What She Wouldn't Say

The baseball cap sat on the passenger seat, stained with sweat and the dust of three seasons. Elena's cap — the one she'd worn to every game since they'd started dating, until the cancer made her too weak for stadium stairs. Leo should have left it at the hospital. Instead, it had ridden beside him through eight months of hollowed-out Tuesdays.

Tonight, the stadium lights blazed like a reproach. Section 204, row 12 — their seats. He'd come alone, as he had since October. The game didn't matter. His coworkers had stopped asking if he was okay three months ago. That was the problem with workplace tragedy: it had a shelf life.

He put on her cap. It still smelled like her — vanilla and the metallic tang of chemotherapy. The woman beside him gave him a pitying look. He turned away.

The sphinx had been Elena's joke. "I'm your personal riddle," she'd say, grinning, when he couldn't figure out what she was thinking. "You'll never guess what's under this stone exterior." But in the end, she'd been the one asking questions: *Why did this happen? What happens next? What's the point?*

Riddles with no answers.

The bottom of the ninth. A home run arced toward the statues beyond left field. The crowd erupted. Leo watched the ball disappear into the night, thought of Elena pointing at the sphinx statue during their first date, making some terrible joke about ancient Egyptian baseball fans. She'd laughed so hard she'd spilled beer on his shoes. He'd thought: *I want to hear this laugh forever.*

The woman beside him touched his arm. "You okay?"

He hadn't realized he was crying.

"Fine," he said. But the lie felt like giving up.

The sphinx had asked Oedipus: what walks on four legs, then two, then three? The answer was *man.* The real riddle wasn't the answer. It was that the answer changed.

Leo took off the cap, folded it carefully. Stood up. The game was over, but the night was just beginning. For the first time in eight months, he thought maybe he'd make it to tomorrow.