrutable, withholding answers she desperately needed.

"I don't know what you want from me," he said, finally.

Her iphone buzzed against the wooden table—another work email at 8 PM. She ignored it, just as she'd ignored the signs for months. The emotional zombie routine: he was there, but not present. Going through the motions, hollowed out by what, she still didn't know.

"I want the truth," she said. "Whatever it is."

Outside the bistro window, lightning forked across the November sky, illuminating his face for a split second. The weariness she saw there stopped her cold. This wasn't indifference. It was something else entirely.

A flash of orange caught her eye—a fox trotting down the rain-slicked street, improbably wild in the middle of the city. It paused, turned to look through the glass, eyes bright with something fierce and untamed. Then it vanished into the dark.

"I'm leaving," Daniel said quietly. "Not us. The city. This life."

Maya stared. "What?"

"I quit my job today. Sold my shares. I'm moving to that cabin in Vermont we joked about." He leaned forward, something igniting in his eyes for the first time in months. "I thought you'd think I was crazy. That's why I didn't tell you."

The zombie wasn't dead; he'd been waking up.

Her phone lit up again. Her boss's name. The world clawing at her, demanding more, draining her dry just like it had tried to drain him.

She watched the fox's empty space in the street, then back at Daniel—really saw him this time. The sphinx had posed its riddle, and she'd been too afraid to listen.

"Ask me," she said.

"What?"

"Ask me to come with you."

The lightning flashed again, and in that brief illumination, everything changed.