I stared at her.
“My parents are dead.
Those photographs are part of my home.
How did hiding them make your parents more comfortable?”
Her expression hardened again, but she had no convincing answer.
Robert walked toward the wall and touched one of the empty hooks.
“Where are they?”
Sharon nodded toward a cabinet near the hallway.
He opened it.
Inside, stacked face-to-face, were the photographs she had removed.
Robert lifted the picture of himself as a child from the top of the pile.
He stared at it for several seconds.
I remembered that photograph being taken.
He had fallen into shallow water ten minutes earlier and insisted on smiling even though his socks were soaked.
My father had been behind the camera.
My mother had laughed so hard she had to sit down.
Three generations were wrapped inside that one cheap wooden frame.
Sharon had placed it in a cabinet because it interfered with the atmosphere she wanted for her parents.
Robert carried the stack to the table.
“I’m sorry.”
It was the first apology anyone had offered.
I did not accept it immediately.
“Why didn’t you answer me when I came in?”
He looked at Sharon.
Then back at me.
“Because I knew I hadn’t asked.”
There was the second truth of the evening.
He had not been confused.
He had been caught.
Sharon turned toward him.
“You told me she’d be fine with it.”
“I thought she would be.”
“You said she wouldn’t care.”
Robert rubbed his face.
“I was wrong.”
“So now I’m the bad person?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to.”
Their argument began rising, but one of the officers cut through it.
“You can discuss this somewhere else.
Right now, you need to collect your belongings.”
That ended it.
For the next twenty minutes, my cabin became a place of zippers, footsteps, cupboard doors, and uncomfortable silence.
Sharon’s mother carried grocery bags back toward the cars.
Her father made two trips with luggage.
Before he left, he stopped near me.
“I believed we had permission,” he said.
“From Robert, you did.”
He nodded.
“We shouldn’t have moved your things.”
It was not a dramatic apology, but it was at least an honest one.
“No,” I said.
“You shouldn’t have.”
He accepted that and walked outside.
Sharon was last except for Robert.
At the doorway, she looked back at me.
