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Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found Here

Where we left off in Part 52 …

Lois looked around and saw a slight hill in the distance. Perhaps if she got higher up she’d have a better signal. As she approached the hill, she discovered it was not more than a rise. She looked down at her phone, two bars; that was better than nothing.

“Perry? It’s Lois. I don’t know about this story. These EPA guys seem a little too competent to be legit. Clark’s going through some personal crisis, so it’s making it difficult for him to focus on the story,” she said into her phone.

What she heard in response sounded more like crinkled paper than Perry. “ –king up, Lois.”

She started up the rise, in hopes of finding better reception. “I’ve only got two bars here, Chief. Maybe at the top of this hill, I’ll have more luck. I’ll call you back.”

“—ll hold, darlin’. Got a meeting… half an…” Perry replied.

“Is this any better?” she asked, nearing the top of the hill.

“A bit, honey. Whatcha got for me?” her boss asked.

The sun was in her eyes and Lois rotated around to look back towards the Kents’ farmhouse. She couldn’t see it. Had she gotten herself turned around? She stepped back and spotting a tree, headed for the shade. “Yeah, Clark discovered an old friend of his had died…”

On the other side of the tree, her two and a smidgen bars went back to one. Damn! She moved further onto the rise and into the bright sun. She tripped over some rocks, hidden in the tall grass, but was able to keep herself from falling.

“Who died?” Perry asked over the line, clearly still not hearing her properly.

Lois looked down at the rocks and noticed that they were more symmetrical and flat than regular rocks. Bending down and looking closer, she discovered they were gravestones. She saw that there had once been a small fence surrounding them but it had fallen into disrepair near the tree, which was why she hadn’t seen it. In the tall grass, the graveyard had been well hidden from the casual observer.

“A friend of Clark’s,” Lois repeated softly. Her eyes were attracted to the old stones. A small mound of earth with small threads of pink and large dusty azure flowers drew her attention. It looked better maintained than the others and even had some dried daisy shaped gold flowers lying on it as if recently brought by a loved one. Who would still bring flowers to an old abandoned cemetery?

“What’s that honey? You’re breaking up. It sounded like you said that Clark was dead,” Perry’s voice faded into static.

“No, Perry,” Lois corrected before an icy chill crept down her spine. “Oh, God, no!” She knelt down at the mound, trying to read the name etched into the rock and already knowing somehow what it would say. Unable to see the letters in the bright sun, but able to feel them with her fingers, she pulled out her water bottle and splashed water onto it, hoping to make the markings more discernible.

Clark Kent – 5-17-66.

Like an anvil landing on her chest, Lois gasped at the sudden pain that developed there. It felt as if were her Clark who lay buried there instead of someone else. “Clark is dead!” she sobbed, dropping the phone and burying her face into her hands.

***

Part 53

Perry looked down at the phone in his hand. What the hell? Did Lois really just tell him that Kent was dead? He hung up the phone. So much for his meditative stress relief. He tried to unfold his legs from his lotus position and got stuck, unable to move. “Jimmy!”

Jimmy, who had been in his office since announcing that Lois was on the line, was too much in shock to come over to help him up. “CK’s dead?”

“Bad reception. I must have heard her wrong, Jimmy,” Perry reassured him, despite having heard Lois clear as a bell. He wasn’t going to believe anything without confirmation. “I need to get a photographer out there pronto.”

Jimmy looked at him hopefully.

No, absolutely not! “Where’s Johnson?” Perry suggested instead, waving his arm.

His young employee rushed over to finally help his boss to his feet. “Uh… Utah.”

“Oh, I got it. Sevison!” Perry said, gripping onto the corner of his desk, trying to pull himself to his feet.

“Winnipeg, sir.”

“Oh, photographers!” he grumbled, more upset at his old aching body than photographers in general. “Just when you need one, you can’t find one.”

“Maybe there’s a new guy looking for an opportunity?” Jimmy suggested, plainly having a ‘new guy’ in mind.

