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EXHIBIT A: The Wedding Cake.
The morning of the wedding. A bridal suite. A very large, very pretty room full of very worried people.
"Okay," said Alex Danvers, standing in the doorway with a clipboard and the face of a woman who had been awake since four. "Everyone's here. The flowers are here. The band is here. Eliza's here, and she's already crying. Jess has the schedule. Sam has the rings. The only thing left is the cake."
"Is it here?" said Lena, from in front of the mirror, where three people were pinning up her hair.
"It's in the reception hall. Five tiers. Lemon and raspberry, with the little sugar flowers."
"Wonderful."
"It's very beautiful."
"I'm sure it is."
"And," said Alex, with a very small, very careful pause, "Kara hasn't been here."
Lena turned her head.
The hairdresser squeaked.
"Where is she?"
"She said she'd go for a walk. To, you know. Settle her nerves."
"How long ago?"
"Ninety minutes."
"Alex."
"I'm just telling you what I know."
"Alex."
"I'm going to check on the cake," said Alex, and left.
She came back four minutes later, at a very fast walk, with the face of a woman who has seen the Lord.
"Lena," she said.
"Yes?"
"I need you to stay calm."
"I'm calm."
"I need you to stay very calm."
"Alex, I am a Luthor. I have been calm in front of hostile boardrooms, federal investigators, and a man who tried to kill me with a chandelier. What is wrong with the cake?"
"There's no cake."
There was a short silence.
"I'm sorry?"
"There's no cake, Lena. There's a table. There's a very nice white tablecloth. There's a knife. There are five plates." Alex held up a small, wrinkled sugar flower, held gingerly between two fingers, like a piece of evidence. "And there's this."
At that very moment, a quiet, guilty voice came from the doorway.
"I can explain."
Lena closed her eyes.
Kara Danvers stood on the threshold in her wedding suit, tie perfectly knotted, hair freshly combed, hands clasped behind her back. She had a faint pink glow high on each cheekbone. She had, on her collar, a small, bright streak of raspberry filling. And she had, in her hair, a single, perfectly intact, absolutely unmistakable sugar flower.
"I was nervous," she said.
"You ate the cake."
"I ate it a little."
"Five tiers, Kara."
"I started with the bottom one. To be, you know. Responsible. To make sure it was good. And it was good. And then I had a feeling, and the feeling needed a second tier." She swallowed. "And then it was just very hard to stop."
"You ate. A five-tier cake."
"In my defense," said Kara, "I didn't know there'd be so many of them."
"It was a wedding cake."
"I really thought it'd be smaller."
Behind her, at the door, Eliza Danvers was holding a handkerchief to her mouth, and Sam was making a thin, strangled wheezing noise, and Jess, with the slow, merciless efficiency of a woman who has kept a Luthor's schedule for six years, was already on her phone.
"I have a bakery on the line," she said. "They can have a three-tier cake here in ninety minutes, if somebody agrees to pay triple."
"Pay it," said Lena.
"Already did."
"Thank you, Jess."
"It's in the budget."
"We have a budget for this?"
"I've been putting aside a Kara contingency fund," said Jess, "since the engagement party."
Lena opened her eyes.
She looked at Kara, who was standing there in her wedding suit, with raspberry on her collar and sugar in her hair and the saddest, most remorseful blue eyes in the history of the galaxy.
She sighed.
"Come here," she said.
Kara shuffled over.
Lena took the sugar flower out of her hair, looked at it for a moment, and, with deep and deliberate dignity, ate it.
"Guilty," she said.
"I'm so sorry."
"I know."
"I love you."
"I know that, too," said Lena. "That's why you're still getting married."
----
EXHIBIT B: Chocolate Chip.
Four years later. A small house in the suburbs of National City. A very ordinary Tuesday.
Lena had come home early.
She had meant to surprise them. She came in the back door, quietly, with her bag in one hand and her shoes in the other, and she was halfway across the kitchen before she noticed the silence.
It was the wrong kind.
It was the kind of silence that has a plan.
"Kara?" she said.
Nothing.
"Lorelei?"
A very faint rustle came from behind the couch.
Lena put down her bag. She crossed the living room on the balls of her feet, with her heart pounding, and leaned very slowly around the back of the sofa.
There, on the carpet, in a small nest of cushions, sat two people.
The first was a very small girl, about three, with black hair in two crooked pigtails and a pair of enormous green eyes. She was wearing a pajama top covered in cartoon owls, and she was holding, in both hands, an entire bag of chocolate chips.
