The Sphinx at Center Field

The lightning crackled across the sky like a warning she refused to heed. Elena sat in the empty stadium, the leather of her baseball glove cracked with age, much like her marriage. Tomorrow she'd sign the papers. Today she needed to remember why it had mattered at all.

She'd met David here twenty-three years ago, during a rain delay. He'd been the guy with the sphinx-like smile—inscrutable, mysterious, the kind of man who made you want to solve him. They'd spent their first date dissecting the game's statistics while thunder rolled overhead. She'd thought his silences were depth; later she'd learned they were just walls.

"You can't bear it if he leaves," her mother had said during the divorce proceedings. "You've built your whole identity around being his wife."

Her mother was wrong. Elena could bear it. What she couldn't bear was how thoroughly she'd fooled herself.

The baseball diamond glistened beneath the approaching storm. She remembered David's proposal—not down on one knee, but as they walked home from a game that had gone into extra innings. "Marry me," he'd said, so casually she'd thought he was joking. The sphinx had revealed nothing.

That was the thing about riddles. The answer seemed obvious once you knew it. He hadn't been mysterious; he'd been emotionally unavailable. She hadn't been patient; she'd been terrified of being alone.

The first drops of rain began to fall. Elena stood up, the glove in her hand. She'd keep the house. She'd keep the memories, even the painful ones. But she wouldn't keep waiting for lightning to strike twice, for a man to become someone he'd never been.

Some sphinxes, she realized, didn't have answers at all. Some riddles were meant to remain unsolved. And sometimes, the bravest thing you could do was stop trying to solve them.