Missing Lois - TOC A taste of Chapter 6, Part 5:
Gareth called the morning meeting and Lucy grabbed a notebook and slowly, as she no longer ran anywhere, tried not to waddle to the conference room. Gareth pulled her to the side, before the meeting started.
“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.
Lucy wondered about the concern, as he hadn’t acknowledged her previously. “Sure, fine. Sorry, about yesterday. I was exhausted. Long weekend. But I’m here today, one hundred percent, Mr. McTinney.” She nodded.
“Your head better?”
Her head? Was that what Clark told him? “Yes, much, thanks.”
“Do you need extra cushions or pillows for your chair?”
That sounded great, but she wondered why he asked. “No, I’m fine,” she stated, staring at him.
“If you need anyone to take anything down from the high shelves or carry up a box from archives, you let me know and I’ll find you some muscle, understood?”
His concern was bordering on suspicious. “I can do my job, Mr. McTinney. You don’t need to worry about that.”
“I understand, Lucy. My wife just gave birth to our third child a month ago. I know that the last months of pregnancy can be the worst.”
Oh, crap! How in the hell had he known about the baby? She looked down at the clothes, she was wearing. Long and baggy enough to hide the bulge, she thought. But not to an expert new father as her new boss. James had better not have had anything to do with this breach in knowledge.
“Excuse me?” she gasped.
“When will you be leaving on maternity leave? Have you let HR know how long you’ll be gone?” These were all professional, sincere questions, which had this been a normal pregnancy with a normal woman with a normal husband, probably would have been thought of as nice even. But not her secret pregnancy with Superman’s baby in this alternate universe where her alternate Clark was slogging through mudslides… Deny. Deny. Deny.
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