The second was Kara.
Kara was also holding a bag of chocolate chips.
They were both, very carefully, not looking at her.
"Hi, Mama," said Lorelei, in a high, bright, brazen little voice. "We're doing homework."
"Homework."
"We're learning. About chocolate."
"I see."
"It's very educational."
"Who taught you that word?"
"Mommy."
"Mommy did?"
"She said," said Lorelei, grandly, "that when you're caught, you just say it's educational."
Kara made a small, strangled sound.
"Kara."
"That's an exaggeration," said Kara, with her mouth full.
"You taught our daughter to lie."
"I taught her to negotiate."
"She's three."
"She's a natural."
There was a very long pause.
Lorelei looked up at Lena.
She tilted her head, in the way she did when she was weighing a deal. Then, with infinite and terrible sweetness, she held out the bag.
"Want some?"
Lena stared at the bag.
She stared at the two guilty, chocolate-smeared faces peering up at her. She thought about all the discipline she had practiced, all the careful boundaries, all the mature and reasonable parenting she had planned and studied and read about in six different books.
She sat down on the carpet.
She took a chocolate chip.
"This is our secret," she said.
"Deal," said Lorelei.
"Deal," said Kara, and then, because she was Kara, "Can I have the rest of the bag?"
"No."
"Please?"
"Kara."
"It's educational," said Kara, and Lorelei burst out laughing, and Lena put her face in her hands.
-----
EXHIBIT C: The Second Daughter.
Six years into the marriage. A brand-new nursery in a brand-new house. A baby in a bassinet.
They named her Charlotte Alexandra.
Charlotte, for a Luthor ancestor Lena had decided to like. Alexandra, for the one person without whom none of this would have been possible, and who had, when told, burst into tears, hugged both of them for a very long time, and then said, in a muffled voice:
"I'm going to spoil her so hard."
"We know," said Lena.
"I'm going to teach her to fight."
"We know."
"I'm going to, I'm going to give her all the candy."
"Alex," said Kara, gently, "that's my job."
They called her Char.
She was a happy baby, small and round and golden, with Kara's hair and Lena's green eyes and a laugh like a thrown handful of coins. She slept in her bassinet, and ate in her high chair, and found, by the age of two, a series of increasingly ingenious ways to acquire sugar.
"She took the cookie jar," said Lena, one afternoon, standing in the kitchen with a hand on her hip.
"Hm," said Kara.
"The jar was on the top shelf."
"Hm."
"Behind the flour."
"Interesting."
"She's two."
"She's very resourceful."
"Kara," said Lena. "You put it down for her. I watched you. You lowered it. Just now. You handed it to her."
"I did not."
"You did."
"I may have," said Kara, with immense dignity, "set it on a lower shelf."
"Why?"
"She said please."
"She said 'cookie.'"
"With eyes," said Kara, in a voice of deep, helpless surrender. "Lena, she looked at me. She looked at me with the eyes. You've seen them."
"They're my eyes."
"That's the problem," said Kara, and put her head down on the kitchen counter.
----
EXHIBIT D: The Halloween Heist.
Another October. A well-lit porch in a quiet neighborhood. Four people, three costumes, and a conspiracy.
Lena's rule on Halloween candy was simple. The girls could have three pieces on the night, and one piece a day for a week, and the rest would go into a locked cabinet, to be doled out in careful and reasonable amounts until Thanksgiving.
It was a good rule.
It lasted exactly eleven minutes.
She found out the way she always did. She walked into the living room at nine-fifteen, with a cup of tea, to find three people sitting on the floor in a circle of wrappers, in the dark, in complete silence, with the guilty faces of a gang of small-time smugglers.
Lorelei, ten, in a dragon costume with the head pushed back. Char, five, in a tiny black cape and a witch hat. And Kara, in the exact same cape, with the exact same hat, and a plastic pumpkin bucket of her own.
"It's a costume," said Kara, immediately.
"You're a witch?"
"I'm a mom witch."
"You're a grown woman."
"I'm a very old witch."
"Why is your bucket full?"
"I walked very fast."
"Mommy went to the rich houses," said Char, in a whisper of deep admiration. "She got the full-size bars."
"Char!"
"She said not to tell!"
"I said not to tell Mama," said Kara, in anguish.
"Mama's right there."
There was a very long pause.
Lena looked at the three of them. She looked at the candy. She looked at the small, golden, proud face of her youngest, and the small, dark, calculating face of her eldest, and the large, blue-eyed, deeply apologetic face of the person she had married.
