Maya had rehearsed the apology for three days, polishing each sentence until it gleamed. But standing on her grandmother's porch, watching the old woman shell peas into a chipped bowl, she found the careful words dissolving. "I should have called," was all she managed. Her grandmother did not look up. "The peas don't shell themselves," she said, and slid the bowl a few inches across the table toward the empty chair. Maya sat. For a long while neither spoke, and the only sound was the soft tick of pods splitting open between their fingers.