The Wellness Riddle

The sphinx of corporate wellness sat perched on her mahogany desk—a brass paperweight Harry had given her three years ago, when they still laughed at the same jokes. Elena traced its enigmatic face while her boss droned on about Q3 deliverables for Vitamin D supplements, the orange bottle of which currently lived in her bathroom cabinet, next to the antidepressants she pretended not to take.

"You're not listening," Marcus said.

"I am." She wasn't. Her mind was at the padel club last night, watching Harry play with that redhead from Legal—the way his palm had lingered on her lower back during changeovers. Elena had been drinking a spritzer she couldn't taste, calculating how many months of silence it had been since Harry had looked at her like that. Five. Since the miscarriage, actually, though they'd never said it aloud.

"The launch party," Marcus pressed. "Friday. You're coordinating."

"Fine."

The sphinx's riddle wasn't about legs in the morning, evening, night. It was simpler: when does staying become its own punishment?

Harry texted as she walked out: *Padel at 7?* Like nothing had changed. Like she hadn't watched him want someone else.

She took the orange vitamin bottle from her purse and dry-swallowed two. The wellness industry's cruelest joke: selling hope in gel caps to people whose problems couldn't be solved with nutrients.

At home, the sphinx went into the trash. The riddle had an answer, after all: leave before you become someone who needs paperweights to remember what happiness looked like.