"Lorelei," she said.
"Yes, Mama?"
"Explain."
"It was Mommy's idea," said Lorelei.
"It was not."
"It was definitely Mommy's idea. She said, and I quote, 'If we move fast enough, we can hit the whole block twice.'"
"You said yes!"
"I was ten! I was coerced!"
"You were wearing a flamethrower!"
"It was decorative!"
"All right," said Lena, and put down her tea. "All right. I'm going to say this once. This is a very serious matter. I want every single one of you to look me in the eye and tell me, honestly, truthfully, with your hearts, whether you are sorry."
"I'm sorry," said Char, instantly.
"I'm sorry," said Lorelei.
"I'm very sorry," said Kara.
"Are you really sorry?"
"No," said all three, at once, and Lena, who had never in her life been so completely out-matched, sat down on the floor and took a fun-size Snickers out of Kara's bucket.
"I'm confiscating this," she said, and ate it.
----
EXHIBIT E: Lex.
The girls were fifteen and twenty. The house was a little louder than it used to be.
It started at the dinner table, one Thursday evening in March.
"I have an announcement," said Char.
She was fifteen, tall, thin, and gloriously furious at the world, in a black hoodie and a pair of boots that looked like they could kick through a wall. She had dyed her blonde hair a shade of electric blue. She had a small silver ring in her eyebrow, which had made Kara cry and Lena pretend she hadn't. She sat very straight in her chair, with her chin raised, like a general addressing a regiment.
"From now on," she said, "I want to be called Lex."
There was a silence.
At the other end of the table, Lorelei, twenty and home from university, stopped chewing.
Kara's fork went very slowly down to her plate.
Lena put down her water glass.
"I'm sorry," she said. "What?"
"Lex," said Char. "As in, short for Alexandra. It's my middle name. It's edgy."
"It is a Luthor name."
"I know!"
"It's my brother's name."
"I know!"
"Your uncle. Who is, I remind you, in prison."
"That's what makes it edgy," said Char.
Lena looked at her daughter for a very long moment.
She looked, for a split second, like a woman who had just been handed an unexploded bomb. Then she took a very slow, very deep breath, and put her hands flat on the table.
"Charlotte."
"Lex."
"We named you after my grandmother, and your Aunt Alex."
"Lex."
"Your aunt," said Lena, "is going to be so confused."
"Oh my god," said Kara, in a faint voice. "Alex. And Lex. They'll be in the same room."
"That's the point," said Char.
"It's going to be chaos."
"I know."
"Everyone's going to look up, every time someone shouts."
"That's rebellion," said Char, with deep satisfaction. "That's what I want."
Lorelei, twenty and dangerously calm, leaned across the table.
"Can I call her Char, still?"
"Absolutely not," said Char.
"Char," said Lorelei.
"Lex."
"Charlotte."
"LEX."
"I think," said Kara, gently, "we can discuss it."
"There's nothing to discuss."
"We can just, you know, try it."
"Kara," said Lena.
"I'm just saying. It could be a phase."
"It's going to be a phase," said Lena, "that lasts five years."
"Yes," said Kara. "But she'll look so cool."
It did last five years.
It was, in retrospect, a very good five years. Aunt Alex took it with remarkable good humor, answering to "Alex" when she was called, and "Other Alex" when she was not, and, once, in a restaurant, standing up and shouting "WHICH ONE?" until the entire staff fled. Jess started referring to the girl, with perfect composure, as "Lex Junior." Sam gave her a small, solemn gift of a leather jacket. Lillian Luthor, who had been quietly informed of the change, said only, "How refreshing," in a tone that nobody could interpret.
And Kara, whose job it was to be the fun mom, took it all very seriously. She called the girl Lex with a perfectly straight face, every day, in every situation, for five years. She introduced her to people as "my daughter Lex." She even signed a school permission slip, once, with the name.
"You're encouraging her," Lena said, one night, in bed.
"I'm supporting her."
"You're adding fuel."
"She's happy," said Kara. "She feels seen. And, Lena. She's still our kid."
"I know she's still our kid."
"She still makes me cookies on Sundays."
"I know."
"She still leaves little notes in my lunch."
"I know, I know."
"So I figure," said Kara, "if she wants to be a Lex, she can be a Lex. It'll wear off. And one day, when she's twenty, she'll turn to us and say, 'Mom, I'd like to be Char again.'"
"Do you really think so?"
"I know so," said Kara. "That's what happened to me."
