Riddles on the Court

The spinach lay limp in her grocery bag, like something already defeated. Elena dropped it on the counter next to her untouched laptop—emails from the firm piling up like accusations. At forty-three, she'd finally learned to buy the wilted bunch. Nobody noticed the difference anyway.

Three mornings ago, Marcus had leaned across the padel court, sweat glistening on his temples, and whispered something about the Egyptian sphinx at the British Museum. "You know why she lost her nose, Elena? Because she forgot to ask the right questions."

The ball had sailed past her then, just as his marriage confessions had sailed past her moral boundaries last month. She should have returned the serve. Instead, she'd let herself get caught in his net—paddle encounters disguised as strategy sessions, hotel rooms that smelled of expensive cologne and poor decisions.

Now her husband David was humming in the shower, same tune for fifteen years. He'd asked about the spinach yesterday—why the sudden interest in cooking? She'd mumbled something about health. The truth tasted bitter: she was trying to build something real with her hands instead of just dismantling her life piece by piece.

Marcus had texted at dawn. *The sphinx awaits.* Their secret code for the courthouse hotel, room 714, where riddles became excuses and wrong answers felt like liberation.

Elena chopped the spinach, knife meeting cutting board with satisfying thwacks. The sphinx had asked: "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?" The answer was *man*—the story of a life crawling toward standing, then leaning toward the end.

Her phone buzzed. *You coming?*

She thought of David's humming, of spinach wilting on the counter, of how some riddles had answers you couldn't un-know once you heard them. The sphinx had devoured those who failed. But she—she'd been devouring herself for months.

Elena deleted the message without opening it, then added another handful of spinach to the pan. Something about watching it cook down felt like beginning again, small and green and entirely possible.