What the Sphinx Asked

Elena sat on the edge of the hotel bed, her fingers tracing the cold bronze of the miniature sphinx she'd bought in Cairo three years ago. The artifact had been a gift from David—"something to remember our beginning," he'd said. Now it felt like a riddle she couldn't solve.

Her iPhone lit up beside her, another notification from Sarah. Not David's sister. The other Sarah. The one whose messages she'd discovered by accident three weeks ago. Elena had begged for an explanation, but David had only offered silence and a packed suitcase.

The television flickered silently, its HDMI cable dangling from the wall where David had yanked it out during their final argument. He'd called her paranoid, controlling. She'd called him a coward. Neither was wrong.

She found herself obsessing over small betrayals. The single gray hair she'd found on his scarf last month—he was thirty-five, nowhere near old enough for that. The new hat he'd started wearing to work, fedora style, trying to look like someone else entirely. Someone who didn't belong to her.

The sphinx's enigmatic smile seemed to mock her. In mythology, the creature devoured those who couldn't answer its riddle. What was her riddle? How long? With whom? The questions circled like vultures.

Elena's thumb hovered over the delete button on Sarah's latest text: "He said he's leaving tonight."

Outside, rain battered the hotel windows, the city's cables humming with electricity, carrying countless other people's betrayals and heartbreaks through the darkness. She touched the sphinx one last time, then placed it in her purse. Some beginnings, she realized, weren't worth keeping.

The phone screen darkened. She didn't delete the message. Instead, she typed back: "I know." Then she turned off the phone, lay back on the unfamiliar pillow, and finally closed her eyes.