I’ve argued that point. We think we got them at a pottery tent at the state fair where they may have been in bulk and we just purchased three, but I don’t know why we would have bought an odd number.
I have fun from time to time attempting to reconcile divergent memories, so allow me to hypothesize one possible scenario:
There were only three available at the fair. You would normally only buy bowls in a set of four. However, as you mention, you really like this particular style. Perhaps you liked it so much that you made an exception in this case and bought the three because that was the maximum available. But then you lost the third, and so the memories you were triangulating from were "there are two in the cupboard," "that's not the full set," and "four is a full set."
Now onto your spouse's memory. They remembered two at first, because they were triangulating between "we normally buy four," "there are fewer than four of these," and "we always buy an even number." Confronted with the existence of a third, the other memory, "there are fewer than four" remains in effect.
