CHAPTER 3
Jerome was holding a wooden cooking spoon like it was a trophy.
"This one's way better," he declared, already digging it into the cereal bowl. "Look how much it holds!"
Elaine arched an eyebrow and swapped it out for a regular spoon. "You can't even fit that spoon in your mouth. Just eat your breakfast with the other one for today."
Jerome grinned, unbothered, and started in with his usual noisy enthusiasm.
The morning light was soft and gold through the kitchen window, slanting across the table, warming the wood floor beneath their bare feet. It was a rare peaceful moment—no deadlines, no alarm bells. Just toast, cereal, and the distant hum of the neighbor's lawnmower starting up.
Jerome chomped down like it was a competition. "Can we go to the Driller's game this week?"
"We'll see," Elaine said. "Depends how work goes."
"Did my Dad like sports?"
Elaine blinked. The question came out so casually, but the impact hit her like a shove. "yes," she said, "he actually played football."
"He did?" came Jerome's awed reply, "was he good at it?"
She nodded. "Must have been. He played in college, even has a game ball. Grandma will probably show it to you next time we visit, if you ask her."
Jerome nodded with the certainty of a child who trusted everything she said. Then he leaned forward over the bowl again, humming tunelessly to himself.
Elaine reached for the newspaper, needing something to anchor her.
The Tulsa World. Front page: budget cuts in the school system. She flipped through the pages out of habit, eyes scanning the headlines, until another story caught her attention.
Bridge Collapse Leaves I-40 Severed Near Webbers Falls
By Boone Voss – Daily Oklahoman
As she read the opening paragraph, her heart stuttered. The name meant nothing—but the writing did.
There was something about it. The rhythm. The empathy without sentiment. The clarity that seemed to come from someone who felt the weight of what they were writing.
She didn't realize she was holding her breath until Jerome said, "Mom? Can we go to the park after lunch?"
"We'll see," Elaine said. "Depends how work goes."
He gave her a skeptical squint. "It's Saturday."
She smiled, distracted. "Exactly."
He frowned over his spoon. "You don't even work Saturdays."
"I do when the news doesn't take a day off."
Jerome considered that with an exaggerated sigh, then asked, "Did my dad work weekends?"
"Sometimes," she said. "But not always."
"Was he a good writer?"
She smiled faintly. "The best I ever knew."
Later that morning, Elaine sat at her desk at the Tulsa World. The newsroom was quiet—weekend skeleton crew tapping at keys and sipping lukewarm coffee. She liked the calm. It gave her space to follow her instincts.
The article was open on her screen now, and she had Clark's name typed into the Daily Planet archive next to it. She clicked back and forth, reading one paragraph, then another, then another.
Her pulse quickened. There it was again—that quiet weight in the language. Something about the phrasing. The way the writer framed human loss without spectacle, how he let the facts speak for themselves without draining them of feeling.
She hadn't felt this kind of itch in her bones in years.
Still staring at the screen, she reached for her phone and stepped outside onto the sidewalk. She didn't want any of her colleagues to overhear this conversation.
"Lois?" Perry's voice cracked through the speaker like old wood.
"Hi, Perry," she said, keeping her voice light. "Got a second?"
"Always. What's going on?"
"I came across a name this morning. Boone Voss. Ever heard of him?"
There was a pause. "Uh, yeah, yeah. Read something by him last week. Bridge collapse coverage. Good writer."
"You think so?"
"Something about the tone. Made me think of Clark, if he were writing with a limp."
She didn't laugh, though she appreciated that Perry hadn't lost his ability to cut through.
"You okay? Why do you ask?"
"Just curious."
"Well, if you want me to look into him, I—"
"No," she said quickly. "No, that's okay. I was just… following a hunch."
Perry didn't press. "You take care of yourself, Darlin."
"You too."
She hung up and stood still for a long time, her phone heavy in her hand. She turned determinedly and reentered the paper. Grabbing her notepad and clipping on her press badge, she headed for her car.
She wasn't assigned to the story—someone else had already filed the morning brief. But that didn't matter.
She needed to see it for herself. Who was she kidding, she was hoping he would still be there, covering the updates for his paper.
The drive out to Webbers Falls was quiet but unsettled. A low, persistent tension crept under her skin as she watched the landscape shift from suburban sprawl to rural countryside. Wide sky. Water cutting through the land like an old scar.
As she neared the scene, she drove past pickup trucks parked in ditches, makeshift roadblocks, reporters walking along muddy shoulders in rubber boots. And the whole time, her mind wouldn't shut off.
She remembered standing shoulder to shoulder with Clark after a gas main explosion. How he had coaxed quotes from shaken firefighters with that calm, steady tone of his. How he'd handed her a protein bar when she hadn't eaten in ten hours. She remembered the look in his eyes when they filed the story just before deadline: tired, focused, proud.
Now someone else was writing like that.
Or maybe—maybe—he still was.
She parked behind a row of news vans near the command center. The barge was half-sunk against a fractured pylon, and twisted steel jutted from the water like bones. First responders moved like clockwork along the shore, and tents had been set up for recovery workers and press briefings.
Elaine showed her credentials, got waved through, and stepped into the crowd gathering near the podium. She found a place near the middle and flipped open her notebook, but her eyes weren't on the podium. They had landed on a man who sat three rows ahead in a wheelchair. From behind, he looked average. Sandy-blond hair, neat. Back straight. Still.
She shouldn't have looked twice. But something in her spine tightened.
He shifted slightly, and her breath caught.
The briefing began. The noise around her—the hum of conversation, the shifting feet, the whirr of camera lenses—faded into static.
"Boone Voss, Daily Oklahoman," the man said. His voice. Even. Measured. A little rougher, slightly different pitch, but unmistakably his.
She pressed her hand to her stomach.
The officer answered his question about vehicle recovery, but she didn't absorb a word of it. She couldn't stop staring. Couldn't stop asking herself why. Why was he here. Why he hadn't come back.
Why he hadn't come home.
When she finally became aware of her surroundings again, she realize the press conference had ended and the crowd had begun to scatter. She stayed where she was, frozen in place, watching him wheel himself toward the edge of the tent, away from the crowd, his back to her. His movement was practiced, deliberate, but something about it felt too clean. Too rehearsed. Like a man trying not to leave a trail.
Her hand lifted slightly, almost without thinking. Her voice followed it—quiet, but firm.
"Clark."
He paused. His hands hovering slightly above the wheels, just for a second. A breath.
He didn't turn around. Didn't scan the crowd. But his shoulders stiffened. His head dipped ever so slightly, as if the name had physically struck him. Then he pushed forward, disappearing into the bodies and blur and noise of the dispersing press.
Gone.
She stood, notebook clutched in both hands, heart racing.
Her feet twitched. For a moment, she thought she might follow. Just start walking, track him like the lead she knew he was.
But she didn't.
Not yet.
He hadn't seen her. She was sure of that. Even if he had, the hair dye, the weight lost, the lines grief had etched into her face—none of it matched the woman he once knew. And yet something in him had felt it, she was certain.
She didn't know where he'd gone but she was going to find Boone Voss.
And she was going to find out why Clark Kent had become him.
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