Saratoga, 1921
Clearly, everyone had lost their minds. And she couldn't stop moving her feet, she was basically pacing in place and it was quite annoying because she wanted to be still and think. She needed to think.
Not only was Rose apparently pig-ignorant enough to have an affair with Jimmy (although Rose didn't know everything about Jimmy, she didn't know about Gillian, she didn't know about all of it, but still...)
Still. And to use what happened during the war. Just like Jimmy had that day at the beach house. Perhaps Rose did deserve Jimmy.
"Oranges," Richard gasped out from behind her. "You always. Smell like oranges."
It was her soap, he knew that. When she got out of that place, last summer, he knew she'd want it, would want to get the smell of those horrors off her, and would want to smell like herself. She had bars everywhere. She kept wrapped bars in her drawers and packed them in her suitcase because she liked her clothes to smell like her soap. She'd been using the same soap since she was a girl, since boarding school, since she'd bought some on a shopping trip with her father, she'd taken them to Europe during the war, she always traveled with them...
He was looking at her like he had never quite seen her before. He knew, though. She had told him, not long after they went from being friends to something more. She had told him about the man during the war, he had told her about the girl in Chicago.
Why was he looking at her like that?
"Oh, Clara," Rose sighed.
"I can't believe you'd do this, I thought we were friends," Clara finally answered. "I'll never forgive you for this. But to make me think I don't know what happened just to provide cover for your own bad decisions..."
"Clara," Jimmy said lowly.
For some reason, she thought of Jimmy kneeling down with her stuffed rabbit in his hands the night her mother died. She turned to look at him. It was the same look on his face.
Like he knew she was about to hurt.
"When we dug out enough to find you, it was madness. You must have given him the morphine, maybe you took some yourself, you were both completely out when we got to you. There was a transport, and he had to get to a hospital ship. He had to get surgery, to repair..." Rose's voice drifted off.
"Then you woke up and asked about him and I...Clara, I didn't know his name and in the confusion, I couldn't find his paperwork. And I know you, I know how you are, you would have kept trying to find him, you wouldn't have been able to let it go and I just...I wanted you to be all right. I kept thinking you would have never been there if it wasn't for me, you'd have stayed home and been safe and I-"
Rose was sobbing and Jimmy was holding her and really, this was just altogether too much.
Rose was saying that the man, the man from the war, was Richard. She wanted to speak, she wanted to scream, but it felt like the air had been pushed from her body.
It was the way Richard was looking at her, he...he was believing this. Clara took a deep breath. She reached her hand up and placed it against the warm side of his face. He'd shaved just hours ago, when they'd changed for dinner, but she already felt the beginnings of stubble under her hand. No matter how carefully he shaved, his facial hair always grew so quickly, doubtlessly if not for war accident he could grow a very thick beard...
"Don't, darling. She's...This is insanity, I was never in France, you were never in Belgium."
His hand covered her own. Clara relaxed a bit. It was going to be okay, she was going to absolutely murder Rose the very first time they were alone together, this was unforgivable, this was...
"I was. Mmm. In Belgium."
She wasn't sure how they got back to their room. She wasn't sure about anything. Habit led her to sit on the bench and take her shoes. It's what she always did when they came into their room, so she slipped them off and pushed her stockinged toes into the thick rug. Normally she'd take her jewelry off, start undressing but it felt...
Everything felt wrong.
Richard sat down on the other end of the bench, the mask facing her, his hands twisting together. He was trying to speak, she heard the clicking, she waited. Waiting felt normal, it felt right...
"Your. Breathing troubles. Last winter. Are because you were. Mmm. Gassed," he finally said. There was so much horror in his voice.
"I told you it was from the war. I'm fine," Clara answered. "It wasn't-my father doesn't even know, I didn't tell Jimmy. Because Jimmy, I was practically recovered when I found out he was injured and his injury was so much worse..."
The silence overwhelmed her.
"I feel like I'm going mad," she finally whispered. "I told you there was someone during the war, you said there was a girl in Chicago..."
"They said. You didn't. Exist," Richard answered. "They said. No American. Girl. Was gassed. That you were. Mmm. A hallucination."
It just couldn't be, Clara thought. There was the war. There was the time at the Grenvilles country house, recovering. There were the dark days in Washington. There was coming home and her father forcing Darcy on her and there was the long time it took her to get her feet back underneath her. Then there was going to Chicago and meeting Richard and everything that came after. That was how it had to be, otherwise, everything just collapsed on top of each other and...
