What the Sphinx Wouldn't Say

Mara's hair used to be the color of autumn leaves, before the chemotherapy turned it into something she had to purchase by the ounce. Now, as she adjusted the copper wig in the museum restroom mirror, she wondered if David would notice the difference, or if he'd stopped looking closely enough to tell.

Outside, the fundraising gala for the Egyptian wing was in full swing. David stood by the buffet, an orange cocktail in one hand, laughing at something his research assistant said. The same research assistant Mara had found crying in his office last Tuesday.

"He talks about you like you're a riddle he can't solve," the girl had sobbed, and Mara had handed her a tissue and thought: *I'm not a riddle. I'm just tired.*

She walked past the glass cases of scarab beetles and papyrus fragments until she reached the centerpiece: a limestone sphinx from the Middle Kingdom, its human face eroded by millennia, its lion's body still powerful, still poised. Mara remembered the myth—Oedipus solving the riddle, or else. But some riddles didn't have answers. Some questions were just questions.

Like: *When did we stop being teammates?*

They'd met on a baseball field in college, both outfielders, both the kind of intense that scared people away. David had pitched a perfect game the day he proposed. Now he pitched proposals to grant committees and left Mara to catch whatever pieces fell.

A fox darted across the museum lawn outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, quick and clever and gone before you could quite believe you'd seen it. That's what their marriage had become—something beautiful that you might glimpse if you were paying attention, but mostly just absence.

David appeared beside her, another orange drink in hand, offering it like a peace offering. "You've been staring at the sphinx for twenty minutes," he said. "What are you thinking about?"

The real answer was: *divorce papers in a drawer at home.* The real answer was: *the way you used to look at me when I slid into home plate, dust in my hair, triumph in my teeth.*

"Just wondering," she said, taking the drink, "what happens to the ones who couldn't solve the riddle."

David studied her face for what felt like the first time in years. The sphinx watched them both, inscrutable as ever, holding all the secrets it would never speak.

Outside, the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky that particular shade of orange that comes just before everything goes dark.