Water and Bone

Marcus stood at the edge of the **pool**, the water reflecting a sky bruised purple by twilight. He'd come to collect his things—really, just to see her one last time—but Sarah's party was still in full swing. The laughter floating across the water belonged to people he'd once called colleagues, back when they were climbing the corporate **pyramid** together, rung by desperate rung.

He'd left his **hat** on the patio table—a fedora, ridiculous for July, but it had become something of a signature during their years in Chicago. Sarah had hated it then. She probably hated it now, perched beside her champagne glass like a wounded bird.

Marcus turned to leave, but his **palm** pressed against rough stone—the garden **sphinx** Sarah had imported at enormous expense, its limestone face weathering oddly fast in the humid air. The statue stared past him toward the house, toward the guests who didn't know their marriage had dissolved six months ago. They'd been so careful with the narrative: "amicable separation," "growing apart," "staying friends."

All lies. Marcus had uncovered her second phone and the messages to his business partner—his former business partner, now. The corporate merger she'd engineered had been a three-way deal, and he hadn't even been at the table.

The sphinx's riddle: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? The answer was man—but the real question was what happened when the evening stretched on forever, when you found yourself alone at the edge of your ex-wife's pool, watching her celebrate with the man who'd replaced you in both business and bed.

Marcus picked up his hat and walked to the gate without looking back. Some sphinxes kept their secrets, and some riddles answered themselves in the walking away.