Clara closed her eyes. The only thing to do was to take herself out of the situation, to think of it as a problem in an article or a story. She'd kissed other boys, other men, but she and the...she and Richard-her mind corrected and her entire body shivered-he was so bandaged they hadn't kissed. She thought the bandages were from a head wound, but why did she think that? Had Rose said that? Had-
No, she decided. She thought that because head wounds were more common.
And other things. The only other person she'd ever done other things with was Darcy, and that hadn't exactly been of her free choice. Darcy was rougher, didn't mind hurting her, didn't seem to think her enjoyment was worth any effort.
But under the table, even as terrified and, well, insane as they were both being...that man was careful with how he touched her.
"Your voice," Richard continued. "The gas."
Yes, true, Clara thought. Rose's father had teased her as she recuperated, told her he'd know she was well when she stopped sounding like a frog.
"Clara. What happened?"
She sighed. "It was the end of the war. We were so far away from the line. My unit was setting up a communications station at the hospital. Then the line moved. We were under attack. The telegraph line was cut. We had to get help so I...I fixed it. Jimmy, he had taught me to hotwire automobiles back in high school. Rose, she tied a scarf around my head so that the...so the sharpshooters wouldn't see me, but then the gas came and I lay out there until help came."
He didn't speak. Please speak, she thought.
"Sometimes. When I listen. To you telling Tommy. About the mermaids. It felt like. I knew the stories. Forever."
It was the best way she knew to comfort herself. Even in the bad times, when her mother wouldn't get out of bed for days and days, Clara would climb under the covers and her mother would smooth her hair back off her face and tell her about the mermaids that lived in Atlantis.
In her delirium, not long after she woke up to find her eyes bandaged, she'd heard Rose working on the man next to her. Later, Rose told her they'd been put together because their eyes were bandaged so they couldn't see each other. At some point, Rose had given her bottles of morphine and told her it was going to be bad. When the shelling started she'd heard the man try to speak. She'd gotten over to his gurney, had thought he needed morphine, but he'd grabbed her hand. And that's how it started, she could sense how scared he was, she knew how scared she was, and so she told her mother's stories.
That day in Chicago, she'd shaken his hand and then clung too long, was it because it felt familiar? How could she know, how could she be sure?
"How could we not have known?" Clara finally said. "If it's true, if this is true, how could we not have known?"
He reached for her hand, not holding it so much as measuring it, and she knew he was trying to reconcile his own thoughts.
"They said. You didn't. Exist," Richard said again.
Who, who said that, Clara wondered, but her mind wouldn't stay still. "We've been married a year, we've known each other two, or maybe longer, I..."
How could she say that? How could she ever again think, I met my husband when I went to visit Jimmy in Chicago again because she didn't meet him, she...
"How we can we know so little about each other that this was there and we didn't know?"
"You didn't. Tell me. About Belgium," he said slowly.
No, no, she hadn't. Because it wasn't really anything, she was fine, it was nothing like being in the trenches or what he endured. And she hadn't because...
She thought of last Memorial Day, how he was so certain she wasn't understanding his meaning when he told her he'd scalped Jackson Parkhurst.
Last Memorial Day, the idea of it scraped her consciousness, because there was something more, something she'd always meant to find out...
Because, she let herself put into words for the first time, he needed her to be innocent. Untouched by the real horrors of war, by their lives, because if someone still whole could love him then he was salvageable...
But she wasn't. She was never the innocent princess in the tower everyone wanted her to be. And if she wasn't whole, if she couldn't make him feel whole, then was it her he really loved?
"They said. You weren't real," Richard said again. "There was so. Much morphine. And I didn't always. Know. Where I was. What was happening."
She hadn't told him about the horrors of visiting Jimmy at Walter Reed after some of his battlefield surgeries were redone. Waiting to see if it was enough to save his leg. Seeing what the other patients endured. What she had seen let her presume what Richard's recovery had been like.
"It's. Not an. Excuse. It shouldn't have. Happened."
"No," Clara answered. "It shouldn't have. Old men in palaces and cabinet rooms picked us up and sent us crashing to the floor like they were spoiled children breaking their toys. And now they look at us and ask why we made a mess."
His thumb was moving quickly across her hand. "No. I mean. I shouldn't have done. It. You were hurt. Scared. I..."
She was shivering. It wasn't cold, it was August, she wasn't an idiot, she knew it wasn't cold, but she couldn't stop shivering.
"So were you," Clara said. "We were terrified. We were on morphine. I was still willing."
