Annie, I'm sorry to tell you that you were wrong; this could be understood without having read the previous two
This was incredibly sweet and very Clark-like. I hate it that he missed so much, but what the heck, for the first year or so they're only blobs anyway
And it's obvious that he's not going to be willing to miss much of anything else. Not even for the old "saving the Hoover Dam" excuse
PJ
who tends to skip past the angsty stuff right to the happy endings