Page 1085 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

Again the great canoe was beached. Again Malu rose up from his seat and stepped out onto the sand. But this time-- was it possible? --this time he seemed to be hurrying. Hurrying so fast that, yes, he lost a little bit of dignity. Indeed, slow as his progress was, Wangmu felt that he was fairly bounding up the beach. And as she watched his eyes, saw where he was looking, she realized he was coming, not to Peter, but to her.
***
Novinha woke up in the soft chair they had brought for her and for a moment she forgot where she was. During her days as xenobiologist, she had often fallen asleep in a chair in the laboratory, and so for a moment she looked around to see what it was that she was working on before she fell asleep. What problem was it she was trying to solve?
Then she saw Valentine standing over the bed where Andrew lay. Where Andrew's body lay. His heart was somewhere else.
"You should have wakened me," said Novinha.
"I just arrived," said Valentine. "And I didn't have the heart to wake you. They said you almost never sleep."
Novinha stood up. "Odd. It seems to me as if that's all I do." "Jane is dying," said Valentine.
Novinha's heart leapt within her.
"Your rival, I know," said Valentine.
Novinha looked into the woman's eyes, to see if there was anger there, or mockery. But no. It was only compassion.
"Trust me, I know how you feel," said Valentine. "Until I loved and married Jakt, Ender was my whole life. But I was never his. Oh, for a while in his childhood, I mattered most to him then-- but that was poisoned because the military used me to get to him, to keep him going when he wanted to give up. And after that, it was always Jane who heard his jokes, his observations, his inmost thoughts. It was Jane who saw what he saw and heard what he heard. I wrote my books, and when they were done I had his attention for a few hours, a few weeks. He used my ideas and so I felt he carried a part of me inside him. But he was hers."
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