Hi,

At last I'm ready to post another part, and I have to admit to being very nervous about this part.

It's a fairly short part, and it's mostly A-plot.

I'm afraid that you might not enjoy this section very much, but I need to move the plot along to reach a conclusion, and for that I have to write some back story.

Please bear with me, and I promise to get back to more family stuff soon.

Yours Jenni

Previously on My Wife The Boss:

From out of the darkening sky, Clark felt the first telltale raindrops hit his face, and he pulled his collar up. “So we're agreed we're going to support each other every way we can, but now do you think we could get back to the car and find a nice, warm restaurant. I don't know about you, but my seesawing powers make me hungry, and there isn't enough sun around to recharge our solar batteries. Would you allow me to take you out to dinner, my dear?” he asked, bowing with a flourish.

Sara's lighthearted laugh trilled out as she pulled her hat back over her windswept curls. “I'd be delighted, sir!” she replied coquettishly, giving Clark a glimpse of what he had to face in the years to come. She'd knock dead any young male with a pulse ... and that was without the use of her superpowers.

Lois' and Clark's lives as parents promised to be pretty interesting in the future.

Yet, he felt very comfortable with this particular role. Being a father was one of the best jobs in the world -- right up there with being a husband to Lois Lane.

****

continued ...

Next morning, in Hyperion Vistas Retirement Home, a few blocks from Lois and Clark's brownstone, an old woman was being helped from her bed into a reclining chair by the large bow-window of her room. It was 9.30 on the dot, and the woman had already partaken of her breakfast in bed ... her only concession to her age of 93 years.

Her aide arranged the woman's cashmere shawl around her shoulders before spreading a blanket across her lap and tucking it around her emaciated frame. The nurse then turned her attention to brushing out the lady's thinning locks, being especially careful not to bruise the paper-like skin which showed through her white hair.

Ina Bowen-Timmons was the nursing home's richest resident -- and its most demanding. Her body might be failing, but her will was as strong as a steel blade and her tongue as sharp.

Woe become any of the staff who inadvertently fell short of Miss Bowen-Timmons' very high standards, a circumstance that seemed to occur fairly frequently. The old dame would extract her pound of flesh before having them moved onto other duties. Not that that seemed to disappoint many of the workers in the home. In fact, they usually felt greatly relieved, unless, of course, she saw to it that they were fired ... and she could do that too, being the founder and the largest share owner in the company which ran the nursing home.

In fact, the large mansion had once been her home. The Bowen family had owned a textile mill in Metropolis and played a minor role in the city's high society for a number of generations, but Ina was the last of her line ... or so she let everyone believe, and the mill had left the family's ownership almost a century ago.

Her father, Arthur Timmons, had been a captain in the British Royal Navy until he met his American wife during World War I. At the end of the war, he had resigned his commission, under duress, and emigrated to the US to work in the family business in Metropolis.

Soon after Arthur had joined the firm, his father-in-law had died unexpectedly, leaving him in charge. For some time, he'd tried very hard to step into the patriarch's shoes, but he was in over his head. Believing himself to be a better sea captain than one of industry, he'd sold the company for a very large sum of money, which he'd promptly deposited in the Bank of England. Once his family was provided for, he'd gone back to sea with a great sense of relief.

Arthur's lack of business acumen and his implicit trust in his native country's banking system had proved to be a great stroke of luck. By the end of the 1920s, the bottom had fallen out of Wall Street and the Great Depression had begun.

Yet, while Arthur pursued his life as a captain of a merchant vessel plying the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Ina grew up in a house full of women; her puritanical grandmother, her lovely, but frail mother and, in time, her baby sister.

As a young child, Ina had looked forward to the infrequent visits of her handsome, happy-go-lucky father but, in time, she came to resent him stealing her mother's attention, and she soon realized that after his visits, her mother would often be left expecting another child. There were many pregnancies, but only one other resulted in the birth of a live baby. Eventually, her mother's state of health failed, and she died while attempting to carry her seventh child to term.

Her mother's death soured Ina completely. She blamed her father in particular, and men in general. She refused to talk to him when he returned, though he had attempted to get back into her good graces over a number of visits.

Finally, he gave up and didn't return to the family home. Five years later, he went down with his ship during a monsoon in the Indian Ocean. Ina even blamed him for that, though he'd left his daughters in the care of his mother-in-law, and financially well-off.

Ina's devout grandmother became her role model. She found sustenance in her duty to the church, a habit she continued to the present day. But not for Ina, the gentle faith of Jesus -- she believed in duty, penitence and sacrifice.

And, as her sister grew, she recognized their mother's weaknesses and their father's carefree character in the child. Ina was extremely disappointed, and resolved to reform her sister's flighty ways.

It wasn't Ina's fault that she'd failed.

“Are you warm enough, Miss Bowen-Timmons?” the young aide asked solicitously as she pulled back the heavy drapes, revealing gardens covered lightly with a layer of snow. “That wind is blowing straight from the Arctic and it wouldn't surprise me if we get more snow.” The girl shivered and rubbed her hands up and down her arms, continuing to chat, unaware that her charge was looking at her with daggers drawn. “It feels cold in here too.”

