What the Riddle Asks

The fox appeared at dusk, the third night since David stopped recognizing my face. It stood on the patio, its coat burnished copper against the fading light, watching me through the glass door with ancient, knowing eyes. I'd been feeding it leftovers, feeling foolish and desperate, some part of me hoping it would bring luck. Or answers.

Inside, David sat in his armchair, staring at nothing. His hands, once so deft at solving puzzles, now lay limp in his lap. The doctor called it early-onset. I called it something else—a theft so complete it felt mythological. David was still here, warm and breathing, but the man who'd built our life piece by piece had gone hollow, leaving behind this walking absence, this participation in living without actually being there. A zombie, I thought cruelly, then hated myself for it.

The riddle, when it came, wasn't from a sphinx at all. It was something David said suddenly, his voice lucid for the first time in weeks: "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?"

The sphinx's riddle. The one about crawling, walking, leaning on a cane. About time wearing bodies down. I'd heard it a thousand times.

But David was looking at me with something like recognition. "Oedipus got it wrong," he said. "The answer isn't man."

"What then?" My heart hammered.

"Love," he said. "It crawls at first—helpless, dependent. Then it walks beside you, strong and sure. Then it needs support, because you're both old and leaning." He smiled faintly. "We're at evening, aren't we?"

Outside, the fox vanished into the shadows. The riddle hadn't been about mortality or decay. It had been about endurance, about the shape devotion takes when time ravages everything else. David might lose himself again in minutes, hours. But in this moment, he'd given me something better than certainty. He'd given me a way to understand what we were becoming.

I took his hand. "Evening," I agreed. "And we're still walking."

The fox was gone, but its knowing eyes stayed with me. Some riddles don't have answers. They only have acceptance.