The Sphinx Waits

Miriam lowered herself into the heated pool, the water embracing her like an old lover she'd foolishly trusted before. David sat on the deck chair, scrolling through his phone, the blue light casting his face in that familiar mask of absence. Twenty years of marriage, and this was what remained — two people swimming in the same direction but never quite touching.

She'd stopped wearing her wedding ring three weeks ago. He hadn't noticed.

From the resort's terrace, the Great Sphinx watched them across the desert night, its broken nose and weathered face somehow more honest than anything David had said to her in months. That ancient limestone creature had kept its secrets for forty-five centuries. Miriam had kept hers for barely seven days.

"You're going to prune," David called out without looking up.

"Let me prune."

A dog appeared at the pool's edge — a stray, ribs showing through patchy fur, one ear permanently folded. It had been coming to their balcony each evening since they arrived. Miriam had named it Horus, though she knew better than to feed it. Attachment was how you started caring about things that could leave you.

The animal whined softly, and Miriam felt something crack open in her chest. She was swimming toward the edge when David finally spoke her name.

"I met someone."

The words hit the water's surface and scattered like ripples. Of course. The sudden trip to Egypt, the hotel upgrades, his restlessness that she'd mistaken for midlife crisis. It wasn't a crisis at all — it was an escape.

Miriam stopped swimming. She treaded water in the center of the pool, suspended between the deep end and the shallow, watching the way the hotel lights danced across the surface. The sphinx riddle wasn't what walks on four legs, then two, then four. The riddle was how long you could keep swimming before you drowned.

"What's her name?" she asked, her voice remarkably steady.

"Does it matter?"

"No." Miriam turned onto her back, floating face-up toward the desert stars. "I suppose it doesn't."

The dog lay down at the water's edge, watching her with ancient, patient eyes. Tomorrow, she would pack. Tomorrow, she would book a separate flight home. Tomorrow, she would figure out how to live in a house that had become a tomb.

But tonight, she would keep swimming, buoyed by salt and silence, while the sphinx bore witness to everything she couldn't say.