What the Sphinx Knows

The pool had gone murky green, abandoned since the divorce was finalized. Mara stood at the edge, clutching her wine glass like a weapon. Behind her, the dog—Arthur, a golden retriever who'd chosen her side in the split—whined softly, sensing what she refused to speak.

Inside, David was boiling spinach. She could smell it through the open kitchen window, that familiar earthy scent that used to signal comfort. Now it just smelled like pity. He'd always cooked when things fell apart. Last time, it was after her mother's funeral. The time before, when she lost the baby.

"You're going, then?" His voice carried across the water, flat and careful.

She turned. He stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the kitchen light. Behind him, on the mantel, the ceramic sphinx she'd bought in Egypt stared sightlessly ahead. They'd argued there too, beneath that unforgiving gaze, while the guide told them the riddle of the creature that devoured all things.

"What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening." The answer had seemed so profound then. Now it just felt like the slow erosion of everything they'd built—four years of mornings wrapped around each other, now reduced to

separate houses and separate wounds.

"The pool needs draining," she said, hating how mundane her voice sounded. "Tell me when it's done. I'll send for my things."

David nodded, once. He looked smaller without her anger to push against. Just a man in a wrinkled shirt, making spinach he'd probably eat alone.

Arthur pressed his warm weight against her leg. She dropped to her knees, burying her face in his golden fur, breathing him in. He smelled of loyalty, of the unconditional love she'd been too terrified to accept.

The sphinx watched them both from across the water, its stone features locked in eternal silence, knowing something she still couldn't quite grasp—that sometimes the riddle's answer is simply: we endure, until we don't.