The Oracle of Terminal 4

Maya's palms were sweating against the cold glass of the departure terminal. Forty-two years old, three failed marriages, and now she was leaving everything behind for a man she'd met on an app that promised to find your soulmate through algorithms she didn't understand.

Her iPhone buzzed in her pocket—David, the man she was leaving, or maybe returning to. She couldn't remember anymore. The device had become her second brain, her confessor, her relationship graveyard. Three hundred unanswered messages from people who had once promised her forever.

"You look like someone seeking answers," a voice said.

Maya turned. An elderly woman sat at a small folding table behind her, a cloth spread with tarot cards, crystals, and—absurdly—a small bronze sphinx figurine. In Terminal 4 of JFK International Airport.

"You're kidding," Maya said.

"The sphinx knows no geography," the woman said, extending her own hand, palm up. "Neither does love. Neither does grief."

Maya hesitated, then placed her hand in the woman's cool, dry grip. The fortune teller traced the lines with surprising gentleness.

"You're running from something," the woman said. "But you're also running toward something. The question is—which one scares you more?"

Maya thought of David, of their fights that ended in silence and cold beds. She thought of the man waiting in Chicago, whose profile picture showed someone ten years younger, someone who might still believe in forever.

"I don't know what I want," she admitted.

"The sphinx asked riddles, too," the woman said. "But the answer was never the riddle itself. It was the person asking it."

She pressed something into Maya's palm—a small card with the sphinx on it. "Departure gate closes in seven minutes. Your flight hasn't started boarding yet."

Maya walked to the gate. Her iPhone lit up with a new message from David: *I don't want you to go. I want to try again.*

She stood at the threshold between one life and another. The sphinx's riddle echoed in her mind: what are you running from, what are you running toward—and which one scares you more?

The answer came to her like lightning. She wasn't running toward a new love or running from an old one. She was running from herself.

Maya turned away from the gate and found a quiet corner. She deleted the dating app. Then she typed David's number into her phone, something she hadn't done in months. The sphinx had been right—the answer wasn't the riddle. It was the person asking it.

And she was finally ready to ask.