“Oh, no, Jimmy. I can’t take the chance,” Perry groaned. Lois needed more backup than Jimmy, especially if something had happened to Kent. “I’m not going to risk sending a new guy…”

“Somebody had to take a chance on you once,” Jimmy reminded him.

Perry looked over at the young man. He really liked the kid, but he didn’t want to send him into something dangerous on his first major assignment. “I took a chance on you once, Olsen, and I had blurry photos of Lois and Superman on my front page. Send Ralph.”

“You’re kidding, Chief. Right? Lois will kill him,” Jimmy said.

Was that what happened to Kent? Did he catch Lois at the wrong moment, and she hit with a karate chop? Perry wouldn’t be surprised with those two. One moment they were happy as two peas in a pod, then Lois was booking a flight out to Kent’s hometown without informing her partner about it. Perry had said it once, and he’d probably say it again, Norcross and Judd all over again. “All right. All right. You go, but don’t blow it!”

“Thanks, Chief,” Jimmy responded. He looked like he was going to leave, and then embraced his boss with enthusiasm, causing not only distress for Perry’s aching joints, but major discomfort in his personal space threshold, before turning to rush out.

“Jimmy!” Perry called to him. “Don’t you ever, ever hug me again!”

Jimmy gulped and smiled in embarrassment, before hurrying once again out the door.

Perry leaned against his desk, trying to catch his breath from untying himself from a pretzel. Meditation, ha! Hogwash! He circled around his desk to his chair and hoped to dear God that he had just sent Olsen off on some fool’s errand.

***

Lois didn’t know how long her tears lasted before she was able to calm herself again. She didn’t know why finding this grave caused such an over-the-top reaction from her. It should have made her mad. Instead, all she felt was unending agony as if it were really her boyfriend in that grave. As soon as, no before, she saw Clark’s name etched into the rock, she had known it was his grave. That man back at the Kents’ farmhouse had stolen the identity of this little beautiful brown haired babe.

She didn’t know how she knew he had brown hair. She didn’t know how she knew that this grave was for a baby. It only had one date on it. It could be for a full-grown man for all she could tell, but she knew, just knew, there was a baby buried there. She didn’t know why she had found herself with her arms crossed, swaying back and forth, as she sobbed, except a flash of an image. An image that felt real enough to be a memory, only she knew it couldn’t possibly be. An image of her holding a brown haired baby, wrapped in a navy blanket, and her crying. She loved that baby. She loved that baby with all of her heart and soul. Its death felt as if her soul, which had been whole, had been ripped apart and into shreds with its death.

Her body ached from this wound. It hurt worse than her arm had after she had been shot. Well, after she had arrived at the hospital and everyone had started poking and prodding it, and her arm had swelled up to the size of the state of Montana, and the pain medications still hadn’t kicked in, hurt. The wound from the loss of this infant felt raw and fresh and gaping, as if every one of her nerve endings had been scorched. She felt as if this baby, this Clark Kent, made her whole and he had been stolen away from her.

Lois’s brain tried to grapple with this sensory and information overload. It didn’t make sense, and she hated feeling confused. She picked up her water bottle and took a sip, trying to figure out what was going on. Who was this baby to her? Why did it make her feel this way? Were these emotions only because she now had concrete proof that not only had Clark – or whatever his name was – had lied to her, but also had done so repeatedly to her face? The one fact that Chuck, as she could no longer think of him as ‘Clark’, swore to her was true was his name.

I am Clark Kent.

And she had believed him. Once again she had been sucked into the lies. She had so much wanted to believe that he was different, that he wasn’t like all the other men in her life, who had lied to her just to get something. Paul had wanted her body. Claude had wanted her story. Or was it the other way around? Either way, she had no idea what Chuck wanted from her. Her love?

