Lucas recovers enough over the commercials to go down to the river court, and that's where Karen finds him. She asks if she has to tie him to the bed to make him stay in, temporarily taking this show in a whole weird direction. Lucas apologizes, and Karen laughs, "The next time you leave the house, I'll be cashing in your life insurance." Wow, she's calm about this. I guess she's saving all her repressed fury and panic for Keith, the lucky guy. Mother and son sit on a picnic table, and Karen prods, "You want to tell me what's going on? Brooke's waiting for you when you come home from the hospital; Peyton's there when I get home from work." Lucas does not crack and sob, "I'm a shameless man-whore, Mother!" He just sighs. Karen asks what happened when she went to Italy, since she was under the impression that he was interested in Peyton. Lucas mumbles that he was, and things are all complicated, and rather than resort to direct communication to work things out, he decided to make things more complicated by dating Brooke. Oh, for -- if anyone on this show had a straightforward conversation where information was correctly and efficiently transmitted from speaker to listener, this show would be ten minutes long and shown as bumper material before Smallville.