The Sphinx's Riddle

Margaret stood in the attic, dust motes dancing in the afternoon sun that slanted through the small window. Her granddaughter Emma, twelve and full of questions, pulled down a wooden box.

"What's this, Grandma?"

Inside lay Margaret's wedding hat—a pillbox of cream silk, delicate as morning frost. But it was the sphinx pin that caught Emma's eye. A small silver sphinx, its wings spread, its enigmatic face frozen in an eternal smile.

"Your grandfather gave me this," Margaret said, her fingers tracing the cool metal. "Egypt, 1968. He'd saved for three years to take me there. We sat by the Great Sphinx, and he told me the old riddle: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?"

"A human!" Emma beamed. "Baby, adult, old person with a cane."

"Exactly." Margaret smiled. "But your grandfather added something. He said, 'And what is the fourth leg?'

Emma frowned. "I don't remember that part."

"Neither did I. He said, 'Love, Margaret. Love is what keeps us standing when our own legs grow tired.'" Margaret's voice grew soft. "That night in Cairo, lightning struck across the desert sky—great, jagged forks of white fire. He held my hand and said some moments are lightning, and some are the steady glow of stars. Both have their place."

Outside, thunder rumbled. Emma looked up, startled.

"Fifty-eight years he's been gone," Margaret said, "but that sphinx pin has never left this hat. Some riddles have answers that change as you do."

She placed the hat on Emma's head. It was too large, perching crookedly, making them both laugh.

"Someday," Margaret said, "you'll understand what he meant. The lightning moments, the starlight ones—they're all part of it."

Emma adjusted the sphinx pin, her fingers on her grandmother's legacy, as the first raindrops began to fall against the roof.