The Sphinx's Riddle

Margaret sat on her porch rocker, the old fedora hat perched on her knee like a sleeping cat. It had been Arthur's hat—her friend of sixty-two years who'd passed last spring. Every Sunday for decades, they'd sat in these same rockers, solving the world's problems over lemonade and crossword puzzles.

Her granddaughter Sarah had given her this iPhone yesterday, carefully programming in numbers and showing her how to swipe. "So you can see the babies grow," she'd said, though Margaret suspected it was really so they could check she was still breathing.

The palm trees swayed in the distance, though her own palms rested quietly in her lap. She remembered how Arthur would read her palm at their church picnics, pretending to divine long life lines and many children. They'd both laugh, knowing the real fortune was having found each other.

"What's the riddle, Grandmama?" Arthur would ask, his eyes twinkling behind thick glasses. "The one no one solves?"

"What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?" She'd recite it from Sunday school days—the Sphinx's riddle.

"Man," he'd always answer. "We crawl, we walk, we lean."

Now she pressed the iPhone's smooth surface, feeling like the Sphinx herself—ancient, wondering what would become of her riddles. But when the screen lit up with Sarah's voice, showing her great-grandson's first steps, Margaret understood.

She placed Arthur's hat on her own head, tilting it just so. The riddle wasn't about legs or time. It was about love—the kind that sits on porches, that endures in photographs, that passes from palm to palm across generations.

"Friend," she whispered to the empty chair beside her. "I think we've solved it after all."