The Sphinx in the Bathroom Mirror

The vitamin bottle sat on the edge of the sink like a small amber accusation. D3, 5000 IU. The doctor said it would help with the fatigue, the bone density, the general erosion of forty-something biology. Maya stared at her reflection instead—dark circles under eyes that still held some spark, some defiance, though god knows where she found it these days.

'You're brooding again,' Liam called from the bedroom. 'I can hear you brooding from here.' He said it lightly, the way he said everything now. With distance.

She swallowed the vitamin dry. It caught in her throat like a stone.

They were supposed to be at a dinner party. One of those excruciating gatherings where couples performed their intimacy for an audience, where Maya would watch Liam laugh at someone else's jokes and feel that peculiar hollow ache—that was the bear, wasn't it? The thing that lived in the cave of her chest. The thing that hibernated through their better years and woke up ravenous whenever he looked at his phone instead of her.

'Coming,' she said, but she didn't move.

Last week, she'd found the sphinx. Not the mythological one, though God knows that would have been easier to explain. No—she found the modern version: a question that had no answer, posed by a stranger with his hand on her husband's shoulder at a work event. 'So how long have you two been pretending?' the man had asked, and Liam had laughed, and Maya had stood there holding her glass of wine like a weapon, and later she'd asked herself: Was he joking? Was she?

The real question—the sphinx's riddle—was simpler and more terrible: When did you stop being the person who would definitely know the answer to that?

'Maya?' Liam's voice was closer now. He appeared in the doorway, handsome in that way that made her tired. 'You okay?' He meant it. He was a good man. That was almost worse.

'I'm fine,' she said. The bear in her chest stretched its claws. 'Just thinking about vitamins.' A small lie, but practice made perfect. She followed him into the living room, where the evening waited like a temple she'd outgrown, and she took her place beside him on the couch they'd chosen together five years ago, two strangers playing at forever.