"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."