She scoffed at that thought, taking another sip of water. But why lie to her if he wanted her to love him? Her soul? Was he the devil incarnate? She didn’t want to believe that about Chuck, but the evidence was stacking up against him. It didn’t make any sense either. Even the devil wouldn’t want this bruised, tattered, bloody, scrap of a soul.

Lois looked back down at the grave and once again felt overwhelming misery. It was almost as if this child was her very own child, ripped from her womb, and laid to rest in this ancient cemetery.

She had never wanted to have children. Children were chaos. Children required hands-on attention. Children required patience. Children meant constant interruptions to one’s life and a loss of what one wanted. Children required unconditional, unwavering, and never-ending love, and she always feared that innate gene was missing from the Lane line. She didn’t want to bring a child into this world only to be as bad of a parent as hers had been with her and Lucy. In addition, she didn’t know, since she hadn’t the role models to look to for guidance, if she could even break free from the Lane vicious circle, even if she had wanted to.

She had thought long and hard about it after that episode with Claude. They had used protection but, still, accidents happen. What kind of parent would she be?

Would she be like her mother and give up her work, her career goals for the sake of her children? Her mother had let a man ruin her life, her career, and was forced her to raise two daughters alone. Two daughters Ellen Lane clearly hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with.

On the other hand, would Lois do the opposite and be like her father, who gave up loving his children for the sake of his work? She could easily see herself following in her father’s footsteps. It wasn’t an easy truth to swallow. She didn’t want to follow her mother’s example either. That had left her with only one option.

Lois had decided right then and there – well, in truth, after she had discovered that she wasn’t pregnant – that if she was going to focus on her career, which she definitely planned on doing, it wouldn’t be fair to a child to be saddled with her for its mom. She would just be one of those women who never had children. She figured that was the best solution for everyone involved.

Now, for the first time since making that decision years ago, she wasn’t so sure. She knew, again with that aggravating knowledge that just suddenly appeared inside her, that she wanted this child. If this child had been allowed to live, she would have loved him with her entire heart and soul, and that truth knocked her off kilter. He was a part of her. What was it about this child, or this image of a brown haired child and his death, that had changed her mind? Not changed it so radically that she wanted a baby of her own now, at this very instant, or even nine months from now, heaven forbid, but maybe someday, it wouldn’t be so bad. It might even be good. She hadn’t thought that she could love someone with that kind of overpowering ability, and now she knew that she could. She just knew.

Lois wished she knew more about the child from this image in her head. Was she really seeing the real Clark Kent, this baby in the grave, or was she seeing a flash of her own future, her own child? Her own child named Clark Kent? That couldn’t be right. Why would she name a child ‘Clark Kent’? Especially now after the name brought her nothing but agony. Despair that he had died. Anguish that someone else would take his name and use it for his own. Fury that she was left to deal with all this mess on her own.

Yes, fury! She understood and knew what to do with that emotion. She kissed her fingertips and set it on the stone. “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll take care of that wrong Clark. I’ll protect you.”

She picked up her cell phone and put the battery back in from where it had fallen out when she had dropped her phone. Then she climbed to her feet, dusted herself off, and started marching back to the Kent farmhouse.

When she went around the curve of the dirt road, Lois flipped open her phone and saw she had three bars. Finally!

“Get me Perry! It’s Lois,” she demanded to whoever answered the phone. She only walked ten paces before he came on the line.

“There you are, darlin’!” Perry said. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last hour. Now, tell me what happened.”

An hour had passed already? “Sorry, Chief, I was out of range,” she explained.

“What’s this about Kent being dead?” Perry asked, and she could hear a rough edge to his voice.

“Well, he is and he isn’t,” Lois grumbled.

“Want to explain that, darlin’?”

She kicked a rock with the toe of her sneaker. “When I called you before I had just stumbled across his grave.”

“His what?” her boss roared.

“His grave. Apparently, my partner died back in 1966,” Lois informed him.