She hurried over to the thermostat and was shocked to see the temperature level set so low. “Would you look at that. They haven't turned this up for winter.” She stretched out her hand to rectify the fault, but was halted by the hoarse, yet commanding voice of the old woman.

“Don't touch that!” The female's prattle had eventually penetrated Ina's aloof manner. “Do you think this home is made of money?”

The young woman looked slightly alarmed, but she persisted. “But you're in danger of catching hypothermia in this cold room.”

Ina was not persuaded. “The cost of heating this home is already extortionate. We can't just go turning up thermostats whenever we like. If there's an unexpected cold spell, the residents can wear a few extra clothes.” Her claw-like hand pointed toward a closet in the corner of the room. “Fetch me another wrap ... the plaid one. It's the warmest.”

While the aide followed instructions, the door to the room opened and the matron came in carrying the mail. Normally, delivering mail wasn't the matron's job, but she made an exception for the home's most important resident.

“Good morning, Miss Bowen-Timmons. It's a fine morning, but a little chilly. Are you warm enough?”

“I'm fine, thank you.” Though Ina was polite, she treated the boss with only a little less condescension than she had the aide. “The girl there is fetching me another shawl.”

The matron glanced in the direction of the closet to see the rather nervous looking young woman emerge. “Ah, I see Liz is attending to you this morning,” she said, turning back to the old lady. “She's our newest recruit and comes highly recommended. I'm sure she'll look after you very well.”

“That remains to be seen!” Ina declared belligerently, her watery eyes studying the new recruit. “Don't dither, girl. Bring me the shawl.”

But Liz couldn't help but hesitate. “I wasn't sure if this was the right one,” she said, holding the item out for inspection, and trying hard not to fidget like a preschooler.

“I said plaid! Don't you recognize plaid?” Ina hissed, her head weaving forward in the manner of a snake readying to strike. “It's the tartan one on the top shelf.”

The matron walked a little further into the room. “Miss Bowen-Timmons, I hope you'll give Liz a chance. This is only her second week here, and so far she's been doing very well.”

“Where's Nancy? You know I like to stick to the people I know.” Ina changed tactics and cowered into her chair, her hands trembling and her voice sounding weak and thready. “I'm an old woman. I don't cope well with new things.”

“Nancy called in sick,” the matron explained, striving for patience. She'd been here before with Ina. There was nothing weak about Ina's brain, but she occasionally used her age and frailty to manipulate a situation. “Nancy has come down with that flu virus which has been going around ...”

Ina gave up her pretense to tut in disapproval. “We didn't take to our beds with something as trivial as the flu when I was young.”

The matron tried to keep calm -- in Ina's younger days people often died from the flu. “That's not exactly true, Miss Bowen-Timmons,” she said reasonably. “But, regardless, we have two more staff who are sick and it looks like one of our other ladies might be ill. I do hope we're not in for an epidemic, but most of our residents have been immunized. However, we're going to be short-staffed for a few days, so please try to be polite to Liz, who has kindly offered to take over Nancy's duties. I'm sure you two will get along.”

The disgusted look on Ina's face led the matron to believe that this was a forlorn hope, but she had other duties to attend to; other residents who weren't as difficult as Miss Bowen-Timmons.

Still, she continued in a pleasant tone, “I've brought your mail, and you even have a package today.” The old lady occasionally got mail from her solicitor or her church, but seldom any packages, and she didn't recognize the printing. “Perhaps a Christmas present ...”

“Why would anyone want to send me a gift?” Ina barked.

It was a rhetorical question, but Liz ran in where angels feared to tread. “Because it's Christmas soon, and people give gifts at Christmas.”

Ina shook her head and a dribble of saliva ran down her chin. “I never did hold with the custom. Christmas is far too commercialized these days. People getting themselves in debt to have the latest gimmick of a gift. Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of our savior,” she ended piously, closing her eyes in the hope that the two women would leave her to her own thoughts.

The matron chose to make her escape. “I'll just leave this here,” she said, laying the parcel on the small table by Ina's side. “Perhaps you can open it later ...”

She wanted to add 'when you're in a better mood', but she didn't quite dare. On the whole, she enjoyed her job, and she needed the money. Besides, in her opinion, hell would freeze over before Ina's mood would get any better.

“Will we see you for lunch, Miss Bowen-Timmons?” she inquired on her way out the door.

“I believe I have a headache starting, so I'll eat in my room,” the lady in the chair replied without turning around.

It was the reply the matron had expected, but before she left, she decided to give Liz an excuse to leave. “Are you coming, Liz?”

But clearly, Liz wasn't so faint-hearted. “I believe Miss Bowen-Timmons' closet could do with tidying out, so if you've nothing else for me to do, I'd like to stay.”

The matron returned Liz's smile. “Not right at this moment, but if you could come back to the floor before coffee at eleven, I think we can spare you to look after our favorite lady.” The matron almost choked on these last words as she closed the door with a firm click. She pitied poor Liz. It was obvious she was new and didn't know what she was letting herself in for, or she wouldn't have willingly suggested remaining in the lion's den.

*****

to be continued ...