Molly and Her Sisters

[Note: Thanks to Curious2c--this story was inspired by, though it's quite different from, his story "Triple Trouble".]

*

I suppose you might think I was a complete idiot—the blindest, most stupid of husbands. But the thing is....

Well, first, hindsight is always 20-20. But beyond that, like most happily married men, I loved and trusted my wife. I had absolutely no idea that the woman I had loved and cherished for eight years, with whom I had shared so many intimacies and so many happy memories, was a selfish monster. Or, more accurately, one of a matched set of three selfish monsters.

****************

Molly's two sisters were a fact of my life, pretty much from the first time she and I ever dated. I'd never even met an identical triplet before, and it was both alarming and quite cool to see three look-alikes—make that three gorgeous look-alikes—when I went to Molly's apartment to pick her up.

We'd met at a grocery store when she asked me to reach up to the top shelf for some herbal tea she couldn't get to. Molly is only 5'2", curvy and voluptuous, with jet-black hair she wears short around her ears. I'm a bit over 6' so I was a natural person to ask for help. I didn't find out until our fourth date that she'd seen me in the produce aisle, thought I was cute, and waited patiently near the herbal tea until I came along so she could ask for help.

That was pretty flattering, I can tell you! And what made it even better is that when she told me, she was lying naked in my arms and we'd just finished making love for the first time.

Our first couple of dates had been really wonderful—we went to dinner and talked until nearly 11 pm, we took a walk in the park and fed the ducks, we went to a rather lame chick-flick and held hands throughout the whole thing. Pretty corny, right? But I was smitten, enchanted, transfixed.

Molly was by a long shot the most beautiful girl I'd ever dated—sexy in a wholesome, girl-next-door kind of way, with a smile that could melt the heart of an IRS auditor. After I'd fetched the tea for her, she chatted with me amiably, allowing me to think that I was picking HER up. And I was absolutely thrilled when I headed to the check-out line with a dinner date for the following Friday.

She'd said something vague about having sisters, but I wasn't prepared for three beautiful Mollys when one of them opened the door and said, "hi, you must be Scott."

I was tongue-tied. "Uh, you, you're, um, not Molly?"

She laughed, as charmingly as Molly had during our conversation in the grocery store, and said, "no, I'm Hannah. Molly and Amy and I are triplets—didn't she mention us?"

"Yes, I guess she did—but somehow I didn't hear anything about 'identical'."

Hannah laughed again. "Molly does that sometimes—just a little fun at your expense. I'll go get her—come on in."

There was yet another Molly in the living room, but of course this one was Amy. They all had the same haircuts, the same figures and the same dazzling smiles, so I didn't have a chance of knowing who was who until Molly came out of one of the bedrooms and said, "hi, Scott. Would you like a nice cup of herbal tea?"

During that first dinner date we talked about everything under the sun, but a lot of time was spent on Molly's life as a triplet. I was fascinated, and wanted to know all about what it was like. Did she enjoy seeing herself in two other faces all the time? Were they closer than most siblings—could they almost read one anothers' minds, the way identical twins are supposed to be able to do? Did they ever switch identities to fool people?

"I don't know if we read each others' minds, exactly," Molly told me, "but we are very close. I feel like I can almost always tell what Amy or Hannah is thinking, and they often do the same thing—like answering a question I haven't gotten around to asking yet, for instance. We've always been that way.

"As for fooling other people--" she stopped, and grinned at me—"I guess we've done a little of that sort of thing. You noticed that we all wear our hair the same way?"

I nodded, and she went on.

"As little girls we loved to fool people—our elementary school teachers, relatives, even our parents! They couldn't tell us apart either, amazingly enough. It was lots of fun, especially when Amy or Hannah got in trouble and wanted to avoid the spanking. 'No, Dad, I'm not Amy, I'm Molly!' "

She grinned. "You can pretty much imagine how it went. Probably drove Mom and Dad crazy.

"Then in junior high we all wanted to be different. For a while it really bugged us that people constantly mixed us up. So we wore our hair differently, and made sure to take different classes, do different activities. Like I was on the yearbook staff, Amy wrote for the newspaper, and Hannah played field hockey.

