Author's Note: From my stats, I see many people are following my story, which makes me so happy! I'd love to hear from you, including how you think this version of season two is going to end. More notes about this chapter are at the end. I've played with the timeline of Fight of the Century and Georgia Peaches in this chapter.

The sound of sobbing woke Margaret up with a start. Emily, she thought, as she ran to her children's room, not bothering to pick up her robe. She opened the door, but Emily was sleeping like a princess, still tucked in under the covers. Teddy's covers were half on the floor, and he was on his stomach, but he was also well and sound asleep. She stepped back into the hallway and realized the sound was coming from downstairs. Katy, Margaret thought with a sigh, doubtlessly being dramatic about Owen being away. She went back and put on her robe and slippers before submitting to her duty and going downstairs. Sometimes, she thought, it was doubtful if live-in servants were worth the trouble.

Margaret followed the sound into the conservatory, but instead of seeing Katy's dark hair and working girl robe, she saw a blonde in a green party dress curled against the back wall with her face in her hands.

"Clara," Margaret called, unsure if she should go to her or not. Since they'd traveled together to New York to obtain family limitation devices, Clara had been friendlier. However, she still had never confided in Margaret, carefully protecting her inner life behind a wall of polite manners. Clara was more her father's daughter than she'd like to admit, Margaret thought.

Even now, when Margaret knew Clara's heart must be broken by the turmoil of the people she loved-The Tin Man, Jimmy Darmody, even her uncle-attempting to have her father killed, Clara's reserve remained intact, although the life seemed to have gone out of her. Clara drifted around the house politely, spending time with Emily who was still battling a fever, making small talk at the table. Even when her grandfather died, Clara had treated attending the funeral as no more than another outing she endured as Enoch Thompson's daughter.

But now, after not seeing Clara since she left for her grandfather's funeral that morning, she lay in a heap in an expensive dress. Clara had only been Teddy's age when her mother died, Margaret recalled. The only maternal figures she'd had since were Gillian Darmody and Nucky's companions. Margaret shuddered at the idea of any girl being mothered by the likes of Lucy and remembered how badly she'd ached for her mother during her first heartbreak.

"There, there. Whatever is the matter?" Margaret slid onto the floor next to her and patted her back, in the same manner she used when Teddy or Emily cried.

Some small part of Clara was mortified that Margaret was seeing her lose control like this, but the weight on her chest was so heavy and the storm of emotions-guilt, anger, remorse, grief- inside of her raged beyond her ability to control it.

"Tell me," Margaret said.

Clara rubbed her eyes and tried to take a deep enough breath to stop the sobs. How could she explain it? How could she explain that Jimmy was her oldest love, that she couldn't remember life without him, that his betrayal felt like a knife through her heart?

How could she explain she lay in bed at night and missed the press of Richard's body against hers, the way that when he would wake up he inevitably would pull her closer, or the feel of his stubble against her forehead? How could she explain she missed the way he always remembered exactly how she liked her coffee, or the way he listened to her talk without making her feel foolish, or the way he could be around her while she wrote, even though she couldn't bear for anyone else to be near her while she worked?

How could she explain that Richard felt like home, and nothing had felt like home since her mother died?

How could she put into words the feeling when she thought he had twisted her desire for him into something for Jimmy's stupid fucking coup, a way to make her almost complicit in the plot against her father? How could she explain the relief and new flash of anger when she found out Jimmy had lied to Richard?

And yet, when the shape of her father's new plan against Jimmy made itself clear to her, one that would sink Atlantic City, she ran without thought to tell him.

How could she explain what she felt when she saw that girl in Richard's lap? That, after all, Richard wasn't any different from any other man in Atlantic City.

And how was she supposed to explain the feeling when she saw Charlie Luciano, like someone had set a stick of dynamite in front of her and she looked down and realized she had a match in her hand? She wanted to hurt everyone at that moment, and seeing Charlie felt like a deliverance. So she lit the match.

Unfortunately, kissing him felt like kissing a hoover, something she told him on the car ride back to Margaret's. He told her he hadn't any other complaints, but then had handed her his handkerchief and tried to make her laugh by telling her stories of his sexual escapades.

She was still crying. At the moment, she felt like she was never going to stop.

"Is this your first heartbreak?" Margaret asked, trying to ease Clara into talking.

"No. During the war, there was a man. I...we didn't have long, and then we were separated. And I just let it happen." Clara felt that older pain resurface, pain she had worked hard to push down. "Afterwards, I just felt numb. I felt numb for so long."

That horrible year in D.C., when dinosaur bones were her only friends. When Jimmy's pain and anger were so deep as he lay at Walter Reed that he never noticed she was drowning. It's why she accepted her father's plea she marry Darcy Blaine, she realized. She didn't have enough energy, enough fight, to say no.

But she had written her way out of it. The pirate novel she never showed anyone. Terrible, but it made her break out of her melancholy, and then she just kept writing. She started getting jobs. It broke through the ice enough to make her fight her father openly when Jimmy was banished, and she plotted to find out where Jimmy was.

By the time she met Richard, she felt alive again.