"What happened to you?"
"I wanted to be called Supergirl," said Kara, with great dignity. "And look how that turned out."
Lena stared at her.
Then she began, helplessly, to laugh.
When she was twenty, Charlotte Alexandra Luthor Danvers turned up at the Sunday dinner table, with her hair dyed back to blonde and her eyebrow ring taken out, and said, in a very casual voice, "Hey. Just so you know. I'd, like, maybe prefer Char. If it's not too much trouble."
"Absolutely," said Kara, who was crying.
"Of course," said Lena, who was also crying.
"That's fine, Lex," said Lorelei, serenely, and passed the potatoes.
-----
EXHIBIT F: The Diet.
Many years later. A bright, sunny kitchen in a rather larger house.
It began, as these things do, with a doctor.
It was nothing serious. A routine appointment, a slightly raised number on a chart, a mild and sympathetic suggestion that Lena Luthor Danvers might, possibly, consider cutting back on the sugar. It was the kind of thing that a reasonable woman would have nodded at, and filed, and forgotten.
Lena did not forget.
Lena, a Luthor, went on a diet.
She did it the way she did everything: with a spreadsheet, a plan, and a fierce, joyful, terrifying sense of purpose. She cleaned out the pantry. She bought a book on macronutrients. She learned the word "legume." She began to eat things with names like quinoa bowl and cauliflower crust.
And, as the weeks went by, she became insufferable.
"I'm just saying," she said, at the kitchen table, over a plate of steamed broccoli, "that it's all about discipline. It's about intention."
"Mm-hm," said Kara, who was eating her fourth pancake.
"I feel so much better."
"I'm sure you do."
"My energy is through the roof."
"That's great."
"You should try it, Kara. You'd feel lighter."
"I feel great," said Kara, and ate a fifth pancake.
"I'm just saying. It's easy. It's not hard."
"Mm-hm."
"It's just a matter of choosing to say no."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. You see a cookie, and you say no."
"That is wild," said Char, from across the table, with her mouth full of waffle.
"It's self-control," said Lena.
"It's weird," said Lorelei, quietly, with a croissant.
"It's fine. It's healthy. And I'm proud of myself." She lifted her chin. "Four months. Four months, without a single cheat."
"Wow," said Kara.
"I know."
"Four months."
"I know."
"That's amazing."
"Thank you."
"I'm so proud of you," said Kara, with total sincerity. And then, in a low, thoughtful voice, with her eyes on her plate, "I just can't believe you've gone four months without a single cheat."
Char put down her fork.
Lorelei looked up.
Kara's head tilted, ever so slightly.
"What?" said Lena.
"Nothing."
"What is it?"
"It's, ah. It's nothing."
"Kara."
"It's just, I could swear, I can smell, oh." She sniffed. "Dulce de leche."
"Excuse me?"
"And, chocolate."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Dark chocolate. And, and butter." Kara's eyes had gone round and shiny and a little unfocused, like a bloodhound's. "And warm pastry. From, I want to say, the, the little place in Midvale? Doña Rosa's?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"It smells like it's coming from," said Kara, slowly turning her head, "upstairs."
Lena stood up.
She stood up very fast, and very straight, and very red, and said, in a voice a full octave higher than normal:
"I have to make a phone call."
She left the room.
There was a very short silence.
"Mom," said Lorelei.
"Yes," said Char.
"We should follow her."
"Absolutely," said Kara, already on her feet.
They found her in the study.
She was standing at the back of the room, in the corner, by the bookshelf, with her back to the door. She had one hand on a hidden latch, which swung a section of shelf aside. She had a small, white paper bag in the other. She had, on her lips, in the soft yellow light of a desk lamp, the unmistakable gleam of chocolate.
She was eating a pastry.
It was a thing of beauty. It was round and golden and plump, as big as a fist, with a shining dark coat of chocolate that cracked, very slightly, as she bit. Inside, there was a thick, heavy, velvety ribbon of dulce de leche, which welled out at the corner of her mouth and dripped, in one slow, glorious amber bead, onto her chin.
Her eyes were closed.
She was moaning, very softly, with an expression of such pure, helpless, trembling bliss that it was almost embarrassing to watch.
"Mama," said Lorelei.
Lena froze.
She turned.
She had chocolate on her nose. She had dulce de leche on her chin. She had, in her free hand, an unmistakable white bag with a small hand-stamped logo that read PANADERÍA DOÑA ROSA, EST. 1974. On the shelf behind her, in a recess the size of a shoebox, were eleven more.
