This woman wasn't his Lois. John Henry had to remind himself of that a hundred times a day and even more so when he caught Lois and Clark holding hands. She was different. She was more guarded for one thing, which he supposed was natural when your family life centered around protecting your husband's secret identity. She was more care-worn as well. He didn't know what it was, but this Lois had experienced something or maybe more than one thing that made her just a little bit sadder, a little bit harder. Still, she was just enough like her in most ways to make it confusing for not only him but now Natalie.
His heart hurt for his daughter constantly. He was relieved when she and Clark returned.
"We were worried about you," Jonathan said in his sunny way. The kid sometimes acted too brightly and treated things too casually in his opinion like thinking a war suit was cool, but now he understood it was his way of coping with the crap, of which he'd had much lately, in his life. And he respected him for it.
"I'm sure," she muttered.
Jordan didn't say anything. He just stuffed his hands in his pocket and nodded at her. The awkwardness that hung around this trip was making him more awkward than usual despite his newfound confidence.
"The wilderness is not a playground," Sam said with his classic stoic delivery.
Lois added. "I'm glad you're okay."
Natalie looked up ruefully. "Don't pretend like it wouldn't be easier for all of you if I wasn't here. I'm a complication, an inconvenience. And you know what, you all make me uncomfortable too, so let's just stop the pretending that we're one big happy family. Please. I can't handle it."
Sam broke the uncomfortable silence. "Well, right now we need to be heading back for lunch. Then anyone who wants to swim can, but I will need to have a constant headcount. There'll be no wandering off by yourself then and making people think you drowned."
He looked at Jordan as much as Natalie as he said that, but she obviously felt it was a personal attack, and when they got moving again, she hung toward the back of the line and he hung with her.
"Why did you wander off from the group?" he asked her quietly.
"Because it's just all so bogus. They're all so I don't know, chipper. Even the husband. I like him. I don't want to like him. They just all annoy me, I guess. They don't know the hardships we've known, lost the people that we have, and it just makes everything feel so fake."
"Hey, they're good people. All of them. I won't hear anything against them. You underestimate their family, Nat-Bug. They've seen hardships and they've lost people too, which you might know if you tried really talking to them. Strength is about more than surviving. It's about learning to smile again, to make friends again, to expand your horizons. It's not easy, but that's what makes you stronger than steel, not sulking and feeling sorry for yourself."
"I know," she said with a sigh.
"No, you don't know. This world almost had the same thing that happened in ours happen here, but you know what stood in the way? Them. I couldn't have done it without them. Even the boys helped. So the next time you're tempted to be rude when they're just trying to show you they care, you remember that and try a little harder."
She seemed genuinely repentant. Maybe he was being too hard on her. Natalie was still grieving her mother and the loss of her whole world. It'd be hard on anybody, but especially on a girl of fifteen. He didn't know how to make it better for her. He didn't even know how to make things better for himself.
He wrapped an arm around her. But they had each other to help them get through it and that was more than they had a week ago. His eyes got watery as he thanked heaven for sending his little girl back. He didn't know how he was going to navigate the teen years without her mother by his side. He was going to say and do the wrong thing a lot probably, but they'd figure it out together, one day a time.