From last time:
The rocking of the hammock soothed him, even as he slowly drifted back to consciousness. He felt the warmth of Lois’s body pressed against his, her hand over his heart. As he opened his eyes, he found her smiling at him. “Happy birthday, old man,” she said impishly. “How does thirty-five feel?”
“Pretty good,” he said with a contented sigh. He pressed his lips against her forehead. The ocean breeze stirred around them, the rising sun had started to warm the sand and the air. “Thanks for a really great birthday.”
She lifted her head to kiss him. “Here’s to many more.”
“Mmm hmm,” he said as he smiled against her lips.
“Your parents are taking Jon to the aquarium this morning, but we should probably head back home soon.”
He stretched his arms lazily overhead, causing the hammock to sway even more. “Okay,” he whispered softly. As nice as this was, and he couldn’t exactly think of things he’d rather do than spend time with his wife, he was eager to spend the afternoon with his family.
********
New stuff:
Lois LANed her latest column to Perry before standing up from her desk. It was strange, having her own office, so close to the bullpen and yet secluded from it. She generally kept the door open, not wanting to lose the energetic feel of the newsroom by cloistering herself off from it. Clark occupied the office next to hers. It was nice to be so close to him. Over the few weeks they’d been back at work, they’d developed the habit of talking to one another in soft whispers, knowing the other was perfectly capable of hearing them. But this time, she walked to his office, smiling when she found him engrossed in his work.
“I’ve got to run out for a bit,” she said. “You free for lunch?”
“Sure,” he said, looking up from the article on his desk. “I’ll see you when you get back.”
She headed for the stairwell that led to the Planet’s roof. Taking off slowly to avoid the telltale ‘boom’ that signaled the presence of one of the city’s resident superheroes, she flew toward the Upper East Side. Close to MetroGen, she touched down outside a rather upscale nursing home. Inside, she was directed to the right room.
She knocked on the open door. “Mrs. Crowninshield?” she asked softly.
The elderly woman looked up from her book. “Ultrawoman! What brings you here?” Mrs. Crowninshield asked with a delighted smile.
“I just wanted to make sure you were all right. Your son mentioned that he wasn’t going to be able to stay long. I wanted to see if there was anything you needed.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine,” the older woman replied. “I certainly don’t want to be taking up any more of your time; I know how busy you must be.”
Lois smiled as she walked into the room and sat down in the chair against the wall. “It’s really no trouble at all,” she said. “But I was worried about whether your house is safe. Do you have someplace you can go once you’re discharged?”
“Peter’s right,” Mrs. Crowninshield replied. “I should get rid of the house, but it’ll cost more to tear it down than it’s worth and renovating it would take years.”
Lois knew the older woman was right. Renovating that property would require a major investment from any developer and it would be years before there was any payoff for it. The house might languish on the market for years. A thought suddenly occurred to her. It wasn’t why she’d come here, but perhaps she could help solve Mrs. Crowninshield’s problem while tackling one of her own.
“Mrs. Crowninshield, I think I know someone who might be interested in buying the house. Would you be willing to talk to them about it?”
“Of course, but like I said, I don’t think I could sell it for very much. Certainly not enough to pay for an apartment.”
“I think you might be wrong about that,” Lois replied. Renovating may have been prohibitively expensive for anyone else, but she and her husband didn’t exactly have that problem. “I’ll be in touch soon.”
She said her goodbyes and headed back to the Planet. Originally, she’d planned on sticking close by the office for lunch, but wondered how difficult it would be to convince her husband to make a detour to Parkside Hill.
********
“So what are we doing here?” Clark asked as he walked down the tree-lined street with his wife.
“Do you remember what a dump your place was when you rented it?” she asked, seemingly changing the subject.
He laughed. ‘Dump’ was an understatement. His apartment had been falling apart—held together with some Elmer’s glue and masking tape—when he’d found it. “Yeah,” he replied. “Why?”
They turned the corner onto Sullivan Lane. “How do you feel about another fixer upper?” she asked, stopping in front of a stately brownstone near the end of the street.
Puzzled, he looked at her, waiting for confirmation that she meant the building behind her. She simply nodded. There was no ‘For Sale’ sign out front, but often times, the city’s most elegant homes didn’t need to broadcast their availability. “We can afford this?” he asked.
