Page 9 of The Marriage Auction 2: Part 4

“The funeral home gave them to you?”

I cleared my throat. “Ellen apparently wore Troy’s around her neck. I didn’t know what to do with them, so I added hers to his and put them around my neck for now. I’m sure TJ will want them down the road.”

“That’s really sweet, you keeping them together like that.”

“Their love was unreal,” I smiled solemnly. “They wouldn’t be happy if they weren’t together.”

“Yeah?” She reached for the untouched glass of wine and took my hand. I grabbed my glass and followed her over to the fireplace where the flames were already warming the entire room. Summer tugged on my hand as she sat on the cushy sectional in front of the hearth. “Have a seat and tell me about them. We’ve talked a lot about how they left this Earth, butnot much about how they lived. I want to know Troy and Ellen through your eyes.”

She pulled her legs up underneath her, sitting sideways. I followed her lead and got comfortable next to her, one of our knees touching.

“Well, I told you we were childhood friends. We met in the orphanage first, then added Erik to the mix through our school connections. Ellen was at the girls’ orphanage and Troy and I at the boys. Since we went to the same school, we all became fast friends. Troy was gone for Ellen from the moment he laid eyes on her.”

“Total insta-love, my favorite romance genre,” she replied with a dreamy gaze.

“I’m not sure I’d describe it like that, but he certainly would. Ellen was a harder nut to crack. Like most orphans, trust didn’t come easy for us. But Troy was determined to prove his intentions. From the time they held hands to their first kiss, he swore to Erik and me that he was going to marry her. His confidence never swayed, not even for a moment. We thought he was girl-crazy, but he would just tell us he was crazy for Ellen. No one rose above her. She was the stars, the sky, the sun and the moon. We were mere humans compared to her.”

“When did they get married?”

“Right out of high school. The second they could, they did. The Johansen’s helped plan a small affair, being the only nurturing adults in our lives. They even let all of us live with them after we aged out of the orphanage. Erik and I went off to university, and Troy went to flight school while Ellen attended community college. Erik got heavily into the science behind brewing beer while getting a degree in business. I went further, going for my masters. By the time I finished, Erik’s beer business had blown up. He needed help, and I needed a job. Together, wegrew the company year by year. Eventually we were so big we needed a regular pilot. That’s where Troy came in.”

“Sounds like the plot to a movie. And TJ?”

With that question, my smile stretched so large my jaw ached. “Ellen had been feeling under the weather for a couple months. Every time we saw her, she looked pale and, frankly, rather gaunt. Erik and I reamed Troy. We told him we knew something was wrong with her, and we were upset they were hiding it from us. We were truly worried. We thought maybe she was very ill. Turned out she was pregnant.”

Summer sighed merrily and pressed her free hand to her cheek, her elbow braced on the back cushion. “How did they tell you?”

“It was so cheesy.” I laughed out loud, remembering the moment like it was yesterday.

Summer wiggled in her seat. “Tell me!”

I grinned, took a sip of wine and thought back to that night. “Well, we were at Sunday dinner, something we’d done for years. If everyone was around, we’d eat a meal together on Sundays. That day, Ellen was pushing food around her plate instead of eating it. Again, the woman looked like shit but didn’t seem unhappy in the least.”

“Because they had a secret.” Summer waggled her eyebrows.

I chuckled at her eagerness. “At one point, I put my fork down and stood up in the middle of dinner, demanding that they either share what was going on, or I was leaving and not coming back. It was an empty threat, but I’d had it with whatever secret they were keeping.”

“Ellen told me to sit my ass down and wait. Then she went over to the Christmas tree—it was a couple weeks before the holiday—and grabbed two brightly packed boxes and handed them to us.”

“What was in the present?” Summer breathed, caught up in the story.

“At first, I didn’t want the present. I wanted to know if my best friend was sick. Ellen pointed at the present and said our answers were in there. Both Erik and I ripped open the packages and found a picture frame with a black image and a blurry white blob. The frame was garish with little plastic jewels glued all over it. The words “Best Uncle” had been painted on the top.”

“Oh my god! That is sooooooo cute.”

“Neither Erik nor I had any idea what we were looking at, never having seen an ultrasound picture before. We stared at the picture like a couple of idiots until Erik was brave enough to ask what we were looking at.”

Summer started to laugh, covering her pretty mouth as she did so.

“Ellen pointed at the frame and told us to read the words. When we still looked at her like idiots again…”

Summer was chortling and snorting through her laughter.

“Ellen finally put us out of our misery stating they were pregnant, and that we were going to be uncles. She explained that the image was the sonogram of the baby. They had wanted to wait to surprise us at Christmas but realized pretty quickly that we did not miss how sick Ellen had become.”

“That’s awesome,” Summer said.

“I still have that picture sitting on my desk in my office in Oslo. I’ll show it to you sometime.”

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