“Uh… honey? Are you sure that just wasn’t some other Clark Kent? It could be a family name,” Perry said somehow able to mix both relief and annoyance into his tone at the same time.

“It isn’t. When we arrived here last night, the first thing Chuck did was introduce himself to the Kent family as Jerome Lane, my husband!” Lois snarled. “He tried to fob me off with some kind of lame story about these people not taking him in when he was orphaned as a child, but I’m not buying it. He somehow knows people in town, but nobody knows him, or at least, they don’t know him as ‘Clark Kent’. He claimed he’s come here recently trying to find out why they didn’t take him in, under the alias of this ‘Jerome’ person. Today, he was practically in tears because he learned some girl he once knew had died ten years ago! I checked the local records and no Kents died here in 1976, when Clark claimed his parents died. Nothing he says adds up.”

Perry cleared his throat. “I thought we discussed this, Lois. You were to only go to Kansas to work on the EPA versus the farmer’s land rights issue, not to dig into your partner’s past.”

“Per-ry! That man, who has been calling himself Clark Kent, isn’t Clark Kent. He stole the identity of the baby whose grave I just found. His birthday even lines up. He said his parents had found him, abandoned, estimated he was three months old and gave him the birthday of February 29th. That would mean they found him in May 1966.”

“There was no Leap Day in 1966, Lois,” Perry said coolly.

“Yes! I know that. That’s what I told him, and he told me some cute story about how because his parents thought he was so special, they thought he should have a special birthday too. Blah, blah, blah! Lies! All lies,” she shouted into the sky.

“Lois, dear, you sound a bit angry. You need to calm down and think about this rationally. You don’t have any actual proof that your partner stole the identity of the person whose grave you found,” Perry said, giving her his soothing voice.

She screamed again. “Back when we were working the Toasters story, Lex told me that he investigated Clark and didn’t find any…”

“Excuse me?" Perry interrupted, his voice tipping over the edge. "Why was Lex Luthor, billionaire philanthropist, running a background check on one of my reporters?”

Lois rolled her eyes. “He was jealous of Chuck, or that I preferred Clark to him, and he was looking for something…”

“Lois,” Perry said in that way he did when he wanted her to listen, instead of talk. “And you believed him?”

“Of course not... well, not at first. I thought Lex was trying to get into my pants, so I went back to the Planet and double-checked his findings. I did my own research. I did my own searches. Do you know what I found? Nothing! Just as Lex told me I’d find. When my search went dry, I started pumping Chuck for information, and we all know what a fountain of information that man isn’t,” Lois said with a scoff. She could see the barn ahead of her now. “It wasn’t until you told me that you had checked his references and that his old college professor, whom you knew personally, raved about him that I figured I must be wrong. I knew that he had to exist, but due to some computer glitch, he no longer did.”

“So, to make a long story short, Kent’s still alive?” Perry asked.

“For the moment, the man whom you and I know as Clark Kent, is still alive. I’m going to confront him as soon as I see him, hash it out with him, once and for all. All the secrets, all the distractions, all the changing of subject whenever I ask him a personal question has got to stop,” Lois said.

“Uh-huh. And the story you went out to cover about the man kicked off his property by the EPA?”

Lois wanted to scream. “We hit a wall. We’re supposed to go back to the Irig farm and look around this afternoon, but Chuck needed to talk to these Kents about his long departed girlfriend, so I went for a walk. That’s when I, literally, tripped over his grave.”

“Girlfriend?” Perry echoed.

“Yeah, the girl Chuck had just discovered was dead, ten years after the fact. Didn’t I mention her?”

“Uh… Lois, darlin’, be careful. Tell Kent I want to hear from him ASAP, so try not to kill him. I’m sure, once you calm down, you’ll discover a reasonable explanation for your confusion about Clark’s identity,” Perry told her.

