Theirs to Keep

Thirty-Six

KARISSA

The word struck me instantly, but still took a full ten seconds to sink in. During the interim I stood there in silence, unblinking. The visual of the photograph — and the three men smiling back at me from it — seared itself into my mind.

“Your… wife?”

“Yes,” said Roderick.

“Not just yours either,” I clarified. “Bryce’s wife. Camden’s too.”

“All of us, yes.”

I took a half step backward, then stabled myself. It was the last thing I expected.

“This was her own personal bedroom,” Roderick continued. “The one she chose when we first moved in. She was the reason we bought this place. Renovating it, turning it into a venue that would someday make us money… all of it was Maddy’s idea.”

“Maddy,” I repeated. The name didn’t sound right when I said it, though.

“Yes.”

“You all… married her.”

“Look, I know it’s strange,” said Roderick. “But we tried to tell you. We wanted to tell you.”

I took a long, deep breath. They had, actually. It was all my fault for not wanting to see.

“It’s not that it’s strange,” I countered. “It’s just… well, I don’t know. I mean, I do know in some ways. I can obviously see how she could fall for the three of you. Just like I did.”

Roderick stood in silence for a moment. He was staring at the photograph intently, as if remembering the day it was taken.

“I just never thought…”

“About marriage?”

I hesitated, then shrugged. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“It was the next inevitable step,” he replied. “We dated, we fell in love, we looked for a place we could all be together. For a while we were in three different apartments, running around like crazy. Carrying clothes with us everywhere. Jumping from bed to bed.”

He stopped short, checking me for some sort of reaction. When he realized I had none he continued.

“This manor was a ruined mess when Maddy first found it. But she wanted it so badly. She sat down with us, and helped us work the price down. It would take a long time to renovate, but in the end—”

“In the end it would all pay off,” I finished for him.

“Yes.”

I gulped again, and this time I was able to swallow the lump in my throat. My pulse was returning to normal. The heat I’d felt upon learning the guys had actually been married was finally leaving my body.

That, of course, left only one question unanswered.

“Roderick?”

Still standing there in his workout shirt, he crossed his bare arms and raised an eyebrow my way.

“How did she die?”

It occurred to me immediately he’d never told me their wife was actually dead. But to me it was obvious. It was in the way he talked about her. It was in the heaviness of his voice.