The Riddle of Us

Marcus stood before the bathroom mirror at 2 AM, staring at the bottle of vitamin D pills on the counter—his daily attempt to manufacture sunlight in a life that had grown strangely dark. At 47, he'd become the thing he once pitied: a zombie moving through motions, the corporate lawyer who'd forgotten what he was fighting for.

The divorce papers sat on his desk, signed and final. Sarah had left three months ago. She'd taken the good coffee maker and the dog, leaving him with an apartment that echoed and a growing collection of supplements that promised to fix what was broken.

On the refrigerator, held by a magnet from their long-ago trip to Chicago, was the photograph: Marcus at 12, glove in hand, ready to play baseball. He remembered that summer clearly—the way the dirt felt under his cleats, the crack of the bat, his father's voice from the bleachers. Before law school, before the mortgage, before everything became about billable hours and cholesterol levels.

His phone buzzed. A text from Sarah: "I think I left my grandmother's sphinx figurine in the attic. Can you look?"

Marcus climbed to the attic, dusty boxes whispering of their life together. He found the sphinx—gold paint chipping, one ear broken—and underneath it, a shoebox of photographs he'd never seen. Sarah, maybe 25, laughing. Sarah, hair wild, spinning on a beach. Sarah he hadn't known in years.

He made himself dinner that night: sautéed spinach with garlic, salt heavy on his tongue. Sarah had always teased him about cooking like a bachelor—everything either over-salted or bland. He'd stopped cooking somewhere along the way, stopped trying, stopped being the man who'd once made her laugh until she cried.

What was the riddle? The sphinx seemed to ask, in its broken, silent way. What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?

Marcus had always thought the answer was simply "man." But standing in his kitchen at midnight, eating spinach that tasted like regret and memory, he understood: the riddle wasn't about legs at all.

It was about how many versions of yourself you have to bury to survive.

He texted Sarah back: "Found it. Do you want to come get it, or should I bring it?"

She replied immediately: "Can we talk? Not about the sphinx. About us."

Marcus set down his fork. The zombie inside him stirred, blinking in the sudden light.

Outside, summer was coming. Maybe it wasn't too late for a ninth inning after all.