"But after a few years, we missed being interchangeable, so we went back to being look-alikes. Once in a while I'd take a chem test for Amy, or Hannah would give an oral presentation for me. It helped us all a bit with our grades, you know?" She grinned at me.

"And there was one time when Brad Hendricks asked Amy out on a date, our junior year. She was crazy about him, and when she got the flu the morning of their date she was beside herself. She cried and moaned, said he'd never ask her out again if she canceled the date. In the end, she talked me into being her for one night. It wasn't hard, because it was their first date and they didn't know each other very well anyway.

"Starting with date #2 Amy took over again, and they went out for almost a year. She never told him I'd been her stand-in!"

Years later, of course, I remembered that story with a great deal of bitterness. But as I said, at the time I was sitting across the table from a beautiful, funny, charming girl. I was already crazy about her. And the fact that she seemed to like me too was unbelievable—like a miracle.

The three girls had split up for college, and enjoyed aspects of being apart. But they also missed one another, and so all three had moved back to Cincinnati after graduation. They found a big apartment to share, and that's where I went to pick up Molly for our date—where I met her sisters for the first time.

****************

So—we can fast-forward eight years. Molly and I dated, we fell in love, and after two years we got married. I considered myself the luckiest man on planet Earth. I had a job in a graphic design firm, and since I had more computer experience than the older guys who ran the place I was a valuable commodity, so I was making good money. We could easily afford a nice three-bedroom house in Oakley Square, just a few miles from our jobs downtown.

And I guess you won't be surprised to learn who our neighbors were. Three years after Molly's and my wedding, Amy had married a tall, rather dull guy named Ted, who worked in financial services. He was perfectly friendly, just not very interesting. Anyway, they lived right next to us, at the end of a little dead-end street called Ferdinand Place.

Amy and Ted's yard backed up to the back yard of a house on Oakpark Place—and guess who lived there? Sorry, you don't get any points, because it was too easy. Hannah, of course, with her husband Arnold. Arnie was the complete opposite of Ted. He was a few years older than we were, a short, funny guy who owned several bowling alleys in the Cincinnati area. He smoked cigars—until Hannah browbeat him to quit—told amusing, frequently off-color jokes, and was terrific company. They'd gotten married a few months before Amy and Ted.

It was no surprise to any of the three husbands that our wives insisted on living so close together. There was a way in which they were almost like Siamese triplets, attached at the hip. Ted and Arnie and I were all used to the way they finished one another's sentences, or seemed to have the same ideas at the same time.

We also adjusted to their need to get together every night—and I mean virtually EVERY NIGHT—to chat for a while before bed. They'd meet in one of our three kitchens, around 9:30 or 10, and visit for a bit, then each one would head home to her husband.

Even after eight years of being with Molly, I could never tell with complete confidence which triplet was which, and Ted and Arnie confessed that they had the same problem. We all got very good at noticing what clothes each wife was wearing, or who had on a particular necklace or set of earrings. When we had Christmas with Pam and Donald, their parents, it was clear that they had as much trouble telling their daughters apart as we did.

This is not to say that their personalities were all the same. Amy was a little stiff, a little more prissy and conservative than her two sisters. Hannah, on the other hand, was the wild one—she drank a bit more, told a few more dirty jokes, and would certainly have been voted "most likely to dance topless on a bar" of the three sisters, though I don't think she actually ever did that. My Molly was in between, and I thought she was perfect: sweeter and more outgoing than Amy, but more level-headed than Hannah.

So it wasn't that you didn't notice differences among the sisters when we were all spending time together. Rather it was that you couldn't tell by sight or by voice which was which. Another way of saying it is, when they wanted to fool you, you didn't stand a chance.

Because none of us had kids yet, vacations were easy to plan. As you might have guessed, Molly and her sisters demanded that we vacation together as a six-some. So we took two weeks each summer and went somewhere fun: Las Vegas, or a beach resort in North Carolina, or Italy one year. We were a pretty compatible group, so the husbands didn't object.

