"Let me find that out, will you? Let me find it out for myself!"

"Nobody's stopping you."

"You were stopping me! I was doing your work in Moscow, and you were here playing with my kids!"

"I offered to bring them to you."

"I didn't want them in Moscow, I was busy."

"I offered you leave to come home. Time after time."

"And let the work fall apart?"

"Petra," said Mrs. Delphiki. "Peter has been very good to your children. And to me. And you're behaving very badly."

"No, Mrs. Delphiki," said Peter. "This is only slightly badly. Petra's a trained soldier and the fact that I'm still standing—"

"Don't tease me out of this." Petra burst into tears. "I've lost a year of my babies' lives and it was my own fault, do you think I don't know that?"

There was a crying sound from one of the bedrooms.

Mrs. Delphiki rolled her eyes and went down the hall to rescue whoever it was that needed rescuing.

"You did what you had to do," said Peter. "Nobody's criticizing you."

"But you could take time for my children."

"I don't have any of my own," said Peter.

"Is that my fault?"

"I'm just saying I had time. And ... I owed it to Bean."

"You owe more than that."

"But this is what I can do."

She didn't want Peter Wiggin to be the father figure in her children's lives.

"Petra, I'll stop if you want. They'll wonder why I don't come, and then they'll forget. If you don't want me here, I'll understand. This is yours and Bean's, and I don't want to intrude. And yes, I did want to be here when you opened that."

"What's in it?"

"I don't know."

"Didn't have one of your guys steam it open for you?"

Peter just looked a little irritated.

Mrs. Delphiki came into the room carrying Ramon, who was whimpering and saying, "My paper."

"I should have known," said Peter.

Petra held up the envelope. "Here it is," she said.

Ramon reached for it insistently. Petra handed it to him.

"You're spoiling him," said Peter.

"This is your mama, Ramon," said Mrs. Delphiki. "She nursed you when you were little."

"He was the only one that wasn't biting me by the time..." She couldn't think of a way to finish the sentence that wouldn't involve speaking of Bean or the other two children, the ones that had to go on solid food because they got teeth so incredibly young.

Mrs. Delphiki wasn't giving up. "Let your mama see the paper, Ramon."

Ramón clutched it tighter. Sharing was not yet on his agenda.

Peter reached out, snagged the envelope, and held it out to Petra. Ramon immediately began to wail.

"Give it back to him," said Petra. "I've waited this long."

Peter got his finger under the corner, tore it open, and extracted a single sheet of paper. "If you let them get their way just because they cry, you'll raise a bunch of whiny brats that nobody can stand." He handed her the paper, and gave the envelope back to Ramon, who immediately quieted down and started examining the transformed object.

Petra held the paper and was surprised to see that it was shaking. Which meant her hand was shaking. She didn't feel like she was trembling.

And then suddenly Peter was holding her by her upper arms and helping her to the sofa and her legs weren't working very well. "Come on, sit here, it's a shock, that's all."

"I've got your snack all ready," said Mrs. Delphiki to Ramon, who was trying to get his whole forearm inside the envelope.

"Are you all right?" Peter asked.

Petra nodded.

"Want me to go now so you can read this?"

She nodded again.

Peter was in the kitchen saying good-bye to Ramon and Mrs. Delphiki as Andrew padded down the hall. He stopped in the archway of the parlor and said, "Time."

"Yes, it's time, Andrew," said Petra.

She watched him toddle on toward the kitchen. And then a moment later she heard his voice. "Mama," he announced.

"That's right," said Mrs. Delphiki. "Mama's home."

"Bye, Mrs. Delphiki," Peter said. A moment later, Petra heard the door open.

"Wait a minute, Peter!" she called.

He came back inside. He closed the door. As he came back into the parlor she held the paper out to him. "I can't read it."

Peter didn't ask why. Any fool could see the tears in her eyes. "You want me to read it to you?"

"Maybe I can get through it if it isn't his voice I hear," she said.

Peter opened it. "It isn't long."

"I know."

He started reading aloud, softly so only she could hear.

"I love you," he said. "There's one thing we forgot to decide. We can't have two pairs of children with the same name. So I've decided that I'm going to call the Andrew that's with me 'Ender,' because that's the name we called him when he was born. And I'll think of the Andrew that's with you as 'Andrew.' "

The tears were streaming down Petra's face now and she could hardly keep herself from sobbing. For some reason it tore her apart to realize that Bean was thinking about such things before he left.

"Want me to go on?" asked Peter.

She nodded.

"And the Bella that's with you, we'll call Bella. Because the one that's with me, I've decided to call her 'Carlotta.' "

She lost it. Feelings she'd had pent up inside her for a year, feelings that her underlings had begun to think she didn't have, burst out of her now.

But only for a minute. She got control of herself, and then waved to him to continue.

"And even though she isn't with me, the little girl we named after you, when I tell the kids about her, I'm going to call her 'Poke' so they don't get her confused with you. You don't have to call her that, but it's because you're the only Petra I actually know, and Poke ought to have somebody named after her."

Petra broke down. She clung to Peter and he held her like a friend, like a father.

Peter didn't say anything. No "It's all right" or "I understand," maybe because it wasn't all right and he was smart enough to know he couldn't understand.

When he did speak, it was after she was much calmer and quieter and another of the children had walked past the archway and loudly proclaimed, "Lady crying."

Petra sat up and patted Peter's arm and said, "Thank you. I'm sorry."

"I wish his letter had been longer," said Peter. "It was obviously just a last-minute thought."

"It was perfect," said Petra.

"He didn't even sign it."

"Doesn't matter."

"But he was thinking of you and the children. Making sure you and he would think of all the children by the same names."

She nodded, afraid of starting again.

"I'm going to go now," said Peter. "I won't come back till you invite me."

"Come back when you usually do," she said. "I don't want my homecoming to cost the children somebody they love."

"Thanks," he said.

She nodded. She wanted to thank him for reading it to her and being so decent about her crying all over his shirt, but she didn't trust herself to speak so she just sort of waved.

It was a good thing she had cried herself out. When she went into the kitchen and washed her face and listened to little Petra—to Poke— say, "Lady crying" again, she was able to be very calm and say, "I was crying because I'm so happy to see you. I've missed you. You don't remember me, but I'm your mama."

"We show them your picture every morning and night," said Mrs. Delphiki, "and they kiss the picture."

"Thank you."

"The nurses started it before I came," she said.

"Now I get to kiss my boys and girls myself," she said. "Will that be all right? No more kissing the picture?"

It was too much for them to understand. And if they wanted to keep kissing the picture for a while, that would be fine with her, too. Just like Ramón's envelope. No reason to take away from them something that they valued.