Always willing, Clara thought. After all, she'd thought about kissing him for so long, and then she had kissed him first. She'd told him to unbutton her dress. Memorial Day she'd refused to let him sacrifice their relationship to save her from...
Save her from...
What had he tried to save her from?
This is my world, Wisconsin, she had told him. It was her world. If he had left her she would have just been alone, she still would have been left to cope with Jimmy and Eli's ridiculous coup against her father, still left to cope with her father's fury, still left to cope with the wonderous world Prohibition had foisted upon her.
"We have so many secrets," she said, barely realizing she was speaking out loud.
After over a year of being together, Clara had learned that there were so many different ways they could be together. Relations weren't always just relations. That night, though, that first night, what she thought was the first night...what was it about that night?
"We have secrets, but you always keep your promises," Clara said, slowly, still trying to piece together the puzzle in her mind. "It's one of the things I love about you, it's one of the things that makes me feel safe."
God, she was so cold. It felt like her feet were encased in ice. Her stocking frayed from the friction as she moved her foot against the rug.
"Why didn't you keep your promise that day?" She stopped, still thinking. "You weren't with Jimmy, I was with Jimmy. He didn't know where you were either."
Angela. She'd lain next to Angela on the beach, watched Tommy play, and fretted. "I'm sure he's fine," Angela had told her. Oh, Angela, Clara thought.
"You didn't hug me back when you finally came. You...your hair was too long. You hadn't been going to the barber. You couldn't look at me. Your mask..."
Something had held her back for over a year. The questions she'd started to form had been pushed back by Richard telling her about Jackson Parkhurst, by telling him she loved him, by going to bed for the first time...
Well.
She took a deep breath. "You promised to meet me. Why weren't you there?"
He wasn't looking at her now, she realized. It was almost like he was folding back in on himself, darting glances at her the way he did when they first met, or whenever the darkness threatened to overtake him...
The realization felt like falling. "Richard, I...I don't think we mean to have secrets. Not real ones, not about us but we do and we...we can't. We can't because soon there will be more secrets than there is truth and we won't survive it."
There was such fear in his face. It was like when he got her from Margaret's house, when they stood together and she wanted to kiss him before he told her whatever awful thing he had to tell her, because she wanted one last moment of before. She was seized with the desire to tell him it didn't matter. Not any of it. Not Belgium, nor why he hadn't met her on Memorial Day, any of it, they should just climb into bed and forget it all, go back to the Richard and Clara of that morning, naked and entwined and...
"I try. Clara. I try to fight. The darkness. But the darkness. Was winning."
She knew damn well she'd never know exactly why Charlie came to get her husband. At first, she'd wanted to scream. Could they not have one night to be left alone? They couldn't go away from each other, not like this, not when...
But at the same time, she needed air. She needed to breathe. She needed to get warm. Her mind was twisting into knots and she was sick with worry that she'd never unknot them.
Richard had kissed her goodbye behind the Ritz and promised to see her on Memorial Day. Then he had made plans to end his life.
When the wave of nausea hit her she just managed to get to the bathroom. The ridiculous bathroom with the chaise lounge and blanket where the night before...Afterward, Clara didn't even try to get up, she just crawled across the floor and pulled the blanket over her, desperate to push away the cold.
He had lain on a bed of leaves and looked up at barren branches.
On Memorial Day.
What stopped him? Not the realization that she needed him.
But a dog.
As he told her she was still. She was so still she'd thought she'd never move again. Now, though, now she laughed.
A black dog with scars on his face.
Of course, on her mother's side, she was a Jeffries. The genealogies her mother had done for the Daughters of the American Revolution were back on the bookshelves at home. And her grandfather Thompson, he'd been barely off the boat from Ireland when he married her grandmother.
But Grandmother Eleanor. Piney trash. Clara had heard the whispers throughout her childhood, from those who had lived in Atlantic City a long time. Pretty Eleanor had come from one of the mostly abandoned towns deep in the Pine Barrens.
Eleanor was also a storyteller. Living with Ethan Thompson, it would be a necessity, Clara thought. Mabel had filled Clara's head with stories of Atlantis and mermaids, but when Eleanor kept Clara she told her about life among the pines. All the mysterious goings-on and unexplained happenings in the woods. Clara's favorite story had been that of the doomed love between the Golden-Haired Girl and the Jersey Devil. But Eleanor had told all of them. Including the story of the black dog.
Clara tasted blood, realized her teeth were chattering and she'd bitten her tongue hard enough to draw blood. It dripped down her throat, making the nausea worse.
