As you couldn't fail to notice, Carol, I was really angry at Clark in the previous chapter. I thought he was a jerk. I liked this part so much better. Here, I really felt the awesome responsibility Clark had taken on at age eighteen or nineteen. He would be the husband of a seventeen-year-old girl who liked him, but didn't dare to trust him with her body. He also had to be the father of his wife's sixteen-year-old sister. That in itself is an awesome task. On top of that, he and Lois had to work so hard to keep their little household afloat financially, while at the same time he and Lois had to study hard to be able to graduate with good grades. Clark is working so hard for the Lane sisters, and he isn't getting a lot of thanks for it.
Generally, I just understood Clark so much better in this part than in the previous one. Of course, I still felt even more sorry for Lois, the way I almost always it do. Well, Lois misunderstands Clark completely, because he is absolutely nothing like her father whatsoever. But she can't know that if she and Clark never spend any time together, and if they never really talk to one another.
This almost broke my heart:
Well, if he ever came to her and said he wanted out, she wouldn't stop him. If he never said anything, she'd let him go after graduation if not sooner. If she could find a way for her and Lucy to survive before she had her degree, and she thought they'd let her retain custody of her sister, she'd let him go before then, but right now she didn't see a way that could happen.
I hated Mayson and Paul in this chapter!!! Scheming people....gaaahh!!!
Poor Lois and poor Clark! I hope things will get better for them soon, but I suspect, instead, that things will get worse before they get better!
Ann
