Wow.
And again.
Wow.
This:
It was truly a masterpiece; a sweeping epic that laid bare all the beauty of this planet, and she knew readers would find hope among the heartbreak.
But for her, it was so much more than a beautiful novel, because each vignette was a piece of their own story, every challenge was an echo of something they had faced together.
The soldier, duty bound to return and defend his village, leaving behind his wife in the big city where they fell in love. The newlywed, falsely accused and imprisoned in the castle dungeon, executed for a crime they didn’t commit. The secret admirer, too scared to reveal his true identity, losing the girl to another suitor because of his own stubborn pride. The young mother, dead in childbirth, leaving her husband to grieve alone.
She recognized in each story not just the universe’s refusal to give up, but their own. They had faced — and conquered — a millennium’s worth of challenges in a single lifetime. The details were changed, but the emotions were the same, and she recognized each trial, each heartbreak they had faced.
And she knew that when he wrote this, they were in the midst of their darkest trial yet, the one she’d thought had broken them. And yet he’d still obviously believed their story wasn’t over. He’d had faith that they would find their way back together to begin again.
It was an achingly beautiful testament to his love for her, and she found herself completely at a loss for a response.
That would leave me speechless, too.
And this:
“I didn’t expect this,” he said, picking up the the thick stack beside it and flipping it over, blue ink showing on most of the pages as he rifled through them.
“Well, I didn’t expect this,” she countered, waving a hand at the manuscript.
That could've been the start of a nasty fight. Maybe it would have been a year before. But they've gone through so much apart and together that her reading his manuscript just breaks down more of the Great Wall between them.
Also this:
“What do you want, Lois?” Dr. Booker asked. “Moving forward. You can’t go back and change anything in the past. What is your best case scenario? What would make you happiest?”
Lois hesitated. “I want...I want an annulment. A divorce annulment. You know how people get their marriages annulled, and they just pretend that they were never married. Like, oh sure, we were married for ten years and you were there at the wedding and you’ve been to our home, but now we got an annulment. We aren’t divorced; we were never actually married. Our marriage didn’t fail -- it just never existed! And then we all have to play along and pretend they were never married? I want that. But for our divorce. I don’t want to start over. I don’t want to get engaged and remarried or have some big recommitment ceremony. I just want our marriage back. Our home back. Our family back. I just want none of this to have been real. I don’t want it to count.”
There was a long pause, and Lois realized that whatever everyone else in the room had been expecting, it wasn’t this.
“You hate annulments. You think they are ‘ridiculous self-delusions’,” Clark said softly, putting air quotes around her words.
“Well, I changed my mind.” She sounded petulant, and she knew it. She hated it, but couldn’t stop herself.
I had never heard anything about a divorce annulment. I'd never even considered the concept. It's brilliant, it's absolutely inspired, and I wish I'd come up with it.
So I did a search on divorce annulment and found that yes, you can annul a divorce in Kentucky under certain conditions. My very brief Web search found only one firm there which discussed the issue, along with another site including a brief mention of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, and Nebraska where a divorce can be reversed. But legally that's a different thing, even though the result would be the same.
My concern at this point is that Lois "doesn't want it [the divorce] to count." That almost sounds like denial, perhaps even a "ridiculous self-delusion." I understand her deep desire to be really, honestly, openly married to Clark, but those years are gone and she can never get them back. Their shared journey through those hard times to this point is part of their relationship, and it's a major contributor to where they are now, both separately and together. To ignore those hard times would be to ignore a big part of who they each are and who they are together. It makes me wonder if this is the next big hurdle they must overcome.
And here I was concerned that you wouldn't be able to maintain the dramatic tension for the rest of the story. Silly me! This is fabulous, truly original and innovative. And it's beautiful. Two flawed human beings are fighting to become the family they once were and build it up to be even better. Clark's unpublished novel, and Lois' response, is the perfect vehicle to show the readers how far each one has come - and how close they are to that re-connection. It's a wonderful revelation of his pain, not only from his separation from Lois, but his conflict between his family and his duty to the world as Superman. It's also a genius-level revelation of Lois' depth of understanding for and compassion toward her (ex)husband. This situation is not unlike the stresses first responders experience in the strain between family and job. There are never enough hours in the day, never enough days in the week, never enough time to save everyone and still love and be loved at home.
Powerful. Poignant. Penetrating.
Using Dr. Booker to highlight the progress they're making is brilliant, too. And it illustrates the truth that a good therapist can help people be who they really want to be, both for themselves and for the ones they love. What's he going to say now?
I can't wait to see what happens next.