Margaret got up when Clara stopped speaking and returned with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Clara poured the liquor down her throat, enjoying the burn.

"For me, it was the solicitor's son. Ah, but he was beautiful, and when I realized he wanted me," Margaret began. When she finished the story she wiped tears from her eyes. "I never felt like that again, I never thought I was going to, until..."

Clara blinked and looked over at her. She wouldn't have thought Margaret felt like that. "Until my father?"

Margaret startled, as she had been thinking about how she hadn't felt like that again until Owen Sleater set his mouth on hers. She could hardly say that to Enoch's daughter.

"Of course," Margaret poured more whiskey into Clara's glass. "Do you want to talk about Mr. Harrow?"

Yes, Clara thought. I want someone to know how badly I hurt, why it's so bad. But I can't tell you, I can't tell anyone, because everyone I love is against someone else I love and I feel like I'm on a lifeboat in the middle of a storm and I'm tired of rowing.

Clara shook her head no, so Margaret kept refilling Clara's glass as she told her stories about Ireland.

The sound of running feet and hushed, urgent voices woke Clara up from a dreamless sleep. The first thing she was aware of was that her head felt like the ocean itself was slamming against it. Her throat felt like she had swallowed sandpaper, and her limbs felt heavy and odd. She sat up, unsure where she was. Not her bedroom, not Richard's, not the guest room at Margaret's. Margaret, she thought. Margaret had listened to her cry, poured a bottle of whiskey down Clara's throat, and then dragged Clara upstairs to her own bed. Clara stretched, her green party dress and stockings feeling dirty and tawdry after sleeping in them.

The noises from the hall penetrated her hungover haze. Something's wrong, she thought, and scenarios ranging from something happening to Jimmy and Richard to her father's steamship sinking flashed through her mind. She stumbled out into the hallway. The young brunette maid stood uncertainly near the top of the stairs like she wasn't sure what she should be doing.

"Katy?" Clara asked after she searched for her name.

"Oh, miss," Katy said. "It's Emily. She can't move her legs."

Clara raced as best she could on rubbery legs to the children's bedroom. Dr. Surran stood over Emily's bed, and the look of terror on Margaret's face ripped at her heart.

"We need to get her to the hospital immediately," the doctor said in a carefully low voice that scared Clara more than it would have if he were screaming.

"I can't drive," Margaret said helplessly.

"I can," Clara replied. The doctor and Margaret turned to stare at her, in her slept-in party dress and curls tumbling from the pins she hadn't removed the night before. "Give me five minutes."

Once more, Clara unclipped her stockings while she ran. She grabbed the first skirt and blouse she laid her hands on and clean underthings before running into the bathroom so she could at least throw water on her face.

As she dashed from her room, she realized the Buick was still at the Ritz. She'd left it there and walked to the Garden Pier to find Jimmy and Richard (what a marvelous decision that turned out to be, she thought, and felt a flicker of pain), and when that turned into a catastrophe, Charlie Luciano had driven her back to Margaret's house. She hadn't thought of the Buick again until now.

"Katy, did my father or Mr. Sleater leave the keys to the Rolls?" Clara asked as she ran for the stairs. Katy nodded.

Eddie Kessler had taught Jimmy and her to drive back in 1914, in the Rolls. It had been a harrowing experience. She'd much preferred driving when her father bought a Ford as a backup vehicle. Clara cast off the fear. Something was desperately wrong with Emily. Margaret was terrified. She could manage to drive the blue menace.

Margaret climbed into the back seat before Dr. Surran carefully handed Emily to her mother. Emily started to cry out of fear.

"None of that, Princess Ozma," Clara said from the driver's seat, working to keep her voice light while her head continued to pound and she tried to remember the order to twist the levers to start the car. "We are off on a hot air balloon ride."

Please, Clara thought, please may a good witch intervene on Emily's behalf.

Clara scratched the passenger side running boards terribly as she pulled in to the hospital, where nursing sisters took Emily from her mother. Margaret and Clara were whisked upstairs to a floor labeled "Infectious Disease" and Clara felt a new sickness claw at her. She held Margaret's hand silently, unable to imagine any words that would make any of it okay.

It felt like an eternity and yet all too soon that Dr. Surran came for them, and showed them a glass door where more sisters were holding Emily down. The man's words rushed over Clara, but she understood the incoming horror and her heart broke in a new way.

They thought it was polio, and the only way to test was to put in a needle in the girl's spine. Margaret wasn't even allowed in the room to hold her daughter.

It's why she didn't believe in God, Clara thought. She knew all too well the horrors of a loving father could inflict on his children. But Emily. Emily wasn't even five years old.

As Margaret sank to the floor with the sound of Emily's screams from behind the glass door growing ever louder, Clara sank with her and tried to block the memory of the sounds of another, far away hospital.

"I've never thought of you as a hysterical young woman," Dr. Surran began.

"Good, neither have I," Clara responded, wondering if men were taken away at a certain age and taught that lecturing, hectoring tone they loved to use when speaking with women.

He handed her papers. "You'll need to direct the staff. You have polio in the house. There are certain ways that things must be cleaned, and of course, the children's things will need to be burned."

Burned, Clara thought.