“It’s a complete wreck on the inside,” she explained. “It needs a gut renovation. The elderly woman who lives here fell and broke her hip the other night. It isn’t safe for her to keep living here. We can pay her more than twice what it’s worth.”
“She’s willing to sell it?”
“Her son has been trying to convince her to get rid of the house for years. She told Ultrawoman she would, if she could afford to sell a house the city would promptly condemn.”
He mulled the thought over in his head for a moment. Was it possible that they could have such good luck? Although, hadn’t they had more than enough bad luck to make up for this? In the grand scheme of things, just to keep the cosmic balance, didn’t they need a really, really great break to go their way? Wasn’t that the way the law of averages worked? “You sure you want to deal with a gut renovation?” he asked, still trying to gauge how his wife felt about this place.
“Your father and I built the addition to the farmhouse. It was actually fun. Since it’ll all be interior work, we can do it as quickly as we want,” she said. Her tone was neutral, but he could already tell that she was in love with this idea.
“Let’s talk to her about it,” he replied simply, pleased by the smile it elicited from his wife.
********
Standing at the top of the stoop, Lois used the key she’d borrowed from Mrs. Crowninshield to open the door. It gave with a loud creak. She smiled over her shoulder at her husband as if to say ‘this is it.’ Since telling him about this idea the other day, she’d only grown more excited about it. “The ground floor is a separate residence now,” she explained as they walked past the immense stair case and the living room. Just beyond that was the formal dining room. Her eyes scanned the dilapidated rooms and the dust covered chandelier.
“I know it’s not much to look at,” she mused as they walked into the spacious kitchen and its eating area, but in her head she was already thinking of the things they could do with this place.
“But it has a lot of potential,” her husband replied, echoing her thoughts. They backtracked to the staircase and explored the bedrooms on the next floor up. The scuffed and splintered hardwood floors, like almost everything else about the house, spoke in mere whispers about the house’s once glorious past.
“I wonder what’s up there?” Clark mused as he looked up the staircase to the top floor of the building.
“One way to find out,” Lois replied as she started up the staircase, knowing that thanks to their X-ray vision, that wasn’t exactly true. Of course, exploring up close was much more fun than just peering in from a distance. She climbed the stairs, surprised to find that they opened up into a tremendous, two-storey library. The built in shelves that lined the walls were filled with ancient, leather-bound volumes. Old brass railed rolling ladders were positioned along the tall bookcases. A spiral staircase led to a small loft on the northern side of the library. Its windows looked out onto Sullivan Lane. There was a marble fireplace on the opposite end of the library, so tall she could stand up inside it. She turned in a slow circle, taking it all in.
“Wow,” her husband whispered as he came to stand behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I love this place. I love the library; the rest of the house is just a bonus.”
“What’s this?” he asked as he headed for the door hidden by the surrounding bookshelves. She followed her husband into the small, round room on the other side. It must have been a little annex to the library. The annex’s walls were also lined with bookshelves. A large round table dominated the space. One of the former owners probably used this to house his or her collection of favorite volumes – a quiet little corner, a sanctuary within this castle of a house. The windows looked out onto the small yard behind the house. If they moved quickly enough they could use the window as easy egress for departures and arrivals in the suits.
“This would make a pretty good secret closet,” she mused. “Plenty of room for capes and boots.”
“We could hide the door behind another bookcase,” he said.
“So what do you think?” she asked.
“I think we should make an offer,” he said with a smile.
Excitedly, she took his hand and stood on her toes to kiss him. “Me too.”
********
Jonathan frowned as he looked at the farm’s books. “We can lease out the fields this season,” he said. He reached for the ledger on the far corner of the coffee table and grimaced in pain.
Martha leapt up to grab it for him. “Jonathan, be careful,” she said. He rubbed the small of his back, trying to soothe the seizing muscles.
“Whatever we’re going to do, we should do it soon. The planting season is about to start,” he managed.
“Wayne said his boys were hoping to buy up more land,” Martha suggested gently.
“Do you really want to give up the farm?” her husband asked.
“It’s been our whole lives,” she began. “But maybe it’s time we retire. If we sell the fields, we’ll have plenty of money to cover our expenses.”
“I don’t know, Martha. It’s already so quiet around here. If we stop running the farm, it’s only going to seem worse.”
“This old house had a lot more life in it just a little while ago,” she agreed. “It’s been hard to adjust. But you can’t keep going like this with your back.”
