What the Pool Remembers

Clara ran her fingers through her hair—still thick, still the same chestnut shade she'd had at twenty-five, though now she found the occasional silver strand like a secret she couldn't quite keep from herself. She should have been grateful. At forty-seven, with her marriage fraying like cotton left too long in the sun, she had more important things to worry about than a few gray hairs.

They were at the Sphinx Resort in Luxor, David's idea of a second honeymoon. His third this year. The Egyptian-themed luxury hotel featured a massive pool shaped like a scarab, surrounded by limestone statues of sphinxes that seemed to watch guests with their stone eyes, knowing things they shouldn't.

She found him by the deep end, floating on his back, eyes closed against the merciless Egyptian sun. A young woman—maybe twenty-three, with dark curls that spilled over her shoulders like something alive—sat at the edge, dipping her feet in the water. She laughed at something David said, a sound too bright for this heat.

Clara didn't approach. She stood behind one of the sphinx statues, its weathered face half-eaten by centuries of desert wind, and watched. The sphinx had posed riddles to travelers, destroying those who couldn't answer. What riddle did her marriage pose? What was the answer she kept failing to find?

The young woman leaned forward, her hand hovering over David's chest. He didn't move away.

Clara's fingers found the sphinx's stone paw, warm from hours of sunlight. She thought about all the things she'd forgiven, all the second chances she'd given. A sphinx demanded truth. But love—love required something else entirely. It required the willingness to be fooled, to believe in next times, to pretend not to see what was right in front of your eyes.

She turned away from the pool, from the water that remembered every ripple, every secret touch, every lie. She would pack. She would go home. And for the first time in twenty years, she would stop pretending she didn't know the answer to the riddle that had been destroying her, slowly, all along.