Katy and Teddy both sat on the porch when she arrived back at the house, and she wasn't sure who looked more anxious.

"Is Emily going to die?" Teddy asked.

Clara kneeled down. Although she typically found Teddy to be a distasteful child, she knew the agony of being a child watching their family disappear around them.

"Of course not. The next few days are going to be very hard on everyone, though, but we are going to muddle through. Can you go play in the yard?" Standing up she looked at Katy. "I need to speak to the rest of the staff."

"They're gone, miss. They didn't want to catch..."

Clara stared down at the papers in her hand. The staff was gone, save for Katy. Okay. She walked inside and went to the telephone, calling the front desk of the Ritz. They'd find people willing to help her clean the house, and she'd make sure they were well rewarded for their work and risk.

The phone rang and rang without answer. The chaos of the lobby the night before came back to her and she slowly hung the phone up. The situation must have worsened. A strike? At the height of tourist season? So many people made their money for the year in these months, she knew. She felt sick again but forced herself to focus.

She wanted Richard. She knew in her bones she could call him and he would help her without question, even after the debacle of last night. He would know how to start a fire, he would know how to mix the disinfectant solution. Teddy would be happy to see him. He would make her feel like things might be okay. Clara shook off the feeling. Their relationship was in ruins; she couldn't ask him for help, for comfort.

Jimmy was just as lost to her, calling Angela would endanger Tommy, Eli and June were off-limits for the same reasons. Eddie was vacationing, her father and Owen Sleater in England.

There was no one, Clara thought. No one could help her. She sat on the stairs and read the papers the doctor gave her, trying to make sense of the directions.

"Katy, is there a bathroom downstairs near the kitchen?"

"Yes. A bedroom, too, for the cook."

"Okay, I want you and Teddy to go downstairs and stay. I might have some questions..." Because I've never cleaned anything in my whole stupid life, Clara thought.

Following the instructions, Clara ripped a clean pillowcase apart and tied it around her nose and mouth before she found baskets and started gathering toys. Basket after basket of blocks, books, dolls were dumped into a pile on the back lawn. When she found Emily's favorite doll her resolve buckled and she almost hid the doll away. After all, she thought, what if Emily dies? Margaret would have nothing left that the child loved. But what if the doll was the reason someone else sickened, she thought? It went into the basket.

After the toys and books were all on the yard, she pulled down the drapes and gathered the clothing. It was hot, and the fabric over her nose and mouth stuck terribly to her face and made it difficult to breathe. Clara struggled to get the mattress off the bed, and fought to drag it down the hallway to the stairs.

Clara felt her hair slipping out the haphazard pinning job she had done that morning. Her shoulders ached, her legs were sore from the repeated trips up and down the stairs, and her head felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. She wanted someone to come save her, she realized. Well, she told herself, the cavalry's not coming as she started pulling the mattress off of Emily's bed.

"You are not going to best me," she said to the mattress when it caught on the stair railing and gave it one hard shove that sent the mattress and herself down the stairs, where they landed in a tumble. Clara stood up, took a deep breath, and pulled the mattress to its funeral pyre. And then did it again, with Teddy's mattress.

For the first time in weeks, months, her mind wasn't strumming in fear and pain about Jimmy and his damn coup or her heartbreak over Richard. She was too tired, too scared, too sore to do anything more than just push through. Over and over she read the instructions from the hospital, terrified she would miss something, that someone would sicken because of her lassitude. She found the Lysol and a bucket and mixed it at the recommended strength and began scrubbing the bed frames.

Finally, it was dark outside and she knew it was cool enough to start the fires. Please don't let me burn the house down, Clara thought as she filled bucket after bucket with water. In the garage, she found a can of gasoline and poured some over the children's toys before lighting a match and throwing it.

One side of the fire seemed like it was going to rage out of control. Clara ran back to the greenhouse for a shovel and rake, and tried to beat it back as best she could.

"Miss Clara," a voice called from the house an instant before Clara felt cold water hit her.

"Your hair," Katy explained, "Teddy and I were watching and embers landed on your hair."

Clara turned and saw Teddy watching intently as all his belongings and those of his sick sister burned.

When Clara went back inside Katy had left sandwiches and lemonade on the hall table with a pair of scissors. Clara wanted to kiss her. She sat on the porch and inhaled the food, the first she remembered wanting since the day her father was shot. Then she walked back out to the smoldering remains of the fire and cut off her hair, throwing the burnt trimmings into the pyre. For a moment she heard Richard tell her she'd be pretty with a bob, and felt her worry that she'd twist her hair into knots if she couldn't pin it back. Well, what will be will be, she thought.

Later, she wouldn't remember how long she mixed disinfectant solutions and moved systemically through the house, cleaning as the papers told her. She worked until she was beyond thought, beyond words. At one point she woke up on the stairs, where she had fallen asleep disinfecting the banisters. While cleaning the bathroom she dropped bleach on her skirt and stocking and saw both develop holes and kept going.

Checking the papers again she thought there was nothing else to do. Finally, she went to take a shower. Staring at herself in the mirror she saw the bruises and cuts from where she battled with furniture and the very uneven haircut that resulted from cutting off her burned hair. Her hands were red and raw from the cleaning products. She peeled her clothing from her body, carefully wrapping them in the face-covering she was going to enjoy burning, and stepped under the water.