But in return I insisted on a week away each year with just Molly—time for her and me alone, no Amy, no Hannah, no brothers-in-law. At first this was a genuine bone of contention, and there were some heated arguments and frosty silences. It took several go-rounds before Molly understood that I was dead serious. In fact it took three years before things came to a head.

"I love your sisters, and I have fun with Arnie and Ted—but I want some time for just us. Is that so hard to understand? That's my deal—you get the two week trip with all of us each year, and I get the one week with you alone."

I must have given some version of that speech about ten times. But it wasn't until the day before our Italy trip, when Molly came home from work and saw that I hadn't even begun my packing, that she gave in. Boy, was that an argument! But I said flatly that unless she agreed to a week away with me, I was staying home. She and the other two couples could go off to Italy without me.

There was more than an hour of yelling—none of it by me—and maybe twenty phone calls to Amy and Hannah. Both sisters came over to help Molly beat me down, but I wasn't yielding. They were happy to explain to me, over and over, how selfish and short-sighted I was being, and how no loving husband would be so inflexible. Etc.

In the end, Molly agreed to my demand, and off to Italy we went. But it was pretty cold between us for several days, and her sisters joined her in making sure I knew I was in the doghouse. If it hadn't been for the support of Arnie and Ted—who were secretly delighted that I'd won, as it meant they'd get the same deals from their wives—I might have given up and flown home early.

But by about the fifth day, the romance and beauty of Florence had softened Molly up, and the rest of the trip was terrific. As was our week alone at Sanibel Island the next winter. After that, each year featured two wonderful weeks with Molly's sisters, and one wonderful week without.

****************

So what's the problem? It all sounds pretty terrific, right? And it was. The problem came when we started trying to have kids.

Molly and I knew we'd have them someday, but we'd been enjoying life as a couple (or as a couple glued to two other couples) too much to be in a hurry. But when she and her sisters turned 30 (I was 32), the biological clock started chiming. She stopped taking the pill, and within a couple of months Molly and I were on a baby-making mission.

Not that I objected, either to the goal or the process of getting there. I had always loved sex with my beautiful, delicious wife. Our sex life was most often intimate and tender rather than rough and wild. We had our usual three or four favorite positions, and the nights we spent extra time on being playful or inventive grew less and less frequent over the years, as I imagine happens with most married couples. Oral sex was almost always part of our love-making, as Molly really enjoyed the way I went down on her.

Once in a while Molly would surprise me—she'd come to bed very horny and be much more aggressive, and we'd fuck strenuously a couple of times in an evening. On a birthday or our anniversary we always had champagne, and that invariably got her extra fired-up. But for the most part it was more gentle and loving, and that was fine with me.

One night after she'd just ravished me I joked with her about it, and found that it didn't go over well at all. It was a Saturday, and when I got back from the grocery store with the stuff for dinner I heard her calling me from the bedroom—where I found her lying naked on her tummy on the bed, holding a bottle of massage oil.

"I'm a little tense today, cowboy," she murmured. "You think you could help me out here?"

It was fantastic! I gave her back and legs a thorough work-out, while she moaned contentedly, then I turned her over and worked on her, first with my fingers and then for much longer with my lips and tongue until she had come three times. Then we fucked, hard, until I shot ecstatically into her. We lay together dreamily for awhile.

Molly went off to the kitchen and brought us back a snack—dinner seemed to be off the agenda—and before long we were rolling around again. She gave me a world-class blowjob, stopping just before I shot into her mouth, and then she rode me like a wild woman, coming a couple more times before I came again.

When we were catching our breath, smiling at each other, I said, "wow—that was something, Molly." Then I pretended to think hard.

"Or wait! Maybe you're not Molly—did I just get very lucky with Amy or Hannah tonight? I'm not sure Molly has ever been that worked-up!"

She couldn't have failed to know I was kidding—but instead of a chuckle or an answering wise-crack I got a cold stare.

"Scott, that is not funny! How could you think that I would ever do something like that? Do you really think I would ever share you with my sisters?"

As she glared angrily at me, I could feel the temperature in the room drop about ten degrees.

"Molly, I'm sorry," I said. "I was just kidding, honey." I reached to take her in my arms, but she rolled away from me and stood up.

"I'm going to shower," she said, still clearly angry with me, and disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the lock click behind her.