“I’m not hysterical!” Lois screamed into the phone. “I know what I’m talking about!” She shut the phone, unwilling to go into another debate about her overactive imagination and lack of cold hard facts. “I’m not being paranoid. I’m not PMSing. I’m clear as a bell. I’m angry as hell, and I’m not going to take it any longer.”

***

Martha set down her rolling pin and picked up the piecrust to place it inside the pie plate, when the back door was flung open and a tornado by the name of Lois blew in.

“Where is he? Where is that lying, double-crossing partner of mine?” Lois growled.

Martha raised an eyebrow at these choice words, and decided that Lois’s vagueness allowed her some room for clarification. She wiped her hands on her apron. “Jerome?”

“No! Not ‘Jerome’,” Lois said, and Martha could tell she was trying hard not to say his name snidely. “The man who both you and I know goes by the name Clark Kent. The man who stole your son’s identity, that’s who!”

Martha’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened in surprise as Jonathan wheeled into the room. She looked at him, wondering if he knew what was going on. How had Lois discovered about their Clark?

“Excuse me?” he asked, making Martha’s heart warm at his inner strength.

Lois turned and pointed her finger at him. “I heard you two talking this morning. You know his real identity, his ‘big’ secret, don’t you? Well, spill it. Spill it! Who is he?”

“Jonathan!” Martha gasped in a scolding tone. How could he have been so careless?

Jonathan looked like he had accidentally bit down on a raw garlic clove and then swallowed it. “I believe, Lois, that is a conversation you should have with your husband.”

Martha was glad that Jonathan went with this solution. It was Jerome’s mistake to have never revealed his secret to Lois; she was his problem. Anyway, being Superman was his secret to tell, not theirs.

“Husband? Pshaw! Like I’d ever marry a man who lies to me at every turn. We work together on the Planet, that’s it. He’s my partner, and that’s all he’ll ever be, now that I’ve caught him red handed in this lie,” Lois growled.

Martha shot her gaze to Jonathan. Told you, they weren’t married.

“So, tell me already! Where is he?” Lois went on.

“He left,” Martha said, turning back to the counter to finish putting her pie together. “A good half-hour ago, he and Thomas went looking for you. When you didn’t return from making your phone call, Jerome was afraid you headed over to Wayne’s… uh, the Irig farm, without him.”

“He left?” Lois sputtered as some of the air let out of her sails. “Terrific. I guess I should go hunt him down.” She turned to leave.

“Best if you stay here, hon, or the two of you are likely to be circling around each other for hours,” Martha suggested.

With a large grumbled harrumph of what must have been agreement, Lois sat down at the table.

Jonathan rolled up next to her. “Lois, I know you’re upset at Jerome, but please give him time. He cares deeply for you, and he really is a good man.”

Lois shook her head. “Time?! Why, so he can come up with more lies, like the one about watching his parents die in front of his eyes?”

“He told you about his folks dying?” Jonathan asked before Martha could.

If he came to Earth around the same time as their Clark, how could Jerome remember what happened back on Krypton? Had he been older when he arrived? Old enough to know what was happening? Old enough to remember? Where had he grown up? Or did he have another family, an Earth family, somewhere else? Had he seen them die? Martha pulled the cookie jar off the counter and set it down in the middle of the table. She pulled one out for herself, and then went to pour Lois some milk.

“Yeah, he said it happened when he was ten. Apparently nobody in Smallville would take him in, so he ended up in foster care in Wichita,” Lois said.

Jonathan’s gaze lifted to Martha’s, and she could almost hear the same questions going through his head. Smallville? Wichita?

“So, that was a lie as well. You seemed like the sort who would care about an orphaned kid,” Lois continued, clearly having caught their surprised expressions. She shook her head, and mumbled, “Did he tell me anything that was true?”

“You really should speak with Jerome about all this,” Martha recommended.

