Riddle in the Dark

The sphinx statue had been watching Elena for twenty years.

It sat in the corner of her antique shop, a limestone replica she'd bought at a flea market in her twenties, back when she'd believed she could collect beautiful things and build a beautiful life. Now, at forty-seven, with the shop's lease ending and her marriage dissolved into uncomfortable silence, the sphinx seemed to be asking its ancient question: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?

The answer was Man — the stages of a life. But Elena couldn't stop thinking about how the riddle assumed forward progress. She felt like she'd been stumbling backward.

She placed her father's fedora on the counter. He'd died two months ago, leaving her this hat, his watch, and a sheaf of photographs from years when he'd still smiled. She'd never seen him wear it — it had sat in his closet, gathering dust, like the parts of himself he'd never shown her. Now she wore it sometimes, feeling ridiculous and tender, trying on a version of masculinity she'd never needed but suddenly craved.

"You look like yourself in that hat," her ex-husband had said, during one of their painfully civil conversations about division of assets. The way he said it — like he was finally seeing something he'd missed — made her want to scream.

Outside, a summer storm was building. The first drops hit the shop's display window, and customers scattered like frightened birds. Elena locked the door, turned the sign to CLOSED, and stood in the dim shop surrounded by objects that had outlived their owners.

The sphinx's stone eyes seemed to gleam in the gathering dark.

Lightning struck nearby — the flash turned everything white, the crash shook the floorboards. In that moment of absolute illumination, Elena understood something she'd been circling for years: She wasn't becoming someone else. She was becoming the person she'd been before she'd learned to shrink herself to fit into spaces that were never quite right.

She took off the hat, smoothing her hair, then put it back on. Not as disguise, but as crown.

The sphinx remained silent, but Elena finally had an answer: She was walking on her own two legs, and they would carry her forward.