What the Sphinx Knows

The water was still dark when she went swimming, cutting through the cold silence of the hotel pool at dawn. Elena hadn't slept. The dinner replayed in her mind—Marcus pushing the spinach salad around his plate, his phone lighting up every seven minutes like a pulse he wouldn't acknowledge.

She'd chosen this place for the marble sphinx guarding the gardens, its enigmatic face reminding her of their first date at the Egyptian museum. Marcus had squeezed her hand then, called her his riddle he'd never stop solving. Now he slept in their room, or pretended to, while she floated alone in the chlorinated dark.

The palm trees along the perimeter cast skeletal shadows across the water. She thought about the palm reader in Barcelona who'd taken her hand fifteen years ago and whispered: "You'll have a long marriage, but not the one you expect." Elena had laughed, young and certain that love conquered all. Some foxes don't raid the henhouse until the farmer's asleep.

Marcus's new executive assistant had a laugh like wind chimes. His email notifications now came between midnight and three AM. He'd stopped looking at her like she was a mystery worth solving.

Elena treaded water, watching the first light bleed into the sky. The sphinx seemed to shift its expression in the graying light—knowing, amused, ancient. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?" The answer was man, crawling, walking upright, then leaning on a cane. But the real riddle was how you could know someone for two decades and still not know them at all.

She swam to the edge and pulled herself up, dripping and shivering. The breakfast buffet would open soon. Marcus would wake and smile that charming, practiced smile, and she would decide whether to keep living the answer to a riddle she'd never asked to solve.

The sphinx said nothing. It had seen this before.