Nobody said anything.
Then Char, slowly, in a voice of pure, awed, deeply gratified revelation, said:
"Four months."
"It's a, I, it's medicinal," said Lena.
"It's a what?"
"It's a, a dietary supplement."
"It's a bomb," said Kara, reverently, staring at the pastry in her wife's hand like a woman who has seen a miracle. "It's a sugar bomb. It's a, it's the best one. They only make them on Saturdays."
"I don't know what you mean."
"You've been driving to Midvale."
"I have not."
"Every Saturday."
"I have a, a standing meeting."
"With Doña Rosa?"
"With a client."
"Mama," said Lorelei, gently, "there's chocolate on your face."
Lena put a hand to her cheek.
It came away brown.
She looked at her fingers. She looked at the three faces staring at her, one blue-eyed and shining, one green-eyed and gleeful, one black-haired and judicially solemn. She looked at the shelf, with its twelve little pastries, tucked away like contraband. She looked at the one in her hand.
She drew herself up.
"I would like," she said, "to speak to my lawyer."
"We are your lawyers," said Char.
"I plead the Fifth."
"You can't plead the Fifth in your own house."
"I'll plead whatever I like."
"The evidence," said Lorelei, gravely, pointing at the shelf, "is overwhelming."
"I want a, a fair trial."
"You're holding the weapon."
"It's an entirely circumstantial,"
"Mama," said Kara.
"What?"
"It's okay."
"It is not okay."
"It's okay," said Kara, coming across the room, with her arms open, with the most tender, delighted, radiant expression Lena had ever seen on a human face. "It's okay. I'm not mad."
"You're not?"
"I'm so happy."
"I was proud of myself."
"I know."
"I was doing so well."
"You were amazing. You did four months. That's the longest anyone in this family's ever gone." She put her arms around her. "But, honey, you can't hide things like this. You'll go insane. And," she added, in a soft, confidential whisper, "I always know."
"I hate that."
"I know."
"You smell things."
"I do."
"You can't just smell my secrets."
"It was dulce de leche," said Kara, helplessly. "I'm only human."
"You're not."
"I'm very close."
Lena put her face in Kara's shoulder.
She was shaking.
She was, for a moment, entirely silent. Then, with a long, muffled, miserable, deeply relieved groan, she said:
"Guilty."
"Guilty," said Lorelei.
"Guilty!" said Char, delighted.
"Guilty as charged," said Kara, and kissed her on top of the head.
They ate the other eleven.
They sat on the floor of the study, in a circle, with the lamp turned low, and passed the bag from hand to hand. Char took a bite, and her eyes rolled back in her head. Lorelei made a small, rapt, purring sound. Kara ate three in a row, in total silence, with tears of reverent joy running down her cheeks.
Lena, with her back against the bookshelf, took the last one.
"Four months," she said, with a faint, helpless smile.
"Four months," Kara agreed.
"I'm disgusted with myself."
"You're magnificent."
"I'll start again tomorrow."
"Of course you will."
"I mean it."
"I know you do," said Kara, tenderly, and licked a smear of dulce de leche off her thumb.
---
EXHIBIT G: The Syrup.
Many years later. A Sunday morning in the big house, full of the noise of a lot of people.
The house, by now, was full.
Lorelei had married a very nice man, and had a daughter. Char had a husband, a dog, and a small and determined son. Alex and her wife Kelly came on Sundays. Eliza came on Sundays. Jess, who was officially retired and unofficially the household's chief of staff, came on Sundays and took charge of the schedule. And the kitchen, at nine in the morning, was a roiling, golden, ear-splitting storm of pancakes.
Lena was at the stove.
She was wearing an apron that read WORLD'S OKAYEST GRANDMA, a gift from Char. She had a spatula in one hand and a stack of fresh pancakes beside her. She had, as the matriarch of a large and chaotic family, an air of deep and weary contentment.
She also had a problem.
"Has anyone seen the maple syrup?"
Nobody answered.
"It was on the counter. A full bottle. I bought it yesterday."
"Hmm," said Kara, from the table, in a very fast voice.
"It was a big bottle."
"Interesting," said Lorelei.
"Almost a liter."
"Weird," said Char.
Lena turned around.
She looked at the three of them. They were sitting in a row along the kitchen table, side by side, completely rigid, each one holding a coffee cup and staring directly at the opposite wall. Nobody was moving. Nobody was blinking. It was, by any standard, the stillest the three of them had been in thirty years.
"What," said Lena slowly, "did you do?"