Her kimono was still at Richard's. Clara assumed she'd never see it again, and missed it like an old friend. She put on a robe that scratched her bare skin and lay down on the bed. Sleep overcame her before she even pulled the covers over her. A loud boom shook her awake a few hours later. She flew down the stairs, afraid somehow the fires had reignited.

Another boom felt like it shook the house.

"It's just fireworks, ma'am," Katy said from the side of the porch.

Clara's legs went out from underneath her and she slid to the porch floor. July fourth, she thought. Of course.

"How's Teddy? How are you?" Clara asked.

"Teddy's asleep in the cook's room. I'm done with the laundry, and I made more sandwiches."

Thank you, Clara thought. I'm starving. "But how are you?"

Katy smiled shyly. "I miss Owen, Mr. Sleater I mean, and I wish he'd come back."

"You and Sleater?" Clara asked delightedly, thinking of her father's obsession that she was going to fall for the Irishman. How typical of Father, she thought, he never actually saw what's going on in front of him.

Clara leaned back against the porch railing, watched the fireworks, and listened to Katy talk about exactly how wonderful Owen Sleater really was. For a wild moment, she wanted to join in, to tell Katy about all the reasons she loved Richard, but of course, she couldn't. So she let the other girl's words wash over her.

"I could fix it for you," Katy offered. "Your hair."

And so Clara Thompson's hair was bobbed on the porch of the house her father shared with Margaret Schroeder by one of the women in love with Owen Sleater while fireworks illuminated the ruined belongings of the Schroeder children.

Jimmy shoveled ham and eggs into his mouth while Richard drank his coffee through a straw. Richard stared down at the table. It was obvious Angela wasn't happy with either her husband or him at the moment. After setting down breakfast she'd gone back into the kitchen and then walked past them without saying a word to answer the ringing telephone. The attempt on Nucky Thompson's life was costing them all, although Richard noted that Jimmy's wife was still in the house with him.

"Oh my god, Clara, are you okay?" Angela asked, speaking into the telephone in the hall.

Jimmy and Richard looked up at each with alarm.

"That's horrible. What can I do?" Angela murmured into the phone for a bit longer, and then came back into the kitchen.

"What's wrong with Clara?" Jimmy asked, as he watched Richard systematically clutch and release the napkin in his hand. Please let Clara be okay, Jimmy thought, thinking of the last time he'd seen her, sobbing in Luciano's car.

"Emily Schroeder has polio," Angela said with anger and fear in her voice.

"Is. She. Okay?" Richard asked, each word an agony.

"Emily? She can't walk and Clara said the doctor's face makes her think there's little hope she'll walk again. Now she's just praying the paralysis doesn't climb up to Emily's lungs. Or Clara? Margaret has barely left the hospital, and do you know what has to be done when a child has polio? Clara's spent the last two days burning toys, mattresses, lines, and clothing. She's had to boil and bleach the entire house, and although I've only been there once, it's quite a house.

"And Clara's had to do it alone because her father and Eddie are out of town, the staff of the Ritz is striking, and the staff at the house quit, except for one young girl Clara's locked in the kitchen with Teddy. And we," Angela gestured around the table, "the people she loves and trusts most in the world are off-limits because two of them betrayed her, and she doesn't want me to come over because she's terrified Tommy will get it. But it's okay, right, because feuds and coups and takeovers are far more important than family."

Jimmy felt their eyes on him. They blamed him. What was he supposed to have done, though?

"She's asked me to go to Blatts and Woolworth's to order toys for Teddy," Angela sighed and turned to Jimmy. "Can you watch Tommy?"

"Of course I can..."

"I mean you. Can you watch Tommy without dumping him off on your mother?" Angela stared directly into her husband's face.

"Sure," Jimmy said. "Richard can drive..."

"I'll walk," Angela answered.

After Angela left, Jimmy turned to Richard. "Can you watch him while I make some calls?"

Tommy stared up at Richard with big, serious eyes. "Did Clara like her present?"

Richard turned to look at the little boy.

"Did she like it?" Tommy asked again.

"I. Mmm," Richard looked down at his hands, which were still clutching his napkin. The ring lay under the quilt Clara brought in the dresser that she used in the room that now tormented him with the memories of what it was like not to be lonely, of having someone he loved love him back.

"Are you and Clara coming to my birthday tonight? Did you get me a present?"

"Clara. Can't. Come," Richard said haltingly.

Tommy looked up at him with sad eyes. "But Clara always comes to my party."

Clara was in the conservatory attempting to edit her latest manuscript when she heard the sound of her name. Angela, she thought, and raced to look at the window. Angela was indeed standing on the sidewalk.

"You shouldn't be here," Clara said when she went out on the porch. It took all of her self-restraint not to the run down and throw her arms around Angela.

"I'll stay down here. I wanted to check on you." Angela looked at her closely. "You look adorable with your bob."

"All the best people are wearing them," Clara said with a smile. "Thank you for going shopping for me."

