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Martha pulled the last of the pies out of the oven with a smile of satisfaction. The pumpkins Josie McIntyre had given her had been reduced to a smooth, orange puree, and now filled half a dozen homemade piecrusts.
"Wow. They smell good, don't they, Clark?"
From his spot on the floor, where he was coloring, Clark nodded.
"If my mom could see me now," Martha laughed. "No more pies from the freezer section for me. These are 100% natural." She regarded her handiwork. "Two for us, one for the McIntyres, and three left over. We'll have to find good homes for them, just like we did for you," she smiled.
She had found a Thanksgiving-themed coloring book during her last frantic pre-holiday trip to the store, and Clark was almost as enchanted with it as he was with his toy truck. Fortunately it had helped keep the child busy while she finished last minute preparations. Now the pies were done, the turkey was thawed, and all she would have to do tomorrow morning would be put the turkey in the oven and fix the stuffing.
"I think I'm getting this cooking thing down, Clark, I really do."
She scooped the little boy off the floor and into her arms, planting a kiss on his cheek. Clark laughed. As she sat them both in a chair Martha wondered if the child had any idea how close he had come to being given away.
She and Jonathan had let fear get the better of them. Martha knew that now. Thank god Jonathan had come to his senses in time. When Hyrum's old Ford had reappeared in the driveway and Jonathan had helped Clark out of the seat Martha had sat down on the kitchen floor and wept with joy.
She snuggled the child's head under her chin. Clark smelled wonderful, a combination of soap and little boy. She pulled the wallpaper sample books back over to him.
"Well, where were we? Oh, I know, we were looking at wallpaper borders for your bedroom. Look, here's one with dinosaurs. Do you like that one?"
Clark shook his head and thumbed through the pages carefully.
The morning after Jonathan had brought Clark home to stay she'd found her husband carrying boxes of things out of her father-in-law's old room.
He'd shrugged self-effacingly.
"Been meaning to clean it out for a while," he admitted sheepishly. "I just never got around to it, but Clark needs his own room. I figure I'll save Dad's books and fishing rod for when Clark gets older, and the rest can go to charity."
Too happy to speak, Martha had only nodded. She understood what Jonathan couldn't say out loud--Clark's coming had once again completed their family. Jonathan could let go of his father now.
"Twucks!" Clark cried happily. Martha could see the child had indeed found a border featuring a variety of different vehicles.
"OK, Clark, trucks it is," she chuckled. "That will look very nice with the blue walls."
Judging from Clark's most frequently used crayons the boy's favorite colors were blue and red. But Martha drew the line at letting her son having a red room.
Her son. She squeezed him again.
"My son," she repeated.
Clark squirmed a bit and she let him climb down from her lap. He ran to the screen door and pointed.
"Mama, look! Daddy!"
Martha hadn't heard anyone approach, but as she watched a new black truck turned into the driveway. Clark had an uncanny way of doing that--she sometimes wondered if he had more sensitive hearing then they did.
"Yes, sweetheart, Daddy's home. You can go see him."
Clark pushed open the screen door and hurried down the porch stairs. He started in awe at the new vehicle.
Jonathan jumped down from the driver's seat and grinned.
"Well, Clark, what do you think? Better than the old Ford, huh?"
When the check from the insurance company had finally arrived, Jonathan had once again retired his father's truck to the barn, to be used only for chores. Ed Fordman had picked him up early that morning to take him into Lowell, where all the car dealerships were located.
"It's nice, honey," his wife said approvingly.
"Yep. Bigger than the old one and only a few thousand miles on it to boot," Jonathan smiled.
"New twuck, new twuck!" Clark began to dance happily around the yard.
Martha rolled her eyes. "You men and your trucks. You were gone longer than I thought, so Clark and I have already eaten. And wait 'til you see the pies I made for tomorrow!" Her expression darkened for a brief moment, like a cloud passing in front of the sun. "I thought I'd give the extra ones to Nell, and to the Ross'. With Joe still in the hospital I don't think Kate's had any time for baking."
Jonathan nodded, thinking how frail Joe Ross had looked when they'd visited him. His heart attack would probably prevent Joe from ever going back to work, or from being as active as he'd once been. The Ross family and most of the town blamed Lionel Luthor, and Jonathan couldn't disagree.
"I grabbed a bite Lowell, Martha. I swung by the college library again."
He reached back into the cab and pulled out a stack of books.
"What's all this?"
Jonathan held them out to her.
"Language books. You know, Egyptian, Greek, other stuff. I thought I might take a look through them and see if I can find anything that looks like what's on that piece of metal."
The piece of metal they had found with the craft was now wrapped in soft rags and safely stowed away in the attic. Martha had insisted they be careful with it, since it was the best evidence, other than the spaceship itself, of where Clark had come from.
Now, however, Martha laughed.
"Clark's not Egyptian, honey."
"I know that, but I figured if they wrote in pictures, and Clark's folk's wrote in pictures, maybe we can make some sense out of it. He'll want to know where he comes from, Martha, and I'd like to be able to tell him more than that he fell out of the sky."
"We're not linguists, but I guess it's worth a shot," Martha nodded. She looked at their son and laughed.
"Look at him, Jonathan."
Clark was blissfully poking and prodding the tires and the fender on the new truck.
"Be careful, Clark," Jonathan reminded. "Touch gentle, like we said." The previous evening Clark had managed to put a dent in the refrigerator door just by closing it too hard. This time, however, Jonathan and Martha had put aside their alarm and explained to the child he just needed to be more careful.
"Gentle," Clark repeated absently as he examined the empty license plate holder.
"I don't think our car insurance covers damage by toddler," Jonathan laughed.
Martha was happy to see him laugh about Clark's unusual abilities. He'd made a lot of progress in the last week.
"I'm not sure any insurance would cover what Clark's capable of doing, Jonathan. He's a smart boy, and we'll teach him to be careful. He may put a few dents in things in the meantime, but…"
Jonathan's smiled faded.
"We still don't know exactly what he can do, Martha, or if his abilities will change as he gets older. And he needs to learn right away not to use them in front of other people. We can't take the chance of someone else finding out where he came from." Jonathan thought of the prison-like S.T.A.R. Labs building, and shuddered. He couldn't believe now he'd actually contemplated leaving Clark there.
His wife put her arm around his waist.
"We'll teach him, Jonathan."
"It's going to take a lot of patience to raise Clark right. A lot more patience than another child would take."
"But we didn't get another child," Martha reminded. "We got this one." She rested her head against his shoulder.
"And I think we're up to the challenge."
FIN
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