Novinha nodded. She did understand.
“But I have Jakt, and so I’m not unhappy anymore. And my children. Much as I loved Ender, powerful man that he is, even lying here like this, even fading away — children are more to a woman than any man can be. We pretend otherwise. We pretend we bear them for him, that we raise them for him. But it’s not true. We raise them for themselves. We stay with our men for the children’s sake.” Valentine smiled. “You did.”
“I stayed with the wrong man,” said Novinha.
“No, you stayed with the right one. Your Libo, he had a wife and other children — she was the one, they were the ones who had a right to claim him. You stayed with another man for your own children’s sake, and even though they hated him sometimes, they also loved him, and even though in some ways he was weak, in others he was strong. It was good for you to have him for their sake. It was a kind of protection for them all along.”
“Why are you saying these things to me?”
“Because Jane is dying,” said Valentine, “but she might live if only Ender would reach out to her.”
“Put the jewel back into his ear?” said Novinha scornfully.
“They’re long past needing that,” said Valentine. “Just as Ender is long past needing to live this life in this body.”
“He’s not so old,” said Novinha.
“Three thousand years,” said Valentine.
“That’s just the relativity effect,” said Novinha. “Actually he’s –”
“Three thousand years,” said Valentine again. “All of humanity was his family for most of that time; he was like a father away on a business trip, who comes home only now and then, but when he’s there, he’s the good judge, the kind provider. That’s what happened each time he dipped back down into a human world and spoke the death of someone; he caught up on all the family doings he had missed. He’s had a life of three thousand years, and he saw no end of it, and he got tired. So at last he left that large family and he chose your small one; he loved you, and for your sake he set aside Jane, who had been like his wife in all those years of his wandering, she’d been at home, so to speak, mothering all his trillions of children, reporting to him on what they were doing, tending house.”
“And her own works praise her in the gates,” said Novinha.
“Yes, the virtuous woman. Like you.”
Novinha tossed her head in scorn. “Never me. My own works mocked me in the gates.”
“He chose you and he loved you and he loved your children and he was their father, those children who had lost two fathers already; and he still is their father, and he still is your husband, but you don’t really need him anymore.”
“How can you say that?” demanded Novinha, furious. “How do you know what I need?”
“You know it yourself. You knew it when you came here. You knew it when Estevгo died in the embrace of that rogue fathertree. Your children were leading their own lives now and you couldn’t protect them and neither could Ender. You still loved him, he still loved you, but the family part of your life was over. You didn’t really need him anymore.”
“He never needed me.”
“He needed you desperately,” said Valentine. “He needed you so much he gave up Jane for you.”
“No,” said Novinha. “He needed my need for him. He needed to feel like he was providing for me, protecting me.”
“But you don’t need his providence or his protection anymore,” said Valentine.
Novinha shook her head.
“Wake him up,” said Valentine, “and let him go.”
Novinha thought at once of all the times she had stood at graveside. She remembered the funeral of her parents, who died for the sake of saving Milagre from the descolada during that first terrible outbreak. She thought of Pipo, tortured to death, flayed alive by the piggies because they thought that if they did he’d grow a tree, only nothing grew except the ache, the pain in Novinha’s heart — it was something she discovered that sent him to the pequeninos that night. And then Libo, tortured to death the same way as his father, and again because of her, but this time because of what she didn’t tell him. And Marcгo, whose life was all the more painful because of her before he finally died of the disease that had been killing him since he was a child. And Estevгo, who let his mad faith lead him into martyrdom, so he could become a venerado like her parents, and no doubt someday a saint as they would be saints. “I’m sick of letting people go,” said Novinha bitterly.