The Riddle We Couldn't Solve

Emma found the bottle of prenatal vitamins in the bathroom cabinet, three years expired and still half-full. She didn't throw them out. Some days, she simply held them, like a talisman from a different life.

"You coming?" Marco called from the hall. "Padel. We're going to be late."

The cat, Bast, wound around her ankles, indifferent to human grief. Emma had named her after the Egyptian goddess, before they started trying, before the doctor's visits became a calendar of disappointment.

The padel court was brutal under the midday sun. Marco's forehand sliced the air with practiced aggression. Emma watched him from the bench, her own racket resting beside her, unused. They'd joined the club together last year—a couple's activity, something new, something they could do while they waited. Now Marco played alone. Emma watched.

"You're not even trying anymore," he'd said that morning, not talking about the game.

She thought about the riddle of the sphinx—what walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening. The answer was man. But nobody asked about the ones who never made it past noon, the ones who stayed children forever, or the ones who were never born at all.

Marco's opponent was someone from his office. Emma watched them shake hands afterward, watched the casual laughter, watched the way Marco's eyes slid past her when he looked toward the bench.

She touched the bottle of vitamins in her pocket. The cat was waiting at home. The sphinx kept its secrets.

"Hey," Marco said, coming closer, sweat dripping down his temple. "You okay?"

Emma looked at her husband—at the lines around his eyes that hadn't been there three years ago, at the way his shoulders stayed perpetually tense, at the love that had curdled into something sharp and wounded.

"I'm done waiting," she said.

"For what?"

"For the riddle to answer itself."

The cat would need dinner. The vitamins could finally be thrown away. The sphinx, after all, had been destroyed—and perhaps that was the only true answer to any riddle: sometimes you have to burn the thing that asks.

Marco stopped moving. The court went silent. Emma stood up, picked up her racket, and walked toward the gate without him.