The black dog, who roamed the forests, trying to save people to make up for the fact he hadn't been able to save his young owner when their ship was attacked off the Jersey coast.
Someone was laughing. Oh, it was her. It was...it was insanity. Richard had been under the table with her and he had been laying in a bed of leaves staring up at barren trees while mere miles away she'd sat in the late spring sun and looked at the trees in full foliage. He was saved by a black dog and Piney bootleggers and not her because she was so terribly easy to leave.
She'd played with Jimmy in the park and she'd eaten pie and she'd gone to Rhode Island to see Rose and to escape from Jimmy's stupid fucking plan and her father's fury and...
Things had to mean something, everyone had to follow the plot where it led, or else it was all madness, else she was mad.
It was a cursed fact of life that Atlantic City was a necessary convenience to keep his city floating in quality booze, and therefore his pockets flush with cash. But did Thompson have to make it so needlessly difficult to keep their symbiotic relationship in working order?
The moment Peter passed him the note he knew it would be Matheson, who apparently felt slighted he hadn't been invited to Saratoga. Was he supposed to invite every stray dog his allies took up with? And of course, he had warned Thompson. Explicitly. Had the man listened? Of course not And even now, instead of dealing with business, he was closeted with Ivy Wells.
That was one plan perhaps not turning out as Arnold meant. Ivy was meant as a means of control over Thompson, not something to make the man lose what was left of his sense of restraint.
"Well doesn't she look like a lamb ready for the slaughter," Ivy said.
Arnold was careful not to let himself be seen, feeling he'd learn more if he just watched for a moment more. What he wasn't expecting to see was Clara Harrow shoeless in shredded stockings, still in her dinner dress. The woman was shaking like she was cold, but even in the country, the air was muggy and warm on this August night.
"James?" What little color Thompson had drained from his face when he saw his daughter, and then he was on his feet and wrapping his dinner jacket around her.
"Clara, is it James?" Thompson repeated.
It was important to savor the delicate little ironies of life. If Thompson was capable of loving anything beyond money, power, and himself, it was the two children who tried to organize his downfall. In his panic over Clara's demeanor, over the idea that only the loss of Darmody could do that to her, Thompson didn't even stop to realize there hadn't been time enough for something to happen to the men and word to get back to Clara.
Even from his perch, Arnold could hear something odd in Clara's voice. "Jimmy? I think he knew, I think he sent Richard to me because maybe he thought I could help, but Jimmy was there, Jimmy knows I can't help..."
Perhaps the girl had gotten a hold of Charlie's little array of samples. Certainly, Darmody couldn't stay out of them. He was deep in the packets almost as much as he was deep in Clara's little noble friend.
"He saw the dog, Daddy," Clara said. There was something like wonder in her voice. "He saw the dog, and the trees were bare."
Arnold could just make out Clara pulling the beads from her dress, seemingly without realizing. Thompson motioned at Ivy, who quietly slipped out of the room
Draper Daugherty was in the hallway. So at least someone's night had just improved, Arnold thought.
"I never thought it could be real? Grandma Eleanor, she told me, but it was like Bible Stories at church, or Santa. Things we pretended were real because it made people happy, because it was more fun to believe. But he saw the dog, and what if there's more? What if it's us, Daddy? Because it wasn't just the Devil, the Jersey Devil had a child. So it could be Jimmy, but it could be me."
Arnold had heard the rumors about Thompson's first wife, Clara's mother. But the stories were almost too macabre to believe. However, Clara's current grasp on reality seemed worryingly slim. Perhaps Thompson wasn't all that wrong when he sent the girl off to the asylum the previous summer.
"Clara, none of that is real," Thompson said, with worry evident in his tone.
"What is real? The Ritz? The house on Ventor? The woods? Belgium? I keep my thoughts so orderly, I don't allow myself to not be okay, but then last summer everything was changing so fast, when I got out of that place everything was jumbled and I saw everything differently, and now I'm not sure what's real or what's not..."
Clara stopped talking for a moment, and more beads were plucked from her dress.
"Mother was home, wasn't she? For both of us? Since then we...That's, that's one of the first things I noticed about Richard. One of the first things I thought I noticed, was that being with him felt like being home," Clara said, so softly Arnold he could barely make out the words.
"You love him?" Nucky asked.
"Why do you think I married him? But maybe that doesn't matter," Clara said, speaking much too quickly, "because, in the end, I'm so easy to leave. Why, Daddy? Why am I so easy to leave?"
"Clara, Mabel... It was not because of you. Something you took great pleasure in telling me last year."
