Martha was right.

He'd been headstrong. Foolish. Stubborn. And good. Good enough to be taken seriously when he'd showed up at the Sharks' training camp.

Good enough that the owner himself had taken notice, first to offer him a spot on the defensive line, and then to offer--

He'd been young, and foolish, and dazzled by big-city glamour and a charming smile--and naive enough to believe that it meant the same thing to Lionel as to him. Stupid enough not to ask questions. And he had been so far from home--far enough that he could pretend that what he was doing didn't hurt anyone. He'd put Martha's picture at the bottom of his sock drawer, face-down, as though that would keep her from finding out.

Until he'd seen the birth announcement in the paper, and realized how wrong he'd been. That he was hurting a woman he'd never met--whose existence he'd been too willfully blind to guess at--and a baby, and...his own soul.

Martha assumed there'd been a girl in Metropolis, and he'd let her. He'd even half-convinced himself.

Until his son grew up to be just as much of a stubborn fool as he was. Until there was another Luthor (one he still couldn't look at without feeling deeply ashamed of the stupid boy he'd been) around, with a smile as deceptively charming as his father's. Until he recognized the dazzled look in his son's eyes when he looked at Lex Luthor.

Martha was right. He'd been every bit as stubborn and foolish as Clark.

That was why he knew what he was talking about.