The Unanswered Riddle

The hotel pool reflected nothing—its surface had been drained for weeks, leaving only the cracked blue tile beneath. Elena sat on one of the loungers, her orange silk robe catching the afternoon light. She'd checked in three days ago, telling no one.

"You can't stay in Room 312 forever," Marcus said, settling onto the adjacent chair. The coiled cable from his headphones dangled from his pocket, a dark umbilical to the noise-canceling world he preferred.

"Watch me."

He reached for her hand, his fingers tangling in her hair—still dark, still the same length he'd first admired at that disastrous office Christmas party seven years ago. "You're acting like a sphinx," he said softly. "All riddles, no answers."

She pulled away. "Maybe I'm done giving answers. Maybe I'm tired of being the one who holds everything together while you—what? While you commute to that job you hate, come home, eat the dinner I planned, and sleep in the bed I chose?"

An orange rolled from the fruit bowl on the side table, coming to rest against her bare heel. Neither of them moved to pick it up.

"I asked you to marry me," Marcus said. "That was an answer."

"That was a question disguised as an answer. And I said yes, didn't I?" She stood up, her robe shifting like liquid. "But somehow in the saying yes, I lost the part of me that knew what I wanted. The sphinx didn't just ask riddles, Marcus. She ate people who couldn't solve them."

"So what happens now? You eat me?"

"No." She walked to the edge of the empty pool, looking down into the absence of water. "I finally stop trying to solve the riddle. I stop pretending there's a right answer."

She dropped her room key into the dry depths. It clinked against the tile, the sound sharp and final.

"You're leaving?"

"I'm already gone." She didn't turn around. "The cable's been cut, Marcus. I just had to be the one to finally see it."

He watched her walk away, the orange silk bright against the beige corridor, and realized she'd been leaving for years. He just hadn't been paying attention to the riddle.