Angela regarded Clara seriously. "I owe you a million favors."

"That's not true."

"I wish you had come to me, when..." Angela cleared her throat. "When you found out Jimmy ordered your father's murder."

"Did you know?" Clara asked, disbelief in her voice.

"I heard him, after, on the phone. Did Richard know before? Is that why you broke things off?"

Clara leaned back against the door and closed her eyes. "He knew, but apparently thought he had convinced Jimmy to cancel it. At first...Angela, we were in bed together when the hit was attempted. I thought that was his part in it, to keep me distracted. Now that I know it wasn't, but even so...he still didn't tell me."

Angela winced. She wanted to tell Clara that Richard would never use her like that, but she was no longer sure of what any of them were capable of doing.

"It hurts, doesn't it? For people you love to keep secrets from you?"

Clara blinked. "Angela, I..."

"Oh, I know. You and Jimmy. Your loyalty to him outweighs your loyalty to me," Angela said.

"No, it's just...Jimmy's like my brother, Angela."

"Which is why when I was pregnant and you spent Jimmy's last days with him before he shipped out, when I didn't even know where he was I just accepted it. Can you imagine how that felt when I found out?"

No, Clara thought, at the time I couldn't. At the time I thought I was doing the best I could, for everyone. But if that had been Richard, if I'd been pregnant in a strange city and he could have seen me but didn't, if he spent that time with someone else, even his sister...I can't imagine how that would feel. I would be devastated. My pain would devolve into fury. I would never forgive that trespass, as Angela has forgiven so much Jimmy and I have done.

"Or all the times you and Jimmy have heated conversations that no one ever explains to me, even when they happen in my house?

Clara struggled to keep her voice even. "Angela, I'm sorry. I thought...I thought I was doing the right thing. I wasn't, but I thought I was."

Angela looked away. "I can't imagine how you felt when you thought Richard used you like that. But I do wonder if you are angrier that Jimmy put a hit on your father, or if it's that he didn't tell you about it. That in the end, to both of them, you were just a woman like the rest of us?"

Long after Angela left, Clara continued to sit on the porch. It's why she was sitting there when a Ford pulled up and a man emerged.

"Clara Thompson?

"There's polio in the house, I'd stay back," she called.

The man looked down at the envelope in his hand. "You've been served," he said and dropped the envelope on the sidewalk. She waited until he drove off to retrieve it.

A subpoena to meet with Esther Randolph, Assistant Attorney General. At her office, which was better known at the Atlantic City Post Office. Clara fought back the urge to laugh.

The blue suit, Clara decided as she dressed. Her father told her she looked like a ragamuffin in it, but she thought it was lucky. She'd gotten a job in it. She'd met Richard in it. If the prosecutor had been a man, she would have put on a dress and brought out Princess Clara. But a woman? A woman would probably see through the act, Clara thought. She doubted Esther Rudolph would fall for the foolish rich girl nonsense the New Jersey State Police bought the night her father was arrested.

Esther Randolph was younger than Clara expected, but, Clara was amused through fear to note, also had a blue suit on, although Miss Randolph's was far more conservative than Clara's.

"I've learned a lot about you," Esther Randolph said, gesturing to the file on her desk. "A man would have gotten a medal for what you did during the war."

"I was a civilian, not a soldier," Clara said.

"Ah, yes. When women do a job somehow it is always painted as somehow less than when a man does it."

Clara didn't disagree, but she also wasn't going to allow herself to see this woman as a friend.

"You came by yourself?"

"I've been able to cross a street since I was six or so." Who could I bring, Clara thought. I couldn't bring my father's attorney, because what if you ask me about Jimmy, or god forbid, Richard? But I couldn't bring Mr. Whitlock, because what if you reveal something about my father Jimmy could use against him?

Esther regarded her. "You know, I wasn't sure what you'd be like. The princess at the Ritz, fancy boarding school, private college...and then you give it up all up to work for the War Department. You come back, get engaged to a New Jersey Blaine, and then end the engagement to write articles and books for young people."

"I didn't think I'd have to explain to you that just because I'm a woman it doesn't mean I don't want to plan my own life."

"Was having your father's enemies try to abduct you, was having bullets fly past your head part of the plan for your life?"

Clara blinked hard, pushing back the memories of that man's hand grabbing her, trying to shove her in the car. That boy's face as he snatched at her leg. Seeing Richard turn the corner.

"Ah, it still bothers you," Esther said when Clara didn't respond. "Does the way your father funds for your pretty life bother you?"

"What do I know about my father's business dealings? To him, I'm just his daughter. He doesn't explain things to me." It's not like I'm a real person that matters, Clara thought.

"And Margaret Schroeder, your father's mistress? Did you know your father killed her husband?"

Clara just stopped herself from saying there was little chance her father actually dirtied his hands. "I know her husband died a few months before she started seeing my father."

"You were with your uncle at your grandfather's funeral last week?"

"Families are usually together at funerals," That was a sudden turn in conversation, Clara thought suspiciously.

"And yet your father wasn't there?"

Clara shrugged. "He's away in England on business."