I got the cold shoulder for the rest of the night and most of the next day. Molly seemed determined to send the message that some things were just not to be joked about. Finally at dinner on Sunday I apologized again, reiterating that it had just been a harmless joke, and she seemed to relax a bit.

She let me spoon up behind her in bed that night and I sighed to myself in relief. I didn't like having Molly angry at me, and I made a mental note never to joke about sister-switching again.

It seemed funny, though, her being so sensitive about it. On our very first date she'd told me the story about taking Amy's place on a date with a high-school boy. And I remembered a time a few weeks before our wedding when the subject had come up again.

Molly and I were disagreeing about something trivial, like which hotel we should stay at for our honeymoon in Curacao. I gave in to her, of course—but during our mock-argument I suggested that if she didn't want me, perhaps I'd marry one of her sisters.

At that time she'd joked right back at me. "I don't think they'd take you, baby. Both Amy and Hannah are very light sleepers, and I've told them you snore sometimes. That would be a deal-breaker. Better stick with me!"

"Rats!" I responded. "Okay then, if I can't have Amy or Hannah I guess I'll marry you after all." And that was the end of that. So I didn't understand at all why, several years later, she got so extremely pissed when I made essentially the same joke.

****************

In any event, and as I've said, it was baby-making, or rather our attempt at baby-making, that brought my life tumbling down around my head.

We'd been trying—and having fun at it!—for about ten months. I'd heard of lots of couples who took a year or two to get pregnant, so I wasn't at all worried. But Molly was increasingly concerned about our lack of success, and she insisted I go to our doctor to get checked out.

So I did. I had the fun of sitting in a little room with some porn mags and jerking off into a cup, and then I waited for the phone call a few days later.

It came on a Friday while I was at work. I closed my office door and spoke for a couple of minutes to Dr. Rendell.

"Well, Scott, you've got nothing to worry about," he said. "Your sperm count is a bit lower than normal—it's about 70% of the average for men in their 30s—but that's no big deal. Your sperm are healthy and strong, there just aren't quite as many of them. You and Molly should have no trouble conceiving, but it may take you a little longer than with some couples."

That was good news! And I looked forward to getting home and reassuring Molly. But for some reason it slipped my mind—at dinner we got into a long conversation about Cincinnati city politics, of all things, and I forgot to bring it up.

The subject didn't come back to me until nearly 11. The sisters' regular get-together happened to be in our kitchen that night, and I'd watched some basketball on TV and then gone up to bed. I frequently went to sleep before Molly came up.

But as I was nearly drifting off I remember the news about my sperm count, and I felt I should tell Molly right away. So I grabbed my bathrobe and headed downstairs, thinking I'd interrupt the conversation in the kitchen just long enough to tell Molly we had nothing to worry about.

As I moved through the living room towards the kitchen I heard a burst of exuberant laughter from the three sisters through the closed swinging door. I smiled to myself, reflecting for the hundredth time on how much they enjoyed one another's company; and instead of heading right into the kitchen I stopped for a moment to eavesdrop on their conversation.

It was totally innocent, I swear. I just couldn't help being curious what they were having so much fun talking about—I hadn't the faintest idea of what I was about to hear.

Voice #1: "Well if he isn't the best, why do you keep wanting to switch with me all the time?"

Voice #2, giggling: "I didn't say Arnie wasn't the best—I just said that he couldn't eat pussy the way Scott does."

Voice #3 (or still #2? I couldn't tell): "Besides, you greedy cow, you still get Arnie more nights each week than either of us—"

"Plus weekends!" another voice interrupted.

"So you should hardly be complaining about your situation." (more laughter)

I stood there in utter shock. To say "I couldn't believe what I was hearing" is to understate it—I was beyond disbelief. Switching? Having sex with each other's husbands?

I sat quietly down on a chair, tried to recover my senses, and tuned back into the conversation.

"...nearly a year, and I just don't think Scott is going to be able to get the job done." (That had to be Molly, I thought.)

"So you're going with Plan B?"

"Yeah, if his sperm count doesn't come back okay. He was tested about a week ago, so we should hear any time."