“And be more told more lies? No thanks!” Lois said. “He told me that you were extended relatives, who hadn’t taken him in when he was a child and that he came back recently to find out why. It’s quite a tearjerker of a story; I’ll give him that. First, his birth parent abandoned him. Then he was found and adopted by the people he considered his real parents, whose violent death he witnessed when he was ten.” Lois took the glass of milk from Martha with a nod of thanks before popping open the cookie jar and removing a chocolate chip cookie. “It’s like pulling teeth to get him to talk about them; probably because he’s still haunted by the memory of it, or maybe because they never existed at all, and he’s already told enough lies. Then after his extended family and everyone he knew rejected him, he bounced around from foster home to foster home. He rarely ever speaks of that experience; although he did mention a foster sister once, which is how I found out about it. Oh, and I can’t forget about Rachel what’s her name, the sheriff’s sister, his childhood sweetheart, whom he just discovered today died some horrible death almost ten years ago. None of it makes sense.”

Martha set down the bowl of cut up apples she was about to pour into the pie shell. “Jerome knew Rachel?” No wonder he had been so interested in what happened between the Harrises and the Irigs.

“That’s what he said,” Lois told her with a wry shrug.

Jonathan looked at Martha, and she could tell he was thinking the same thing. How long has Superman been in Smallville?

“Why did he steal your Clark’s identity? Why did he claim you were relatives when you’re not? Why would he come out here to visit you and get to know you, if you aren’t?” Lois said, taking another cookie. “Do you think he’s a local kid? He clearly knows the area and the local hangouts. He knew Lana and Hank, but they didn’t know him. He claimed he used to know the sheriff… um… Max, which makes sense if he once knew his sister. But why doesn’t anyone remember him? I can’t believe he could go through life without anyone seeing him. He’s so… so…” Her voice faded and her eyes glazed over as if she was searching for the right word, or maybe she was remembering why she liked Jerome in the first place. She shook whatever she came up with out of her head. “Why does he use the name Clark Kent in Metropolis and Jerome here in Smallville?”

“He didn’t want us to know about Clark?” Martha suggested, and Jonathan nodded in agreement.

“Obviously he didn’t, since he stole your son’s identity,” Lois said. “If I had done that, I’d run and never look back, but why return and get to know you, then?”

“Martha,” Jonathan said hesitantly. “You don’t think he could be…” He pressed his lips together.

Martha’s gaze narrowed. What was her husband up to?

Jonathan looked at her with love, trying to buy her forgiveness. “You don’t think he could be related to my Uncle Jerome, do you? You know the one, who died in Italy during World War Two?”

Martha felt like grabbing her husband and giving him a good shake. What’d he gone and said that for? “Jonathan!” she scolded.

Lois was staring at them with interest. A light brightened in her eyes. “Go on.”

Martha wiped her hands on her apron and grabbed the back of Jonathan’s wheelchair. “Excuse us,” she told Lois as she wheeled him out of the kitchen and into their bedroom. She shut the door behind them. “Are you nuts? How could you tell her that?”

“I didn’t tell her anything, Martha. I just made a suggestion,” Jonathan said in his defense.

“Now, you’re going to have her hunting through Italy for a Jerome Kent, or a Clark Jerome Kent, or a Jerome whatever! He doesn’t need that kind of help, Jonathan. It’s not our place to give her ideas,” Martha said.

“I was just trying to help,” he said weakly.

“The best way for us to help Jerome is to keep our mouths shut, be supportive, and let him figure this out on his own. He’s a big boy. If he truly loves her, like he says he does, he’ll come clean when he’s ready,” Martha said.

Jonathan looked up at her with regretful eyes. “You’re right,” he apologized, taking her hand in his and tugging her into his lap. “Forgive me?”

“Always,” Martha said with a whispered smile, and kissed him. Then she clasped her hands on his arms. “Come on. I’ve got a pie to get in the oven, and you need to tell that investigative reporter in our kitchen that Jerome isn’t some unregistered alien from Italy.”

Jonathan gave her a strange look.