"What's odd, Miss Thompson, is that your father filed paperwork saying he was taking your grandfather's body to Ireland, Belfast to be exact, for burial, leading me to wonder who you buried in New Jersey?"

It was one of the few times in her life Clara was honestly speechless. What the hell was her father doing in Belfast that would help him destroy Jimmy?

"You love your father?"

Clara thought, I love my father. I love Jimmy. I love Richard. I love Uncle Eli. None of them loved me enough to stop this war, and now I sit being questioned by a federal prosecutor in the fucking post office.

"Of course I love my father."

Esther Randolph rearranged the papers in front of her. "You also love a man named James Darmody? Because there are mentions of Mr. Darmody all over the case notes. Is this going to be your life, Miss Thompson? Every man you love a killer, every comfort in your life paid for by someone else's blood?"

Each day Clara spent a couple of hours at the Ritz. She needed to pack her room, but she also needed a break away from the house and Teddy, whom she and Katy took turns watching. Teddy exhausted her, even though she felt horribly for him. Margaret felt more like a ghost than a fellow inhabitant of the house. She came and went from the hospital, ate the food Katy put in front of her and focused her energy on making sure her baby survived this scourge.

The strike raged on, and the Ritz was seemingly coming apart at the seams. The hotel began to look shoddy and smudged. Eddie, returned from vacation, was frantic trying to pack the suite without any help. The Boardwalk seemed dirty and tawdry for the first time in Clara's life. Closeted in her room, Clara was forced to relive her life as she sorted her belongings into boxes destined for storage, things to send to her little cousins, and what would first go with her to Margaret's and then to wherever she landed.

From the depths of her closet, an old velvet rabbit fell out. Clara picked it up and stroked an ear, where the nub of the velvet was completely worn away. She couldn't remember a time when she didn't have her rabbit. The memory of Jimmy bringing her the rabbit the night her mother died came back to her. She put the rabbit in the box destined to go with her to Margaret's.

Clara left the Ritz early that day and walked to Leander Whitlock's house, carefully skirting around the striking workers marching on the Boardwalk.

The maid showed her into Mr. Whitlock's office, just like she had done before. Unlike before, someone else sat on the sofa.

"Clara," Jimmy said and started to stand.

Clara waved him off. "Mr. Whitlock, you are both my lawyer and Jimmy's, right?"

Leander regarded Clara thoughtfully, wondering what in the world the child was up to. "That is correct."

"So what we say while we are in the room together?"

"Ah," Leander answered, understanding Clara's implied question. "Yes, most things said between the three of us fall under attorney-client privilege, unless you two mean to plan a crime." Leander reflected that he positively should have charged Clara a higher retainer. After all, he wouldn't be surprised if Clara and Jimmy started planning a half-baked criminal enterprise in his office.

"Did my father have you kill Margaret's husband?" Clara asked Jimmy directly.

Jimmy blinked rapidly. "No," he answered, not expecting that question.

"Don't lie to me, James," Clara responded.

"Clara, I swear. On Tommy, I swear."

Clara closed her eyes and thought back to early 1920. "Because that's when you accidentally started a war with Rothstein by killing his men in the woods?" That led to the d'Alessio brothers getting involved, Clara thought. That led to those men trying to kidnap me, trying to kill me on a city street. That led to Richard killing a teenager. All because you wanted to appear like a big man to Al Capone, darling brother.

Leander stood up, poured three whiskeys, added a little water to one, and then handed out the drinks.

Before taking a sip, Clara swirled the glass in her hand, looking at the amber liquor thoughtfully. "Do you think the Volstead Act has stopped one person from drinking? Do you think any drunkard is now a sober family man because of Prohibition?"

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," Leander said.

"Clara, why? Why are you asking?" Jimmy questioned her, ignoring her reverie about Prohibition.

Is this where I cross the Rubicon? Clara wondered, or have I been crossing it all along in inches, always pretending like I wasn't making unalterable decisions? "Remember when we were children and we'd play that game with rubber bands, but you had to be careful that the rubber band didn't snap back and hit you instead of the target?"

Jimmy nodded, confused.

"You tried to get my father convicted on state charges, he used political influence to turn them into Federal charges, and now the Harding administration is in chaos and they've cut him loose. That lady prosecutor? She means to get him, and not on racketeering charges. She asked me about Margaret's husband, said my father had him killed, and then she said your name was all over the file. The rubber band snapped, Jimmy, on both of you."

"Damn it," Jimmy said, rubbing his eyes. Nucky had taken care of things regarding those men in the woods, Jimmy thought, but God knew what else could come to light.

"Mr. Whitlock, could Clara and I have a moment?" Jimmy asked, needing to talk to Clara without having to be careful.

Leander looked at them both and then walked away.

"Why are you telling me?" Jimmy asked, not quite meeting Clara's eyes.

"Do you think I want you in the electric chair? Do you think I want Angela to be a widow, or for Tommy to grow up without a father? Goodness, Jimmy, just because I'm furious with you..." Clara turned away, unwilling to let him see the emotion in her eyes.

Jimmy fumbled in his pocket, lit a cigarette, took a drag, and tapped Clara on her shoulder. She reached back for the cigarette without saying a word. They shared it silently for a while.