“So I guess we don’t have much of a choice…”
Jonathan’s lament was interrupted by the sound of the porch door opening. “Mom, Dad?” They heard Clark call out.
He entered the den, grinning broadly. “We found a place,” he said. “We started the paperwork to buy the house this morning.”
“Clark, that’s wonderful!” Martha exclaimed as she stood up.
“That’s great news, son, congratulations,” Jonathan said. He started to stand, but reached for the armrest of the sofa as he grimaced in pain. Before he knew it, Clark was at his side.
“Dad, are you okay?”
“It’s just my back,” he said through gritted teeth.
Clark helped him ease back down onto the couch. “Have you seen the doctor?”
“Yeah,” Jonathan said. “He told me to take it easy.”
“What about the planting season?” Clark asked. “You can’t work like this, Dad.”
“We’ll lease out the fields this year or hire more help. It’ll be fine,” Jonathan assured his boy.
“You sure you don’t want me to come back and help?” Clark asked.
“You have your life in Metropolis, son. That’s where your focus needs to be. We’ll be all right.” Martha shot him a quick glare, but he avoided making eye contact with her. His boy was happy; he didn’t need to worry about this.
********
“All right, we need someone to take the lead on the renewal of the strategic arms reduction treaty,” Mike said as he paced the length of the conference room floor.
“Yeah, that one’s a non-starter,” Lois whispered under her breath. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Clark smile in response to the pun only he could hear.
“No volunteers?” Mike ventured with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s not that we don’t think it’s important, Mike, but it’s a pretty byzantine topic for the editorial page.”
“And that’s exactly why we need to write about it. Our readers need to know that keeping loose nukes out of the hands of terrorists and keeping old ones from creating ecological catastrophes is a big deal.” The rest of the editorial staff put their collective heads down as though they’d been rebuked by the teacher.
“I’ll take it,” Clark said.
“Teacher’s pet,” Lois muttered almost silently. She endured the gentle elbow she got in the ribs in response.
“Do you have time?” Mike asked.
“The mockups of the A Section are already in Layout and I’ve been following the situation pretty closely. You’ll have my draft in a couple of hours.”
She smiled, not at her husband’s apple-polishing tendency, but at the fact that he was writing again. He’d taken to the job as editor even better than she’d hoped. There was something about the way he worked, the way he handled himself around this job, that surprised her. He managed his staff and their work with a familiarity that could only have come from his experiences on New Krypton.
She was proud of her husband. Hell, she was always proud of her husband, but this was different. This wasn’t an example of him using one of his many gifts to do good. From the depths of his anguish, from the heart of the darkest despair, he had risen up to build his life again.
He amazed her.
********
They walked through the main floor of the house, just as rundown as it had been when Lois had first seen it. But it was different now. It was theirs. “Mrs. Crowninshield’s son said she found a new apartment. Someplace nice and safe and low maintenance.”
“That’s great,” Clark replied.
“I can’t believe we own a house,” she said, shaking her head in wonderment. It was all theirs. They’d gotten a good offer on his old apartment and it looked like it was going to come through. Things were really falling into place.
“I know,” he replied as he draped an arm across her shoulders.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us, though,” she mused.
“We can do it,” he said as he squeezed her shoulders. “We can do anything we want with this place.”
“Do you think this place is too big for just the three of us?” she asked.
He smiled as he kissed her temple. “Is that your subtle way of saying we should start thinking about having another baby?”
She laughed warmly. “Not quite yet,” she said. “But with the downstairs apartment, it’s six bedrooms, six bathrooms and a library bigger than my old apartment and yours combined. That’s a lot of space.”
He frowned, deep in thought. “What are you thinking?” he asked.
“What if we asked your parents to move in with us?”
She watched as he put his hands in his pockets. “That could be a great idea,” he said after a long moment. “They’ve been having some trouble with the farm since Dad’s back started bothering him.”
“And Jon really misses them,” she added.
“I think they miss him, too.”
She nodded in agreement. She knew how close Jon and his grandparents had become. “And with your parents here, if there’s a big emergency, we’ll both be able to respond.”
“That’s true,” he said with a thoughtful nod.
“But do you think your parents will want to live in the city?”
“I don’t know. But I think you’re right. I think we should ask,” he replied.