"I didn't go straight home. I never told you, but I went to the park with Jimmy, and last summer, I was so tired of the conspiracy, you wouldn't listen to me, Jimmy wouldn't, Uncle Eli wouldn't. I just wanted to be with my friends and not think about it, I didn't see. And I love him, how could I not see?"
Ah, well, Harrow did seem the type Slightly worrisome, but the man had Clara and the Darmody boy to take care of now. That should lessen the odds. Still, he'd up the insurance and make sure there were no suicide provisions on the policies.
There was actually fear on Thompson's face as he regarded his daughter.
"Clara, you were not responsible for Mabel. You were right last summer. I was her husband, I should have seen. And Harrow, there's no way of knowing what the war did to him."
Clara laughed. A strange sound considering the circumstances.
Rothstein made a rare mistake and at the noise, both Clara and Nucky turned to look towards his hiding spot. Ah well, time to reveal himself.
Her father's words rang in her ears. He had failed to save her mother. He hadn't paid attention. He had refused to see what was right before him. He was Mother's husband, he should have seen, he could have saved her...
She could do better. She could. She was no longer a helpless child. She was no longer under any misapprehensions. She'd have to make changes, of course. All of her foolishness about being watched from the walls must end. She'd tried hard all year not to let Richard see, but she knew it had bled through sometimes. Same with her fear when it came to his work. She'd just have to do better.
She must do better.
As she passed by Jimmy's door she heard movement inside. Were they already back? She tapped on the door and opened it.
Oh dear god, she thought, and another wave of guilt washed over her. Tommy was sitting on the floor, rocking with his cow, his face red and swollen.
"Tommy?"
He looked up at her angrily but just kept rocking.
"Mama didn't leave me like this," he finally said. "Nobody was here and Daddy said stay in the room."
Clara sank to the floor next to him and started patting his back.
"Don't! You aren't my mama!" Tommy said again, curled around his cow. "You made me go to that old house and you were always at parties. I had to ride in the truck and it wasn't fun, Clara, and the attic is scary."
Clara pulled her hand back. He was right. Oh goodness, she was making an utter mess of everything. She didn't know how to do this. She didn't know how to toe the line Rothstein kept redrawing in the sand for her, she didn't know how to raise Tommy like Angela would have done, she didn't know how to save Jimmy from himself or even how to save her husband. She wanted to cry in someone's arms and have them make everything better.
"Tommy, I'm so sorry," she finally said.
Tommy's arms were still wrapped around his legs. "I want to go home," he whispered.
Oh god, those nights in the Ritz, when all she'd wanted was to go back to the house on Ventor. "Daddy sold the house, baby. We don't live in Atlantic City."
Tommy looked up at her then. "I want to go to our home."
Clara blinked away tears. So did she. "Okay, baby. That we can do."
At some point, Tommy had relented and crawled in her lap. He had cried and asked for the mermaid stories. For the first time in her life couldn't remember them so she told him the story of the Jersey Devil. She sat on the floor of Jimmy's room with Tommy leaning against her and decided it was all just a matter of making choices. She could do this. She had to do this.
She just needed a plan.
"They are in here, Rich," Jimmy said as the door creaked open.
Clara blinked against the light. Had she fallen asleep? She wasn't sure. Richard was behind Jimmy, both alive and apparently no worse for the wear.
"Tommy needs to go home," Clara said, not yet ready to hear anything from Jimmy.
"Okay, Rothstein wants us all to go back to the city anyway."
It was an effort, keeping her face placid, not screaming that she didn't give a fuck what Rothstein wanted, that whatever nonsense Matheson (it had to be Matheson, her father was doing an absolutely bang-up job handling that situation, Clara thought) was doing that required them to risk their lives now wasn't why they needed to go back to the city.
"Lovely, that's all settled then," Clara said with a smile. "We will come up with better arrangements for Tommy next time. I won't let this happen again."
She didn't miss the look Jimmy and Richard shared. What, they expected her to be tear-stained and raving? That's exactly what she wanted to do. She wanted to wake up tomorrow and find all of this was a dream, that her own sense of reality hadn't been unalterably twisted, that she wasn't going to spend the rest of her life frantic over what would happen when Richard left her sight.
But what had a childhood on the Boardwalk taught her? That she had to play the hand she was dealt, and that she was playing to win.
Her best friend was a liar who couldn't be trusted, Jimmy was a spinning top skittering drunkenly across the floor, and Richard's darkness threatened to take him from her. She and Jimmy were as responsible for the bullets that shattered Angela's brain as the Butcher was. Gillian was a specter haunting Tommy's future.
