medium · Act reading

Passage: Mara had rehearsed the apology for three days, polishing each phrase until it gleamed. But standing now on her sister's porch, she found the careful sentences dissolving. What came out instead was clumsy and unplanned—half a sentence, a long silence, then simply, 'I should have called.' Her sister did not answer right away. She stepped back from the door, not in rejection but to make room, and held it open. Mara understood then that the speech she had practiced would have been a kind of performance, and that this fumbling, unscripted thing was the only version her sister could have believed. It can most reasonably be inferred from the passage that Mara's rehearsed apology failed to come out because:

1. she had forgotten the words she spent three days memorizing.
2. a polished speech would have felt performed rather than sincere.
3. her sister interrupted her before she could deliver it.
4. she was too angry to go through with the apology she planned.

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