Several nights ago at the dinner table, chewing a mouthful of spinach, the boy had claimed it was stupid to farm, boring to be a farmer. Ram had not reacted. He had sold his last acre in the Imperial Valley a decade ago to move to Dave’s home in Los Angeles. He felt he had chopped off an arm and left it behind. The boy could not know that. Ram had not grown spinach but he had grown lettuce, peas and asparagus and carrots, thousands of bales of cotton; he had rotated through so many seasons of alfalfa. Ram had glared at his grandson. That had been the end of it, but the words still stung.

Now Ram inspected the zucchini and returned it to the cart, saying nothing. He wanted to leave, wander to a corner of the store without the others, but when he turned to go, a Chicano man stood before him, blocking the narrow passage between the shopping cart and the avocados.

“¿Perdón, señor, sabe usted dónde están los chiles?” the man asked softly. Ram’s stomach clenched.

“Why would I be knowing where the chilies are?” Ram snapped. “You saw my brown skin, so automatically I must be speaking Spanish too? And eating chilies? Chilies?” The man shrank back, and Ram stepped toward him, but he felt his son’s grip on his arm.

“What’s the matter with you, Pop?” Dave hissed. “Pretending you don’t speak Spanish.” A blond couple near the bananas had turned to look at them.

Ram snatched his arm away. “What a rude fellow,” he said, his voice quivering, his manner too dignified. He scowled at Dave. “You will find me at the checkout,” he announced, and walked slowly past the couple.

“What’s the matter with Bapu-ji?” little Anika asked her father.

“He seems to have forgotten who he was married to,” Dave said, then caught himself. His mother, even when alive, had never needed defending. “He is upset about Grandpa Karak,” he added. Dave looked up to see the blond couple, inspecting apples now, farther away. At a cocktail party tonight, or at dinner, they would tell their friends about the scene between the loco foreigners at the grocery store. The thought came to him suddenly and he knew he had arrived at the truth: It was an old shame his father had felt. A visitor from the past.

GRACE TORRES, KARAK’S ONLY DAUGHTER, telephoned the house that night, asking for Ram. “I have been making arrangements for the funeral,” she announced. “I have a favor to ask.” Ram had known her as Grace Singh, long ago when she and her brothers were toddlers, but that changed after her mother had remarried.

“What favor?” Ram said. His voice was calm and sounded like gravel.