Trigger Warning: Everything is more or less canonical, but mentions of suicide, incest, and child molestation.

Princeton/Atlantic City: December 1916

Her feet pained her terribly, and the smell of bacon was making her sick. The gentleman she was pouring coffee for told her about how terrible the never-ending Battle of Verdun was in Europe. Angela pasted a smile on her face.

As she poured him another refill, Angela watched a young woman walk hesitantly into the restaurant, like she wasn't sure she was in the right place. Unconsciously, Angela started noting details, mentally sketching her royal blue coat with navy blue cuffs, the blond curls that coiled heavily against her neck, the ringlets on either side of her face that grazed her jaw. The girl slipped the coat off and hung it on the peg by the booth. She was wearing an olive green jumper style tunic over a matching olive green skirt under the coat. The blouse under the jumper was striped olive green and light blue silk. Everything about her spoke of money. A college girl in town to visit her brother or beau, Angela decided. She drifted over to take the girl's order, internally betting that the girl would order coffee and toast and forget to leave a tip.

"What can I get you?"

The girl looked up and bit her lip. "Are you Angela Ianotti?"

"Yes?" Angela said. "Why are you asking?"

"I'm Clara Thompson. Jimmy, Jimmy Darmody, wrote me and asked me to come see you."

Angela sat the coffee pot down and burst into tears.

Clara stared at her for a moment, before jumping up and helping Angela into the booth. Reaching into her skirt pocket, she retrieved her handkerchief and pushed it into Angela's hand.

"Where is he?" Angela asked.

"He joined the Army. He's at Camp Grant, in Illinois."

"Why?"

"I don't know. One night last month Jimmy showed up at my college and told me he had left Princeton and enlisted. A few days ago I got a letter, telling me about you, about the baby."

Angela buried her face in her hands. Jimmy was gone, gone for real. Gone to the Army. "My aunt threw me out. I barely make enough money waitressing to rent a terrible room, much less pay for decent food. What am I going to do? What am I going to do when I can't work?"

"That's why I'm here," Clara said decisively. "You are going home with me. My father, he'll help you. Jimmy is like his son. He's like my brother. You are our responsibility."

Angela thought later that day that she would believe that Clara and Jimmy were really brother and sister. They had the same way of convincing someone to follow their plans, no matter how outlandish. Before she could even think, she had quit her job, packed up her scant belongings, stepped into Bamberger's so Clara could buy her an engagement ring, and was walking into the Ritz-Carlton in Atlantic City.

"Miss Clara! You are home a day early," a man with a German accent said when they arrived on the eighth floor.

"I missed you, too, Eddie," Clara said with a smile. "This is my friend, Angela Ianotti, she's going to stay with us."

"No one told me, I don't have a room..."

"She can stay with me."

Angela looked around Clara's room. She'd never seen a hotel room like it, and she'd spent her childhood in hotel rooms. It wasn't just that it was nice, although it was nicer than any hotel room Angela had ever been it. It was that someone so clearly lived there. Bookshelves lined one wall and were overflowing with books and pictures. Angela picked up a photograph of Jimmy and Clara as toddlers, let her finger brush over the image of Jimmy, and wondered if that's what their baby was going to look like, all floppy hair and pouty lips.

Clara drew a deep breath and knocked on her father's office door. So far, nothing in her day had gone according to plan. She'd just meant to check on Angela, see what she needed, and then come home to talk to her father. But once she knew Angela's aunt had thrown her out, once she'd seen Angela's desperation, what could she do? This was the girl Jimmy loved, this was his baby, she had to protect them.

"I'm guessing you know exactly where James is?" her father said in way of greeting. He didn't bother to get up from his desk.

"It's nice to see you as well, Daddy. I'm happy to be home for Christmas, thank you for asking," Clara replied with what she hoped was her most charming smile.

"Clara, today is not the day. Where is James?"

Clara bit her lip. "I don't know what happened, Daddy, I really don't. He came to Bryn Mawr one night night and told me he'd joined the Army. He's at Camp Grant, for basic training."

"He's where?" Nucky asked angrily. "Do you know how hard I worked to get him into Princeton? And he's thrown it away, why, because he couldn't cut it? And he's joined the Army? Does he even know there's a war in Europe that idiot Wilson is going to get us involved in?"

"I think that was the appeal, honestly. And Jimmy was doing well at Princeton, that's not why he left."

"James joined the Army because he wants to go war?"

"There's good news. Jimmy's engaged!" Clara said, trying to make her voice bright. "Her name is Angela Ianotti. She's very nice, you're going to like her a lot."

Nucky stared at his daughter. "James is engaged?"

Clara smiled. "Isn't it lovely? And that's not all, they are going to have a baby."

"James has knocked up some Princeton townie, ran off to join the Army, and left you to clean up his mess?" Nucky said in a dangerously low voice. "You have college to worry about, Clara."

"That's not fair, Daddy. Jimmy is... he's the only brother I have. Jimmy would do the same for me."