"I don't want Nucky to get the chair either," Jimmy finally said quietly. "I didn't want the hit, I don't want him to die."

"Then why?"

"Fuck, Clara, I don't know. I thought it would be a clean coup, he'd pay for..."

"For Gillian," Clara finished his sentence.

"Richard really thought he had convinced me not to go through it." Jimmy said, trying to fix the one thing he thought might still be in his power to set right.

Clara nodded. "Uncle Eli told me. It's why I went to the Dempsey fight. Well, that and when I went to the Ritz to change I realized a strike was starting and I was going to warn you."

"I'm sorry about that night, too. I put that girl in his lap, Clara. I was just trying to make him feel better." And it was yet something else I've fucked up, Jimmy thought.

"Richard's a grown-up, Jimmy. He knew a hit against my father was something you considered, seriously, and still didn't tell me. He didn't have to kiss that girl. He hasn't even tried to reach out to me."

"He loves you, Clara. He's heartbroken."

Clara looked up, and Jimmy flinched away from the pain in her eyes. "And I'm not?"

Jimmy lit another cigarette, and they shared it as well. Clara realized she'd missed the cigarettes.

"Tommy missed you at his birthday."

"Tommy's birthday," Clara said quietly. "I was there when that child was born, but I completely forgot his birthday."

Jimmy looked at her. "You sent a present. Toy horses. He loves them."

"No, Angela must have bought them when she ordered toys for Teddy..."

Jimmy shook his head. "No, Angela wandered how you got the present to us."

Clara closed her eyes at the same time as Jimmy realized. Richard brought the present so that Tommy wouldn't think that Clara forgot him. It was sheer strength of will that kept Clara from crying in Leander Whitlock's office.

Margaret was sitting in the drawing-room, watching Teddy play on the porch when Clara returned to Margaret's house.

"How's Emily?" Clara asked quietly.

"No change," Margaret said. "The doctors think that's a good thing."

It means the polio isn't climbing toward her lungs, Clara thought. Thank God.

Clara sat in the chair across from Margaret and tried to think about what she wanted to say. What she could say, to someone who had only ever been kind to her, to someone whose daughter lay in the hospital fighting for her little life.

"I wasn't especially kind when you and my father...started," Clara said in a rush. "It was nothing to do with you, or the children. It's just, my father, he's hardly been a monk since my mother died. There were always women, and it just seemed best not to get attached. But Margaret, you are the best of them and my father is lucky to have you. I've been lucky to have you this last year.I think you might be to good for the likes of the Thompsons, honestly."

Margaret turned to stare, Clara's outburst catching her by surprise. "You've never been anything other than pleasant and polite. I only knew..." in her exhaustion, Margaret had to search for the right word, "...that you weren't showing your honest self because I saw you with Mr. Harrow when he protected us all. But Clara...I'll never forget how you helped my children and I during this."

Margaret and her children, more hostages to fortune, more people she didn't want to see harmed, Clara thought. More people the men in their lives were failing to protect.

That night in her room, she set aside the last edits of her Bobbsey Twins book. Tomorrow she would mail it out. The Stratemeyers had told her it would be the first week of August before she received another assignment. She had a few articles to write, but she knew she needed a break. Maybe she'd start planning a novel that was just hers.

First, though, she took out her notepaper with her monogram CST (Clara Susan Thompson) embossed on the top and began writing.

My dearest, Richard,

I wonder if this how the citizens of Pompeii felt when the volcano erupted? Everything covered in ash, everything ruined, and no seeming reason for any of it? Do you think they knew what had happened to them?

I don't know what's happened to any of us. I'm so sorry for my temper and impetuousness. I'm so angry-at Jimmy, at you. But underneath all of that, I love you, and if ash is falling, I still want to be with you.

She wrote until all her feelings were out, all her anger, fear, and all of it. Then she signed it, stuffed the pages in an envelope, and walked up to Katy's room to beg a favor.

"Daddy!"

Clara heard the child's excited cry from upstairs.

"Well, if it isn't the heroine of the hour," Nucky said with a smile at his daughter as Clara descended down the stairs.

Clara smiled and then noticed Katy staring starry-eyed at Owen Sleater. It made her think of Memorial Day when she had missed Richard so badly and wondered how she would keep from throwing herself at him when he showed up at the Memorial (which he didn't, she thought, and then realized he'd never actually told her why). "Mr. Sleater, Katy and I have been struggling to get something down off a high shelf in the kitchen for days. Would you mind going to help her?"

Katy flashed a smile at her as they walked towards the stairs, and Clara smiled back.

"Playing cupid?" Nucky asked after he sent Teddy outside to play, and he motioned for Clara to sit in the drawing-room.

"Katy deserves every kindness we can give her, and she definitely deserves a huge bonus. She was the only person who didn't quit."

"And what do you deserve?" Nucky asked.

She smoothed her green skirt. "The truth. To be treated like a grown-up, for once in our relationship. You weren't in England, you were in Ireland. Where you apparently were burying my grandfather, which is odd since I watched his coffin lowered into the ground in Dorothy. And yet there was a coffin on your ship's manifest, so God only knows what you and Sleater were up to in Ireland.

