What the Sphinx Knows

Mira stood before the Egyptian sphinx in the British Museum, its limestone face eroded into something almost tender after four thousand years of silence. She'd come here every Thursday during her lunch break, seeking the kind of inscrutable calm her marriage had lost somewhere between his promotion and her mother's diagnosis.

'You're back,' said the security guard, a man named Fox with weathered skin and eyes that seemed to know too much. He'd told her once he was named for his grandfather's cunning, not the animal. 'Still waiting for it to speak?'

'The sphinx asks riddles,' she said, avoiding his gaze. 'I'm not good at answers anymore.'

That evening, as she let herself into their Chelsea flat, James's coat was already on the hook. His scarf, smelling of expensive cologne and someone else's cigarettes, hung beside hers like an accusation. They'd stopped pretending. The silence between them had grown comfortable, domestic as their

—well, as their cat, Bast, who appeared from the bedroom with her usual imperious demand for dinner. James had bought her as a kitten three years ago, back when they still made grand gestures. Now the cat moved between them like a small, furry diplomat, indifferent to their cold war.

'I saw Fox today,' Mira said, pouring wine she wouldn't drink. 'At the museum. He asked how you were.'

James looked up from his phone, something unreadable flickering across his face. 'Does he know?'

'That we're living like roommates who share a bed and a mortgage?' She set the glass down harder than intended. 'Everyone knows, James. We're not fooling anyone.'

The cat wound around her legs, purring. Outside, rain streaked the windows like tears.

'There's someone,' he said quietly. It wasn't a question.

'There isn't.' But she thought of Fox's weathered hands, the way he looked at her when he thought she wouldn't notice. 'But there could be.'

James nodded, once. 'Same.'

The sphinx had no riddle for them. Some truths weren't mysteries to solve—they were just doors you finally stopped pretending were locked.

'I'll pack tomorrow,' she said.

Bast rubbed against James's shin, then hers, choosing neither and both. The cat would understand. Cats always understood the art of leaving and staying, sometimes simultaneously.

Mira finished her wine. The rain kept falling. Somewhere in the city, Fox was ending his shift, and tomorrow she'd have an answer worth giving.