The Riddle in the Garden

Elena stood in her kitchen, wilting spinach sagging in the colander like forgotten promises. The condo felt hollow without Marcus—the silence heavy, accusatory. On the counter, his sphinx paperweight stared with its painted stone eyes, the same riddle they'd argued over the night he left: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? He'd said it was about adaptability. She'd said it was about inevitable decline.

A cat appeared in her garden window—not hers, but a stray with patchy fur and calculating yellow eyes. It watched her with the sphinx's ancient stillness. Elena pressed her palm against the glass, cold against her skin. "He's not coming back," she whispered. The cat's tail twitched once, indifferent.

Next door, Simon's dog barked—joyful, stupid, relentlessly present. Simon himself was like that: golden retriever energy, terrible timing, always hovering after Marcus left with casseroles and pitying looks. Elena had stopped answering his texts three weeks ago.

The spinach water boiled over, hissing against the burner. Elena turned off the flame and dumped the greens into the pot, watching them steam and collapse. This was adulthood, wasn't it? Cooking alone for one, while stone riddles waited for answers that changed with every stage of life. Four legs when you're naive, two when you think you own the world, three when you realize how fragile it all is.

The cat jumped down from the windowsill and vanished. Simon's dog fell silent. Evening gathered around the edges of the kitchen. Elena lifted the sphinx, its weight solid and reassuring in her hand. The riddle wasn't about decline at all, she realized. It was about how we keep moving anyway, on however many legs we have left.

She set the sphinx by her plate and sat down to eat.