The Riddle in the Attic

Margaret stood in the center of her attic, surrounded by fifty years of accumulated life. At seventy-eight, she'd finally decided to downsize, but her granddaughter Lily had insisted on helping, turning the chore into what she called "an archaeological expedition." Margaret chuckled at the memory.

She reached for a dusty wooden box and lifted the lid. Inside lay three objects that had traveled with her through six decades. First, the small brass **bull**—a paperweight her grandfather had given her on her twelfth birthday. "Stubborn as a bull," he'd said, ruffling her hair, "but that's what'll serve you well when the world tries to push you around." That stubbornness had carried her through medical school, through her husband's death, through raising three children alone.

Beneath it lay a length of old-fashioned telephone **cable**, copper wire frayed at the ends. She'd found it during her first nursing rotation in 1968, when she'd spent hours on the hospital phone coordinating her mother's cancer treatment while simultaneously comforting a dying patient. That thin wire had connected her to everything she'd loved and lost.

And there, at the bottom, sat the porcelain **sphinx** Arthur had brought back from Egypt, weeks before the accident that took him. He'd written in his last letter: "The sphinx asks riddles, but love—that's the answer worth searching for." For thirty years, she'd kept it on her windowsill, its silent presence a reminder that some questions don't need answers, only faith.

"Grandma?" Lily's voice came from the ladder. "What did you find?"

Margaret smiled, lifting the sphinx to the light filtering through the dusty window. "Just some old friends," she said softly. "Just some old friends."