The Riddles We Swallow

Margaret pushed the **spinach** around her plate, the greens wilting under the weight of everything unsaid. Across the table, David's face illuminated in the cold light of his **iphone**, his thumb scrolling through something more compelling than their seven-year marriage. The notification pinged—his fourth in ten minutes. Each one felt like a tiny betrayal, a whisper that somewhere else, someone wanted him more.

"Remember when we used to talk?" she said, not really asking.

He looked up, the screen reflecting in his glasses like a second, more attentive spouse. "I'm just checking the **baseball** scores, Mags. Game's in the seventh."

She remembered baseball differently. Summer nights at Fenway, beer cups sweating on the rail, his hand finding hers in the eighth inning when their team finally pulled ahead. That was three years ago, before the promotion, before the move to Chicago, before they became two people who happened to sleep in the same king bed. Now baseball was just another thing he watched without her.

"Who's winning?" she asked anyway.

"Red Sox. Three nothing."

Now she spent her mornings **swimming** laps at the Y, the chlorine stinging her eyes, the rhythmic stroke-breathe-stroke the only meditation that quieted the question mark growing in her chest. underwater, she could pretend everything was still fine. Down was safety. Down was silence. Down was where she didn't have to ask why his phone stayed screen-down on the nightstand these days, why he started showering at work.

But then there were days like today—finding the receipt in his coat pocket, the time stamp 2:17 AM, a bar she'd never heard of, two entrees ordered. It perched on her tongue like a **sphinx**'s riddle, demanding an answer she wasn't sure she wanted to solve. The sphinx had always been her favorite myth—mostly because she could never understand why Oedipus didn't just walk away. Why solve the riddle when you could refuse to play?

"David."

"Yeah, Mags?"

"Where were you last night?"

His phone lit up with another notification. He didn't look away. The spinach on her plate had gone cold. Outside, Chicago snow fell silent and indifferent, covering everything fresh.

"Just working late, Mags. You know how it is."

She rose from the table, her chair scraping against the hardwood, and walked to the door. The sphinx remained silent, its secret safe in the space between them. Some riddles, she decided, didn't need answers at all. They just needed you to stop playing the game.