She wasn't going to be left alone again. Tommy was never going to come home and find Richard's blood sliding across the bathroom tile. Her father had failed to deal with the reality of her mother, failed to protect her.
She would not make her father's mistakes.
An exorcism, Clara thought. They had to perform one of their own devising. Belgium. What led him to her door on Memorial Day. They had to move on from their pasts, shared and otherwise.
"Here's what I thought about, while you were gone," Clara said as they walked into their room, knowing she had to get it out, knowing she had to say it. "I was scared and I was in danger and you were there. And perhaps it wasn't our finest moment and maybe I'll never truly understand how we didn't realize sooner, how somehow you sat down next to Jimmy in Chicago and that meant you came back into my life, but maybe that's because it doesn't matter. Maybe it's because we were meant to find each other, or maybe life is just a series of chances and the dice rolled in our favor this once."
He looked at her, then, and she saw he was searching for hope. Searching for the idea that they could overcome this. She could offer that. And the words she said, there were in truth in them and there were things she wanted to be true and there were things he needed to hear. And somehow, she convinced herself, they all added up closer to the real than whatever the actual truth would have been anyhow.
"Memorial Day, Clara. I thought. You'd be better off. I thought things. Could never get improve. I thought..."
"Last summer was hell. And so you went into the woods and strange things seem to happen to us in the woods. But we aren't in the woods now. We aren't even the same people who were in the woods, in Belgium or in the Pineys."
"The woods. Are for. Living," he responded and Clara thanked whatever Piney magic sent that illusion to him.
"They are. Life is for living. We are what we are and the world is what it is and we just have to muddle through together."
The only way out was through. They had to put this behind them. Her fingers were experienced now at the art of undoing his tie, of carefully reaching for the collar pin underneath before she pulled it loose.
He seemed to understand, turning her and undoing the row of buttons down her back. She shimmied out of her garter belt as behind her he took off his mask. Clothes landed where they fell as they made their way to bed, as they undressed each other with practiced moves. Tonight was not a night for trying new things. Clara reveled in the familiarity of it all, that nothing was a surprise or caught her unawares. When she felt his breath on her neck she knew his fingers would slide down her back, sending shivers through her. When she leaned back and nipped at his ear he ground up against her just like she knew he would.
But at the same time, she couldn't make her mind stop, suddenly thinking of clumsy fingers sliding under a tattered nightdress when she wanted to feel his hand on her now. They fell into the bed and his mouth traveled down her body as it always did (lick, graze of teeth, press of lips, lick, graze of teeth, press of lips...) and she felt like she was back in the Ritz, happy and in love and lost in the passion of the moment...
He had come to her from the woods, he had tasted of smoke and salt and iron, and oh god, was it the rifle? Had she actually tasted the rifle? Now she couldn't even feel what he was doing to her, because she couldn't breathe, she couldn't, oh god please don't let her be sick again, it felt like everything was closing in on her, she had to sit up...
There was confusion in his eye when she pushed him off her, and no, that's not what she wanted, she had to do this right, she had to make everything okay because the alternative was more than she could even think about. Luckily her hand knew what to do even when her mind did not and his forehead was pressing against hers and his hand was between her legs even as her hand kept working against him and it was both thrilling and embarrassing that she could hear her own wetness as he touched her and it felt nice, it felt lovely, it always did but still, her mind wouldn't stop.
The more she tried to not think the more she thought. And she didn't want to think of anything, much less about her mother or what her father could have done or how Jimmy knew, Jimmy knew, and took Richard to kill Jackson Parkhurst and that's when she should have known Jimmy shouldn't be trusted to handle anything, ever. Jimmy just rolled the dice that taking Richard out to kill, feeding him a steak, sending him to her would be enough to fix things and what if it hadn't been? Can't be trusted, can't be trusted, can't be trusted...
But how could she trust Richard when his mind could tell him at any moment they were all better off without him? And she shouldn't be thinking about this now, because what she was supposed to be doing was making things okay and she wasn't, she was going to ruin everything, she had to make everything better or else she could lose everything.
He was pulling away from her and she froze with terror, worried he knew what she was thinking, but no. He was close and then she knew she needed more, she had to find some way to make her mind stop.
