The Sphinx at the Pool's Edge

The divorce papers sat on the kitchen counter, white as bone, heavy as expectation. Elena stood at the sliding glass door, staring at the **water** of her backyard pool. It had been three months since David moved out, two since she'd last spoken to her mother, six weeks since she'd shown up at work.

The **cat**, Bast, wound around her ankles, demanding breakfast. Bast had been David's idea—a namesake for the Egyptian goddess, a joke about fertility and domesticity that had stopped being funny somewhere around year seven. Now the cat was hers, this sentient reminder of everything she'd failed to sustain.

Elena slid the door open and stepped outside. The pool was pristine, maintained by a service she kept paying for because the alternative was watching it stagnate. She dipped her foot in.

She hadn't been **swimming** since the hospital. Since the miscarriage, the second one, the one that finally broke something between them that neither could name. David had wanted to try again. She had wanted to stop feeling like a vessel for something that wouldn't take root.

She lowered herself into the water. It was shockingly cold. She floated on her back, staring up at the sky, letting herself drift without direction.

At the deep end, perched on the concrete edge, sat the garden **sphinx** David had brought back from Egypt. A souvenir from his bachelor trip, the one he'd taken without her because "you'd hate it, El, it's just desert and tombs." The sphinx smiled its enigmatic smile, holding secrets it would never share.

Elena treaded water, suddenly furious at the stone creature. What did it know about longing, about the weight of years and the terrible patience of waiting? Riddle her this: what loses everything by holding on and loses everything by letting go?

Bast appeared at the pool's edge, peering down at her with amber eyes. The cat blinked slowly, unconcerned.

Elena swam to the ladder and pulled herself out, water streaming from her body like tears she couldn't cry anymore. She stood dripping beside the sphinx, two survivors of different kinds of eternity.

"Fine," she said to the stone face, to the absent husband, to the water, to the cat watching her with ancient, indifferent eyes. "I'll solve this one alone."

Inside, the phone rang. Work, probably. Or her mother. Or David, wanting to know if she'd signed the papers.

She let it ring.