Watersedge Memoir

The padel ball echoed against the backglass as Marcus's hand found my waist again. Fourth time this match. His wife was supposedly at the spa, my husband supposedly golfing. We played like we fucked — competitive, breathless, wrong.

"You're thinking about it," he murmured during a changeover, sweat dripping down his temple.

"About what?"

"The riddle." He gestured toward the resort's centerpiece — that grotesque sphinx fountain presiding over the pool area, water streaming from its stone eyes. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening. Man. We're all just crawling, then walking, then leaning."

I served instead of answering. The ball hit the net.

That night, I found my husband at the pool bar, nursing whiskey while the sphinx fountain cast long shadows across his face. He was ten years my senior, his "third leg" already showing itself in the careful way he moved now, the pauses before standing.

"Your mother called," he said without looking up. "Buster died yesterday."

My childhood dog. The golden retriever who'd slept at the foot of my bed through puberty, through college, through my first marriage and divorce. Buster, who'd known me before I became this person — this woman who played padel with a stranger's husband while her own measured his decline in whiskey glasses.

"I didn't feel it," I said. "When he died. I didn't feel anything."

"That's not true." His voice was gentle. "You just haven't let yourself yet."

The pool's surface rippled in the wind. Somewhere in the distance, music played, people laughed, vacationers vacationed. But we stood there like monuments, like the sphinx itself — stone riddles without answers, guarding questions we were too cowardly to ask.

"Marcus invited us to dinner," I said.

"I know." He finished his drink. "He asked me earlier. At the golf club."

The world tilted. "You knew?"

"That's the thing about riddles, Sarah." He stood up carefully, using a cane he'd hidden behind the bar. "The answer's always there. You just have to stop being afraid of what it means."

I watched him walk away, his uneven gait measuring out the hours we'd wasted, the love we'd buried under years of silent accommodations. Behind me, Marcus emerged from the padel courts, still in his game clothes, still believing he'd discovered a secret.

"Tomorrow," I told him. "Let's play again tomorrow."

Because sometimes the riddle's answer isn't a transformation. It's a choice — to keep crawling, to stand, or to lean into someone else while your own heart beats somewhere else entirely.