"More," she said, and her voice was breathless and deep. And that was good, because it should be. She climbed up in his lap, maybe if she was on top, maybe if she was doing the work it would be enough, she could just feel and his hand was on her hip and she always got excited and went too quickly so for a moment it hurt a smidge but then she was moving and it was okay, she could do this. But then she was filled with worry. Was she doing it right? Was he enjoying it? Because if she was doing it right why was she still thinking?
She was so deep in her mind that for a moment she didn't realize what he was doing until he had flipped her onto her back and one hand was behind her head and her hair was being pulled. She meant to tell him, she knew he wasn't doing it on purpose, but then she felt it. The sensation of letting go. She pulled her head up a little and the pain of her hair pulling washed over her just like the delicious feeling of him moving within her did. When his other hand started kneading her breast she finally felt the familiar coiling in her belly, like all feeling in her body was gathering in one place.
"Please, more, please," she whined and he was pushing into her hard enough that she was sliding across the bed and had to dig her feet into the sheets to keep from moving more and he lowered his mouth to hers and she wasn't sure if they were kissing or just breathing each other's air but in the end, it didn't matter.
Because in the end, for a few moments, Clara finally escaped thought.
Anyone watching saw the image of a man Nucky Thompson purposefully presented to the world. Well, if perhaps not tastefully, dressed. Carefully groomed. Standing on the balcony of the Saratoga racetrack watching a parade of intentionally bred two-year-old racehorses. Enjoying the fruits of the labor that brought him here on this beautiful morning.
No one was close enough to see the slight shake in his hand as he rolled his lighter between his fingers. He always had considered his sharp focus one of his few virtues. He would never have achieved all he had without his ability to focus on the goals that matter. Without keeping his eye on the main event and ignoring anything happening on the sidelines. His fingers hesitated a little around the lighter. Perhaps, Nucky thought, he sometimes had difficulty discerning the difference.
Mabel. Clara. Even Jimmy. He exhaled slowly. He supposed he could add Margaret and the children to the list.
Has it ever occurred to you that you've recreated our family with three substitutes!" Clara had hissed at him in the living room of James's beach house, the day he went to pretend to make peace with James.
The day he made his plans to have Clara sent to Ferncliff. To have James and Harrow killed. He thought it was the right thing. Save Clara from her foolish decisions. Punish James for his treachery. Remove Harrow from the equation. He thought Clara would recover, move on, live the life he wanted for her.
A mistake, he thought. He had thought Harrow was simply Clara's chosen rebellion. Not until last night had he honestly understood Clara loved him. And that perhaps he had dealt his daughter lasting damage. He had seen the truth of what Harrow was, in what little time he had spent thinking about the man. What made a fine basis for a soldier didn't make a fine basis for a husband. Who would have ever dreamed the man would move on Clara?
Nucky sighed a little. Even he had to admit the odds favored the notion that Clara was the aggressor.
So many of his plans had come to ruin. Last night Matheson had made his own declaration of independence. Humiliated him. And who could he turn to, now, to be his muscle? Doyle? Owen? They weren't James or Eli. Or even Harrow. Chalky was, but Chalky cost and had his own agenda.
A long inhale of his cigarette helped settle him. Margaret's little ploy with the money had been devastating, but he'd made it back. Still didn't leave him enough of a cushion. He had to right the gameboard. What he needed, what he'd always needed, was someone capable and loyal.
"Harrow," Nucky said lowly as he approached Rothstein's group, where the man stood at attention, "walk with me."
It burned him that Harrow waited for Rothstein's nod. More people were arriving at the track. Clara and Tommy were walking down on the green among the spectators, Tommy clutching that ridiculous cow he seemed to always have.
"I had always anticipated having this sort of conversation before Clara married, but the way you two went about it robbed me of that opportunity," Nucky paused. Typically he could read people's faces but Jesus Christ, this was impossible. "We spoke of this a little on the golf course."
"I'd never. Let anything happen. To her," Harrow said at such an agonizingly slow pace Nucky felt the minutes melt from his lifespan.
"I'm going to wager an educated guess that it's not James supporting and raising that boy," Nucky said, gesturing to Clara and Tommy below them. "Do you know what James never understood?"
Harrow didn't speak. Nucky wondered if it was loyalty to James or just the needed warming up period keeping him silent?
"Once you have people who depend on you, your life is no longer yours to dispose of as you see fit. Remember that the next time your heroic nature leads you to rush into a burning building."
"I've never," Harrow replied haltingly.
"Metaphorically speaking," Nucky responded with a glare. "You came into my house and you took my daughter. You've gone along with her taking on the Darmody boy. So what you've given up is your chance to go down in a blaze of glory. Clara's been through enough. You don't get to leave her sobbing at your graveside with Tommy clinging to her."