"Nothing," said Kara.
"Nothing," said Lorelei.
"Absolutely nothing," said Char.
"Why," said Lena, "are you all sitting like that?"
"It's posture," said Kara.
"It's a new thing," said Lorelei.
"It's very good for the spine," said Char, in a high, strangled, unnatural voice.
Lena put down the spatula.
She walked across the kitchen.
She stopped in front of the table, and folded her arms, and said, in the dangerous, quiet tone that had once brought three separate boards of directors to their knees:
"Where. Is. The. Syrup?"
There was a very long silence.
Then, from beneath the table, in a tiny, high-pitched, vibrating voice, came a small and unmistakable hic.
Lena bent over.
She lifted the corner of the tablecloth.
Underneath, in the shade, with her tiny fists clenched and her face shining with something golden and sticky, sat a very small girl, about two years old, with a head of wild black curls and a pair of enormous green eyes. She was wearing a pair of pajamas covered in small yellow stars. She was vibrating, faintly, at a frequency just on the edge of visibility, like a tuning fork. In her lap was an empty glass bottle.
It had been licked clean.
"Chloe," said Lena.
Chloe looked at her.
She had syrup on her face. She had syrup on her hands. She had syrup, in a truly impressive quantity, in her hair. Her little chest was rising and falling, very fast, and her whole body was blurring slightly around the edges, as though the air were rippling.
"Granmas," she whispered, in a voice of deep conspiratorial awe.
"Yes?"
"Syrup."
"I see that."
"Allllll gone."
"Where did it go?"
Chloe patted her small, round tummy, very proudly.
"Hic," she said, and then, with a sudden, bright, blinding, delighted smile, she vanished.
There was a small whoosh. A gust of wind. A whirl of napkins. A faint streak of gold, shooting out of the kitchen, down the hall, up the stairs, around the house, back down again, and across the living room in a long, shrieking, laughing blur.
"WHEEEEEEE!" said Chloe, going past the window.
"WHEEEEEEE!" said Chloe, going past the door.
"WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" said Chloe, going past the ceiling.
"She's fast," said Lorelei, faintly.
"She's very fast," said Char.
"How long," said Lena, standing slowly, with her hands on her hips, "has she been under the table?"
"A while," said Kara.
"How long?"
"Eleven minutes."
"And nobody told me."
"We were going to."
"You were going to what?"
"We were going to say," said Kara, with immense and heartfelt sincerity, "as soon as you turned around."
"I did turn around."
"Then we, ah, would have."
"Kara."
"We tried," said Lorelei. "We said hmm."
"You said hmm."
"It was a signal."
"It was nothing." Lena looked at the three of them. She looked at the empty table, and the empty bottle, and the small, shrinking, giggling trail of syrup on the floor, winding off towards the living room. Somewhere in the distance, a very small voice was shouting "GRANMAS! I'M A TRAIN!"
She looked back at Kara.
"Kara Danvers."
"Yes?"
"You taught her that you could go under the table."
"I did not."
"You absolutely did."
"I may," said Kara, with great dignity, "have mentioned, once, that it was a good place to hide."
"From whom?"
"From you."
There was a long, quiet pause.
Lena looked at her wife.
It was, she thought, with a sudden rush of helpless tenderness, the same look. The one Kara had worn on the morning of their wedding, with a sugar flower in her hair. The one she had worn on Halloween, in a plastic witch hat. The one she'd worn in a thousand small domestic crimes, over a thousand small and ordinary days, for more than forty years.
It was the look of a woman who had never, for a single moment, regretted anything.
"Guilty," said Lena softly.
"Guilty," said Kara, with a tremendous, beaming smile.
"Guilty," said Lorelei, and Char.
"Guilty," said the small voice, from somewhere near the ceiling.
Lena picked up the empty bottle.
She turned it over, thoughtfully, in her hands.
"Well," she said. "I suppose that's one way to learn about maple trees."
"I'll make her a pancake," said Kara.
"She's had three pancakes."
"She's had none. She skipped the pancakes. She went straight to the syrup."
"That's worse."
"It's efficient," said Kara, and Lena, for the forty-first time that year, began to laugh.
In the end, the verdict was unanimous.
The Luthor Danvers family was found guilty on all counts: of eating the cake, of stealing the candy, of hiding the chocolate, of adopting the name Lex, of sneaking pastries in the study, and of drinking an entire bottle of maple syrup.
The sentence was life.
Nobody has ever wanted a pardon.
Fin.