Riddles in the Rain

The sphinx statue in the hotel courtyard had seen better days. Its wing was chipped, its face eroded by three decades of coastal storms—much like Elena's own marriage, she thought, tracing the stone nose with her thumb. Forty-two years old and starting over, checking into a seaside hotel alone while David packed their things.

She sat at the pool bar, nursing a gin and tonic. The pool itself was empty, covered for the off-season, a blue tarp that rippled in the gathering wind like a sad ocean. Beside her sat the spinach salad she'd ordered for dinner, determined to make healthy choices now that there was no one to cook for but herself. She stabbed at a leaf, thinking how David had always made fun of her health kicks. He'd been a steak-and-potatoes man, solid and uncomplicated. Until he hadn't been.

The first flash of lightning turned the dark sky purple, a spiderweb crack of illumination that made her jump.

"Storm's coming in fast," the bartender said, already gathering glasses.

Elena nodded, watching the sphinx through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The ancient riddle-maker, silent witness to countless strangers' private disasters. What was it the sphinx asked? What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? She'd spent years in the noon of her life, standing tall in her career, her partnership, the carefully curated life they'd built.

Now, approaching evening, would she need a third leg to lean on? Or was this—the solitude, the terrifying freedom—her third leg, stronger than she'd imagined?

Another lightning strike, closer this time. The sphinx seemed to smirk in the sudden brightness.

"You staying for the storm?" the bartender called from the kitchen doorway.

Elena finished her drink, the gin sharp on her tongue. She watched rain begin to streak the glass, blurring the courtyard into impressionistic swirls of gray and blue.

"Yes," she said. "I think I am."

She ate a leaf of spinach. It tasted like beginning.