Chapter 4

“You five ... You each could lose your most attractive feature and each of you would still be amazingly alluring. I really am the world’s luckiest man. It’s probably good that I’ve already found, found and married, the love of my life, because if I had to choose among you five, I couldn’t do it. I’d have to marry all of you.”

Heather dropped to one knee, grabbed his hands with hers, and said, “Dad, would you marry us?”

Dad’s eyes nearly rolled up into the back of his head. His head tipped back, and his mouth released a long, tremulous, “ohhh-hhh-hhhhhh.” After nearly a minute, he recovered and looked down at Heather, still on bended knee.

“That was amazingly witty, but you actually meant that. Didn’t you?” He looked around at the rest of us. “She did mean that, and she was speaking for all of you. Wasn’t she?”

Heather tugged slightly on his hands to get him focused on her. “Yes, Dad. I did. We did. You’re the only man that any of us has ever met who interests us at all. I’m not saying that we might not meet another such, but, so far, we haven’t. We love you. We’re in love with you. We love being your girlfriends. We would truly love being your wives ... although ... two and three of us would also be married to each other. We would love having you as husband to the ends of our days.”

“How do you five do that? Have you had this discussion?”

Still holding his hands, Heather replied, “Not per se. We understand each other and, though it happens very infrequently, we know when one of us is speaking for all of us. This time, it was my turn. It’s usually Beth or Liya, they are our ... social experts. While I understand my sisters, I do not fully understand our sisterhood. Two of us and three of us are more tightly bonded within the five of us, but I see all five being together for much of our lives. However, I believe that those lives will be ... braided: the duo goes, the duo returns. The trio goes, the trio returns. I believe that there will even be times when the duo separates and the trio separates, but never because of loss of love or caring. Life will generate different opportunities. We are all certain to do different things, different things that require, for a time, separation, though only in distance, not in love, in caring.

“I can see you, Dad, being one of our anchors. It’s ... fuzzy, but I feel it strongly. You have various parts to play in our lives, both in single lives and our lives as a group. I know that this may seem very ... weird, but a lot of it is extrapolation ... from my knowledge of my sisters, of their and our interests, our likely career paths, though, as one might guess, the career paths are very fuzzy and still quite general.

“That’s how I see it. Obviously, I cannot extrapolate details, but I would be very surprised if this ... outline, I guess, is far off, though I consider the term ‘outline’ to be too definitive for what I see, as what I see is too nebulous for that term.”