"Or we could talk about the strike that's crippling Atlantic City, that's going to destroy a lot of our fellow citizens who have voted for you, who have paid protection money, who love their flashy former treasurer.

"Or I guess we could discuss why you ordered Margaret's husband murdered, and who did it?"

Nucky walked to the bar and poured a drink. "How the fuck do you know any of that?

"In the middle of trying to cope with Emily's illness, I was subpoenaed by Esther Randolph."

"I told you to contact my lawyer, Clara!" He turned to glare at his daughter.

Clara met her father's gaze with a glare of her own. "And yet I didn't, because I don't trust him."

"Yet I'm to trust you?"

"You could end up in the electric chair! Was any of this worth it?" Clara said through gritted teeth. "And do you think I would say anything to Miss Randolph that would hurt you?"

"I'm going to handle it, Clara. You don't have to worry about it."

Her father made his excuses, and after he left the room, Clara stared out the window and realized he hadn't answered any of her questions.

Jimmy's car wasn't in front of the beach house, so Clara chanced that he wasn't home.

"Clara," Angela said when she opened the door.

The words began to tumble out. "That day I went to meet you for the first time I was so scared. But then, Angela, I loved you. Almost instantly, I loved you. I was so happy it was you Jimmy had fallen in love with. And you've been such a good friend to me since the first day we met. But especially when I first came back, before I left for D.C. And then when I came back from D.C., when somehow I ended up engaged to Darcy...you helped me. You are one of the few people I can just be myself with, and I'm so, so sorry for all the ways I've betrayed you and wasn't a very good friend to you."

"Would you like to come inside?" Angela asked gently, which caused Clara to laugh.

They walked into the sunroom. "Clara, I've kept my fair share of secrets from you. Our friendship...it was always going to be fraught. Jimmy loves his secrets, and you've been keeping them since you shared a crib."

Clara blinked.

"I do have a question, though. Are Tommy and I in danger?" Angela asked while looking out toward the beach.

"I don't know, Angela. Do you think that you are?" Clara brushed her hair behind her ear, fighting the urge to twist her hair.

"Ever since...Nucky, Jimmy's just seemed on edge."

"My father, he would never hurt you or Tommy. But some of the people Jimmy is in business with, Angela, I've met some of them and I wouldn't put anything past them."

Angela took a deep breath.

"Let's go away," Clara said suddenly. "The men are committed to this foolishness, so let them sort it out for themselves. You, me, Tommy, we'll go away. My friend Rose Grenville? I was at her grandmother, Mrs. Levitz's, cottage in Newport in May and she told me to come stay anytime. She even offered her guest house. She's delightfully bohemian, so she'd love the idea of us setting up a tiny little artist's colony. She stays in Newport until the first week of October, so we'd have a little over two months. Hopefully, by then, things will be sorted or we will just head back to New York. "

Angela nodded. "Clara, I keep secrets, too. I've met someone."

Ah, the things we never talk about, Clara thought. "A woman?" she asked gently.

"How did you know?" Angela said, terror in her voice.

"When you first moved to Atlantic City and I came to visit you from Washington? I thought there was something with your friend Mary?" Clara didn't tell Angela that Jimmy had later told her Angela tried to run away with Mary.

Angela nodded, and then decided to confide in Clara. "Her name is Louise. She's a novelist."

Clara didn't judge Angela, but she also silently apologized to Jimmy for her harsh judgment towards him. Maybe he knew, she thought. Perhaps that's why.

"Invite her. Two writers, a painter, one Tommy? That sounds like an excellent beginning of an artist's colony. We could leave in two days? Tomorrow Emily comes home from the hospital and I'd like to be there, and that will give Mrs. Levitz time to answer us."

Angela nodded. This was different from last time. They were going with Clara, she was going to tell Jimmy, it was for Tommy's best interest. "Yes. Jimmy just left to go to Princeton, but he should be back by then. It will be good for Tommy to be away from Gillian."

Clara looked over at Angela. "I'm sure," she finally said.

"And Richard?" Angela asked gently.

Clara sighed. "I wrote him a letter. I poured out all of my feelings. He needs to make the next move."

Angela reached for Clara's hand. "I never had a sister, and I haven't had a lot of women friends. But Clara, a friend who holds your hand while you have your baby, who loves your child like her own, who pins your hair at your wedding, who supports your ambitions, and listens when you need to talk? Those friends don't happen very often. And I truly believe soon I'll be pinning flowers in your hair when you marry Richard, and holding your hand while you have your babies, and watching your children play on the beach with Tommy. Just like I've celebrated every book and article you've written, we're going to celebrate all those things together, too."

Clara blinked away more tears. "In two days, we are going to off on a new adventure."

"I'll see you in two days," Angela responded.

Note: I'm most definitely not saying Clara wasn't a woman until she learned to clean. Absolutely not. But from the moment we meet her, Clara is protected by Nucky's money, the staff at the Ritz, Richard, and even Jimmy. The idea of how Clara copes when she has none of that, or when none of it can help her, was fascinating. I also thought the timing in the show of Emily sickening right around the time of the strike was also interesting.