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.