Mrs. Delphiki wasn’t giving up. “Let your mama see the paper, Ramón.”

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

Peter reached out, snagged the envelope, and held it out to Petra. Ramón 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 Ramón, 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 Ramón, 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 Ramón 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.