The Riddle We Never Answered

Marie sat on the balcony of their apartment — her apartment now, she corrected herself — watching the neighbor's golden retriever chase its tail in hopeless circles. The dog had been doing this for three years, since she and Damien moved in together. Some infinities, she thought, were just different kinds of stubbornness.

The unfinished stone patio Damien had abandoned last summer stretched before her, his ambitious DIY project that had become a sort of domestic pyramid — each weekend he'd add another layer of irregular stones, muttering about foundation work, about building something that lasted. Now it looked like an ancient ruin halfway through excavation.

She traced the lines on her palm, something she'd started doing since the palm reading in Vegas on their anniversary. The fortune teller had taken one look at her hand and said, "You're someone who answers questions nobody asked." Marie had laughed, but the woman's eyes remained flat and knowing.

The coaxial cable still snaked through the living room, disconnected since their fight two nights ago. They'd been watching some documentary about Egypt — cue the sphinx segment — when Damien had finally said what he'd been not saying for months: he'd been offered a promotion in Chicago. He was leaving. He wanted her to come, obviously. The choice, he insisted, was hers.

"That's not a choice," she'd told him. "That's a sphinx without a riddle."

Now she heard his key in the door. He was back for the rest of his things. Bentley, their own dog, lifted his head from the rug but didn't bother standing. Even the animals knew when something was over.

"Hey," Damien said, and the way he didn't meet her eyes said everything. "Just here for the books."

She watched him pack, efficient and distant, and realized she didn't know how to ask whether she'd ever see him again. Some questions felt too heavy to speak aloud.

"Your mother called," she said instead. "She wanted to know if you're still coming for Sunday dinner."

Damien paused, a box of novels in his arms. The cable from the disconnected TV caught on his shoe. "Tell her I can't make it."

"She'll ask why."

"Tell her whatever you want." He looked at her then, really looked at her, and she saw it: he wasn't leaving because he didn't love her. He was leaving because loving her had become another question he couldn't answer.

"You know," she said, "the sphinx ate herself alive because Oedipus solved her riddle. Without the mystery, she had no purpose."

"I know that story, Marie. You told me."

"I'm saying sometimes the answer destroys you."

He set down the box and came to where she sat, taking her hand. His palm was warm against hers, and for a moment they were just two people who had spent three years learning each other's geography.

"Maybe," he said quietly, "that's why some riddles aren't meant to be solved."

Bentley stood and limped over to them, pressing his warm side against both of their legs, the only one who still believed in belonging. Outside, the neighbor's dog finally caught its tail and immediately let go, looking confused. Marie started to laugh, and Damien laughed too, and it was terrible and inadequate and somehow enough.