The Sphinx in the Hallway

Margaret found her husband sitting on the floor of the hallway at 3 AM, their aging golden retriever's head resting on his knee. The dog, Buster, had been with them for fourteen years—through three promotions, two miscarriages, and the slow erosion of whatever they'd once promised each other.

"She won't tell me," Daniel said, not looking up. "She just sits there with her riddles."

The sphinx in question stood at the end of their hallway—a decorative piece they'd bought in Egypt during that last trip when they still pretended things were fixable. Ceramic, winged, frozen in that eternal silent question. Margaret had hated it then. She hated it more now.

"Daniel." She adjusted the knit hat she'd thrown on to come find him, the one that covered the gray roots she hadn't bothered to fix since February. "It's a statue. It doesn't speak."

"That's not what she asked me last night." His voice cracked. "She wanted to know what eats at everything but consumes nothing."

"Regret," Margaret said, and the word hung between them like smoke. The dog whimpered, sensing something in the air.

Daniel looked up then, and Margaret saw it again—that terrifying distance in his eyes, as if he were somewhere she couldn't follow. The medication wasn't working. Or maybe it was working too well, smoothing over the jagged edges of him until he'd become someone who sat in hallways conversing with Egyptian monsters.

"The answer's time," he said softly. "Time eats everything. That's what she really meant."

Margaret sank to the floor beside him, the hat slipping to her shoulders. Buster rested his chin on her knee, that old, steadfast weight of him. She thought about all the riddles they'd never solved—why she stayed, why he drifted, what happened to the version of them that could still laugh at dinner parties instead of sitting in darkened hallways at 3 AM, waiting for ceramic monsters to speak.

"We should sell it," she said. "The sphinx."

"And then what?" Daniel's fingers threaded through the dog's fur. "Find something else to ask us questions we can't answer?"

Buster sighed, that long, shuddering breath of old dogs who've seen too much. Margaret rested her head on her husband's shoulder, and they sat there together as the hallway light flickered once, twice, then held steady. Some riddles, she realized, don't have answers. Some monsters you just learn to live with.