The Sphinx at the Kitchen Table

Margaret stood in the center of her father's study, surrounded by the accumulated debris of seventy-three years. The sphinx paperweight from his 1978 trip to Cairo stared at her with painted glass eyes, its enigmatic smile frozen in time. He'd kept it on his desk through three marriages, two bankruptcies, and the pyramid scheme of '89 that nearly cost him the house.

She picked up his lucky hat—a crushed fedora smelling of tobacco and rain. He'd worn it to every job interview, every court date, every funeral. Including hers, when she'd divorced Michael and moved back home at forty-two, pregnant and alone.

On the kitchen table, a bag of spinach had gone slimy in the refrigerator. They'd planned to make his favorite spanakopita together, the Greek dish his mother used to make, the one that always made him talk about the old country even though he'd been born in New Jersey. It was their Sunday ritual.

Now the spinach would rot with the rest of his unfinished plans.

The phone rang. His lawyer, calling about the will.

"Margaret, I'm sorry to tell you this, but there's another beneficiary."

She laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "The orange tree?"

"How did you—"

"He planted it the year I was born. Told me once it was going to outlive us both. Said its fruit would taste like sunshine and regret."

She walked to the backyard, where the ancient orange tree dropped fruit like bitter tears into the grass. Her father had built his life like a pyramid: sturdy foundation, impossible heights, a tomb at the center filled with things he couldn't take with him.

The sphinx had been right all along. The riddle wasn't what you left behind. The riddle was who remained to find it.

She picked an orange from the ground, peeled it, and ate it in the rain, letting the juice run down her chin like the tears she'd refused to shed at his funeral.