********
He awoke with a start, his heart still pounding. The space in the bed next to him was empty, which meant Lois was still on her patrol. Things were getting better, but the nightmares persisted. So did his somewhat jumpy reactions to sudden, loud noises. He’d been using the meditative techniques he’d learned on New Krypton to try and center his thoughts and regain his equilibrium. It was still a struggle, but he was muddling through.
He didn’t want to talk to Lois about it. He could feel the difference in the way she regarded him these days. She had faith in him again. She wasn’t constantly asking him if he was okay and assuming he wasn’t. He didn’t want her to know how hard it still was.
With a sigh, he fell back against the pillows, wondering if it was ever going to get easier. It had to. He couldn’t keep this up. Clark couldn’t keep pretending that nothing was bothering him. He hated lying to his wife. He hated keeping things from her.
At least he was managing to keep things together most of the time. It was usually only in his sleep, when he couldn’t keep his mind occupied and his thoughts focused on other things that New Krypton still had its hold on him. During the day, he was his own man. At night, that place still dominated him.
********
They touched down just shy of the porch and rushed toward the door to avoid the rain. “Mom, Dad?” her husband called out as they walked into the farmhouse.
“Hey kids!” Martha exclaimed as she came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands dry on a dishtowel. Jonathan followed behind her. “Everything okay? You sounded kind of anxious on the phone, sweetie,” she said to Clark as she hugged her son and daughter-in-law.
“Everything’s great,” Clark replied as he slipped his hand into Lois’s. “But there is something we want to talk to you about.” Clark gestured for them to gather around the kitchen table. He glanced at his wife and smiled.
“We know how much you both love the farm,” Lois continued as she sat down.
“But it must be getting harder to run it now,” Clark said.
“We’re managing,” Jonathan replied. “Wayne’s boys are handling the planting this year. They’ve leased out the land.”
“All of it?” Clark asked somewhat incredulously.
Jonathan merely nodded.
Lois could see Clark set his lips in a thin hard line. “The new house is enormous,” he said. “It won’t be ready for a while, but we wondering if you would want to come live with us.”
“It would be great to have you there,” Lois added.
“Son, we’ll be all right,” Jonathan began, but Martha placed a hand on his arm.
“We don’t want to be an imposition on you two; we know you’re just starting your life together.”
“Martha, you wouldn’t be an imposition,” Lois replied. “We understand if you’d rather have the peace and quiet now that the farmhouse isn’t quite so packed…”
Her mother-in-law smiled as she shook her head. “Believe me, it’s too quiet around here. We miss having all of you with us.”
“Then please think about it,” Lois replied. “There’s a separate apartment on the ground floor of the house, it would be perfect. Martha, there’s even room there for an art studio or a dark room.” That elicited smiles from Clark’s parents.
“And there’s no reason to sell the farmhouse,” Clark added. “We could still come out here for holidays. And we’ll fly you back whenever you like.”
Jonathan nodded thoughtfully as he patted his wife’s hand where it still rested on his arm. “We’ll think about,” he said.
********
“Congratulations on the house, Clark,” Dr. Friskin said warmly.
“Thanks,” he replied with a smile. “We’re really excited about it, but it needs a lot of work. We’ve been so busy we haven’t even started yet.”
“And work is still going well?”
“Yeah. I still miss being a reporter. I think I always will. But it’s good work. I still get to help get the truth published, to make sure people are informed about the world. I get to work with Lois again. Whenever I need a second opinion on whether to run with a story or what to lead with, she’s right in the office next door.”
“So you’re happy,” Dr. Friskin said.
“I am,” he agreed. After a long pause, he added, “mostly.”
“You’re still having the nightmares, aren’t you?”
“Some nights,” he admitted. “It’s not that bad, though.”
“Have they decreased in intensity?” He shook his head. “Frequency?” Clark shook his head again. “But you’re coping?”
“I’m trying to get used to the new normal for us,” he said.
“Are they affecting your life besides your sleep?”
He frowned as he tried to figure out what to say. “Sometimes. Lois and I alternate patrols, but when we hear something on the news, some emergency, she still takes most of the tough ones. Fatality accidents. The worst fires. That sort of thing.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
“Frustrated sometimes. But mostly? Relieved. I don’t mean to burden her with the hardest calls, but we both know she’s still better able to handle them than I am. I’m not sure when that’s going to change. Or if it ever will.”
