Her mother found her on the veranda again, a week into the break, the same spot where the harder questions had first been asked, and settled into the chair beside her without ceremony, the particular unhurried patience of a woman who had learned, over sixty years, that important conversations arrived on their own schedule rather than anyone else's.
"You've been quiet since you came back from the village," her mother said, not quite a question.
"I've been thinking."
"Good. That was rather the point of asking you to." Her mother studied her a moment in the fading light, something gentle but searching in her expression. "Tell me what the village showed you, since you clearly haven't finished turning it over yet."
Zarina gathered the pieces of it slowly — Yusuf's plain observation that she
