"How many mothers do you have?"
Henry blinked.
"Just one" he shrugged. "How many mothers can you have?"
"Suzy has two. But she has two different mothers" Thomas explained matter-of-factly. "And my mum says your mum shows in more than one place at once."
"Well, I have one mother, but I have two aunts" Henry replied. "It's just that they look a lot like Mum, so some people are confused."
"Weird. How can the look the same?"
Henry shrugged. They always looked like this and he never understood the sensation they created when they went out together. He always had his mother, his aunt Elsa and his aunt Elena. They definitely weren't identical, even though everyone said they were. He just knew which one was which - by the way they moved, by the shapes of their faces, by their voices. He never understood how people can claim they are unable to tell them apart.
He added a piece of roof to his castle and sat there, looking at it, as deep in thought as a four-year-old may be.
"Mum…"
Henry looked very serious, in his dinosaur pyjamas and under a star-printed comforter.
"Anything wrong, kid?"
He shrugged and grimaced.
"Are we weird?"
Emma's face paled a bit as she sat next to him on the bed.
"Why are you asking?"
Henry squirmed a little.
"There is a boy, at daycare. He asks all sorts of questions about you and I…"
She sighed.
"What kind of questions?"
"Like, why are there three of you. And he meant you, as in, why do I have three mums. I tried to explain to them that you are actual, like, separate people, and the you are not actually identical, but he doesn't believe me. He says there must be something wrong with me, because I have three identical mothers."
"Oh my" Emma leaned to him and patted his cheek. "Henry, kids are stupid like this sometimes. They see something they don't get - like us being triplets - and they make up an explanation that works for them. Then they work with that explanation and try to fit the world to it. He thinks that there is something weird about me and so in his head he makes you also weird. There aren't so many triplet sets in the world, so most people wouldn't have seen one. Also, we all live together and that makes people even more confused."
"So… Thomas just doesn't know what triplets are?"
"And so he thinks our family is somehow wrong. But nothing is wrong about us and if someone comes and says it to you, you can tell them to" Emma heroically swallowed 'stuff it' and finished with "talk to me, and I will explain it to them" 'slowly' she added silently.
Henry's eyes slowly closed and he burrowed under his covers, a bit deeper. He frowned and yawned deeply.
"And…" he trailed off, falling asleep in the middle of the sentence.
"Yes, and. Always an and for us, kiddo" Emma sighed and closed the tiny book she didn't get to read to him that evening.
She was rather proud of him for the way he reported the whole situation, but in the long run they had to plan for dealing with such situations themselves, before it became a problem for Henry.