Shadow of the giant

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.
    By your father's age, Petra said silently, he was on his
own, trying not to starve to death in Rotterdam.
    But you're all going to catch up with him and pass him by.
When you're in your twenties and out of college and getting married, he'll
still be sixteen years old, crawling through time as his starship races through
space. When you bury me, he'll not have turned seventeen yet. And your brothers
and sister will still be babies. Not as old as you are. It will be as if they
never change.
    Which means it's exactly as if they had died. Loved ones who
die never change, either. They're always the same age in memory.
    So what