Life was a funny thing, Nucky thought as he walked away. Clara fought so hard to marry whom she chose and yet found someone far more potentially useful than Darcy Blaine would have ever been.
Now it was just a matter of biding his time until they came home.
Tommy was excited about seeing the horses, but he was far more excited about getting his present later. That's the first thing Richard had said to her that morning, that if they were leaving he had to keep his promise to Tommy. That was good, Clara decided. Normal. Richard kept his promises, and as long as he did, then everything could be okay. She just had to be vigilant.
"I seen better looking broads hanging out the windows at Bellevue, Princess," Charlie said from behind her.
Normally this was set her fuming, but he was right. No amount of blush or lipstick helped her today.
"Must you?" she finally asked.
"Still mad your friend is slumming it with Darmody?" Charlie asked lighting a cigarette.
Clara wanted to laugh. She'd practically forgotten that in the wake of everything else.
"Sure," she said, accepting a cigarette. "What's eating you?"
"That fucking Dennis Malley," Charlie finally said. "God damn Matheson, too. Fucking Irish cocksuckers. No offense."
Clara nodded. Did Dennis have designs on Meyer, she wondered. Good. Let Rose's husband be as awful as she deserved.
"My father involved?"Clara asked softly, hoping Charlie would answer her.
"Matheson made it clear last night he ain't working with your father no more," Charlie finally said. "Don't tell nobody you heard it from me."
"I would never," Clara promised.
Charlie laughed. "Princess, you'd shove me in front of a crosstown bus to get Harrow out of a jam. Somedays Darmody."
"Well, I wouldn't push you in front of a bus for anyone else. Anyway, you'd feed me to animals in the zoo if it would help Meyer."
"Not for anybody else. Well, maybe Benny," Charlie said with a smirk.
Nucky's words rang in Richard's ears as he walked towards Tommy and Clara. Luciano was talking to her. Clara was laughing. That was good, even if he wished it wasn't Luciano making her laugh.
Last night had been...he'd never meant to tell her. He knew about her mother. That night in the hotel, when she'd told him about her nightmares...some part of him knew he should walk away from her. That his darkness threatened her. But how could he, when she smiled when saw him?
She smiled now when she noticed him and lifted her hand. Like she had in Chicago. On the day he thought they'd met. It still seemed outside the realm of possibility that the girl from the hospital was real. That she was Clara. How could we not have known she had asked, but how could he burden her with stories about the war? He didn't want those memories in his head, much less in hers. He'd wanted to protect her, not realizing she already had her own memories.
Tommy was excited about his present, even if he asked to make sure they were going home that afternoon. Clara didn't ask if Jimmy was coming.
"Cows," Tommy cried excitedly. "Look, Mr. Cow, cows!"
When Tommy got close to the cows he froze. "Are they going to eat me?" he asked so quietly Richard barely heard him.
"Cows. Eat grass. And oats," Richard answered as Tommy's free hand entwined in his.
"These are very large cows," Clara said.
"Holsteins," Richard answered her. Very healthy cows, he thought. Well taken care of, even if their main job was entertaining visitors.
"You folks ready to ride?" the man in charge of the cows asked.
Tommy's hand tugged at his pants. He stopped to pick him up.
"We don't. Have to."
"I want to," Tommy answered, lower lip trembling.
"Well, we'll be with you," Clara said. "Richard won't let the cows hurt you."
He put Tommy in the cart before helping Clara up.
The reigns felt nice in his hands. Familiar. The cows were far too big to move at anything but the slowest piece.
"See, Mr. Cow, these are nice cows," Tommy pattered to his toy. "They are taking us for a ride."
"This was a good idea. He loves it," Clara said. "A nice end to a difficult summer, and now we go home."
Yes. Now he was going to take them home.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm so nervous I've run off all my readers with my last chapter! I hope the reveal that Clara and Richard were together in Europe paid off the way I wanted it too.
So when I started playing with the idea of this story, and then had the idea of putting Clara with Richard, what held me back was his suicide attempt. Clara was going to be Mabel's daughter, how would she cope with that? And then I realized, that was the story.
As far the dog and the men and the leafless woods, well. Richard doesn't see leaves when he looks up, even though he's in the woods on Memorial Day. Boardwalk Empire has so much magical realism. This story needed some. Atheist Clara believing in these stories because of Nucky's mother made sense to me.
I'll put some source stuff up on tumblr. THANK YOU FOR STILL READING.