She cleared her throat. “I mean, some kind of undocumented or illegal…” she paused trying to come up with another term for ‘alien’. “— fugitive? Refugee? Worker? Man!” She rolled her eyes. “Tell her something!”

He laughed.

Martha opened the door to find Lois leaning up against the counter, innocently eating another cookie. Too innocently for Martha’s books.

“Now, Lois,” Jonathan started in on his explanation. “What I was saying before about Jerome was just conjecture, just a guess on my part. There’s no proof…”

“Of course. Just spit-balling ideas. I’ve got it,” Lois replied, turning her gaze from Martha’s pie and looking at them in the eye. She seemed entirely satisfied by this clarification of Jonathan’s earlier suggestion, too satisfied. “I appreciate it.”

Martha shook her head. They’d have to warn Jerome.

The back door opened and Thomas burst inside. He was breathing heavily as if he had run all the way from home.

Her brow furrowed. “Where’s Jerome?” Martha asked.

“We got separated at the farm. I went one way; he went the other. Before we met up again, I saw him being led into the tents by a group of men at gunpoint. They looked like soldiers,” Thomas said, setting his hands on his knees trying to catch his breath.

“Soldiers? Sounds like Trask. Of course, Chuck would say I was jumping to conclusions again,” Lois said, pushing herself away from the counter.

“Who’s Trask?” Jonathan asked.

“Some psycho, who leads a once-government-sanctioned rogue military group, out to prove that Superman is the advance troop for a huge alien invasion. Trask threw me out of an airplane right after Superman came on the scene, trying to flush him out, because he thought we had some ‘connection’,” Lois scoffed at that possibility, a little more than forcibly than necessary. “I knew Trask would resurface sooner or later. Those types always do.”

Thomas’s jaw dropped. “You know Superman?”

Lois blushed slightly and shifted her position. “Yeah, we’re friends. I’m the one Superman flew off with after he saved the Prometheus shuttle.”

Martha and Jonathan looked at one another.

Thomas glanced over at Lois. “At least, you’re safe. Jerome was terrified that they had gotten you. He said if anything happened to you, he’d never forgive himself.”

“Forgive himself,” Lois grumbled, rolling her eyes. “He never forgave himself the last time I got shot.”

Martha and Jonathan exchange another look.

“You got shot?” Jonathan asked.

“Yeah, in August. Stupid thing really. Some guy I know tried to save me from a kidnapper and ending up shooting me instead,” Lois explained, briefly pulling up her right sleeve to show them the scars. “Chuck had nightmares for a month about it, and he wasn’t even there. I kept telling him to stop blaming himself, even Superman got there too late.”

Martha turned away as she winced at this comparison. Her heart went out to the poor lonely superhero, who had to lie to everyone just to have some sort of private life. She didn’t know what Jerome was doing, toying with Lois’s affections, but it was clear, if nothing else, his emotions were deeply involved. She’d bet the farm that Superman took his world tour holiday right after Lois had been shot. It made sense that he would need a leave of absence. Martha gave herself a mental note to give the man a hug once they brought him back.

Thomas’s brow furrowed. “Chuck?”

“A nickname. Jerome once up-chucked on my shoes. Shall we go?” Lois said, heading for the door.

Martha followed them to the back door. “Be careful. Jerome still isn’t…” super, she wanted to say. “—feeling up to par,” she said instead.

Thomas turned back and came into the kitchen. “Mr. Kent, do you still have that shotgun you use for scaring off coyotes? Maybe you should get it out, just in case.”

“Sure, Thomas, it’s in my gun safe. But you don’t want to bring a gun into this fight. As Lois just reminded us, someone innocent is liable to get hurt,” Jonathan replied.

Thomas laughed. “Lois? Innocent? Jerome is going to need Superman’s powers to keep up with her.”

Martha and Jonathan joined in his laughter, but neither of them felt it sounded natural.

***End of Part 53***

Part 54

Up-chuck = American slang for throw-up.

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