“One group at a time,” he admitted.
“And hiding them in trash bags?”
Robert actually looked embarrassed.
“I needed some way to get them outside without you asking questions. If I walked through the house carrying wrapped packages every night, you would have wanted to know what they were.”
I stared at him.
“So you started volunteering to take out the garbage.”
The one chore he had avoided since the 1990s.
Amelia made a tiny sound that was almost a laugh before covering her mouth.
Under any other circumstances, it would have been funny.
My husband, who considered taking out the trash a form of torture, had suddenly become the household garbage champion because he was smuggling family photographs out of my closet.
But I wasn’t ready to laugh.
“Why?”
Robert looked at me.
“Why would you hide this?”
My voice cracked.
“You know what Amelia means to me. You know what losing contact with her did to me.”
