YOU KNOW IT WHEN YOU SEE IT

"Hi, Mrs. Kent? My name is Lois Lane...I'm with the Daily Planet, and I'd like to talk to you about your son."

Has Martha Kent not spent nearly the last thirty years of her life hearing those very words, she might have done more than just look.

"We need to talk about Clark, Mrs. Kent," Mrs. Aberforth, a well-meaning blonde young teacher had said.

"There's something off about that boy," the women from church had tittered and tattered at Bible Study. Martha had stopped going to church then.

"Your son will be safe in our custody," the well-dressed men in her nightmares said.

Even more so than the Jesus-freaks, the insane Ross woman from down the road and suspicious old Malcolm who'd had to come to fix their windows time and time again because neither she nor John had the touch for them, this woman made her nervous.

It was always easy to deflect questions about Clark— she wasn't the first woman to have a strange kid out in the country and she'd be damned if she was the last— but this woman, with her sweet bright eyes and the setting Kansas sun glinting off her coppery red hair did not evoke the feelings of defensive derision Martha harbored for every judgemental shrew out there that had ever questioned her and John about Clark.

Her lips tight in a frown, she looked her up, down, and up again, and instantly, she knew, this Lois Lane from the Daily Planet, knew what Martha knew about Clark.

It was easy for Martha to track the whereabout of her son— occasionally he sent her postcards, and oftentimes he sent her emails, and she followed the local news of whatever area he'd been in last and knew he'd moved on when there were stories of unusual fortune or damn near miracles. But then, she knew what to look for.

She'd seen in the suspicious eyes of many an accuser, the discomfort, the fear, even more disturbingly, the awe that Clark sometimes evoked. The closer she looked at Lois Lane, she saw only a plea, and beyond that, a promise.

A promise of no ulterior motives, and discretion.

The doe eyes didn't mask a perceptive intelligence and hard-won wisdom, a certainty of self and determination to match that ambition.

The pretty face didn't hide an unshakable moral foundation. Martha didn't know what those morals were, but standing before her was a threat to her only son. Her head begged her to remain calm, her heart raced with sickening fear, strengthening with every beat the resolve to silence this beautiful, possibly good woman if that was what it took, but her instincts told her—

Trust this woman. This woman is good. This woman will not let you down.

Martha Kent was suspicious and had become a little unfriendly in her twilight years, but she knew a good soul when she saw one, so she quieted her head and her heart and stepped back, letting Lois Lane into her house, and irrevocably into her life.

Thanks for reading! Drop a review on your way out. More to come soon.

YellowWomanontheBrink

November 1, 2017

1:57 AM