Would he, Nucky thought. "So I'm expected to support this girl and her baby?"

"Not just you, Daddy. I wouldn't ask that. Jimmy will send money from his Army pay, and I'm going to help, too."

"I didn't realize Bryn Mawr allowed its students to work."

Clara took a deep breath. "They don't. That's why I quit school. The War Department, they're advertising for girls who speak French or Italian. I speak both, Daddy. My Italian is better than my French, thanks to the sisters, but my French is still quite good. They are going to train us to be telegraph operators in France, behind the front lines, because like you said, it's not long until..."

"You want to work on the battlefield in France?" Nucky asked, his voice completely cold. He looked at his daughter, with her bright eyes and her freckles. Mabel, he thought, and pictured his wife when she was not much older than their daughter, before she was his wife, excitedly talking about teaching in the tenements of Newark. His sweet, innocent, idealistic Mabel.

Anger flared deep inside him. How dare Clara think he'd allow her to risk her life like this? How dare Mabel leave him to raise their girl on his own? He turned to look out the window, remembering coming home that evening before dinner because it was the housekeeper's afternoon off, and he was worried about Clara and Mabel being alone. The house had been as silent as a tomb except for a slight thumping noise coming from the bathroom. When he opened the bathroom door, he was greeted by a sea of red flowing across the white tile. It was Mabel's blood, and his warm Mabel was as cold and white as the tile itself as she lay in a heap in front of the sink.

He lifted his wife's body from the floor. For a moment, he tried to close the wounds on her wrists, tried to make her warm again, but already she was cold and heavy in his arms. The thumping noise continued. When he looked up, he saw their daughter rocking back and forth in a pool of her mother's blood, her head knocking against the lip of the tub. Their daughter, who already woke up screaming every night because she'd seen the rotting corpse of her baby brother, the one Mabel cared for instead of taking care of their living, breathing girl. At that moment, all he saw was blood all over his little girl's face, her plaid dress, her white stockings, her black buttoned boots. Eight years old and covered in her mother's blood. He dropped Mabel back to the floor, and grabbed his baby, called her name, tried to get her to talk.

Clara hadn't answered. Not when he took her into the other bathroom, washed her, and dressed her in a clean nightgown. Not when he rocked her, sitting on the stairs, ignoring his wife's body in the next room, just rocking his girl while her teeth chattered like she was freezing.

Clara didn't speak until Gillian brought James to sit in Clara's bedroom with her while she sat on the floor, holding her old velvet rabbit. That's when he heard his daughter's voice, saying, " My Mommy's dead, Jimmy." When he swept Clara up to take her to the Ritz, he took James with them. Gillian was crying over Mabel like she had lost her mother. He couldn't leave either child with her.

Practically as soon as Clara could sit up, Mabel had put Jimmy and Clara in the bath together. Mabel had smiled up at Nucky as she'd washed both babies, and said, 'Gillian will always need help with Jimmy. If we treat them like siblings they'll always think of themselves as siblings.' How many nights had he gone into Clara's room to tell her goodnight, and seen two small fair heads laying on her pillow? Clara, who could tend toward selfishness, was never selfish when it came to James. If Clara got a treat, she expected James to get a treat. If Nucky took Clara on an outing, she wanted James to accompany them.

He had made so many mistakes raising Clara. The night of his party for the state government when Clara's scream echoed through the suite, and he found a drunk commissioner standing over his thirteen-year-old daughter in her nightgown. Eli had come to him the next day and told him the Ritz was no place to raise Clara. Eli and June wanted Clara to go live with them.

Like he was going to hand Clara over to Eli. Instead, he told James that one of his new jobs was to stay in Clara's room whenever Nucky had guests. Gillian had complained, but she never complained about the money. Sometimes he wondered if he should lock two teenagers up together, but Mabel's gambit had worked. He had warned James away from ever touching Clara. 'She's like my sister, Nuck ,' James had said, clearly insulted. When he spoke to Clara about it, she'd looked up at him with horrified eyes and said, 'don't be ridiculous, Daddy! Jimmy, he's my brother .'

James was so nice and easy because he was a boy. They could go fishing, go hunting, and Nucky didn't always have to worry about protecting James from rough language or meeting the wrong people. It didn't mean he didn't have hopes and dreams for James. The boy was so bright, so personable, was even athletic—the All American Boy. Nucky had plans for James. Plans the little prick had just destroyed by running off and joining the Army. The Army, where he could be hurt, could be killed for a war over what? Protecting the holdings of inbred royals across the sea? Enriching the war barons here in America?

Clara and James were still just children, Nucky thought. Only in August, just a few months ago, he'd thrown a ball and for the first time, let them attend. They'd finally disappeared after the breakfast, and he found them both in Clara's room. James was asleep across the foot of her bed, Clara asleep across the head, both still in their fancy clothes like tired children after a birthday party.

James had already thrown his destiny to the winds. It felt like a knife to Nucky's soul, but what could he do? But his Clara, the little girl who loved nothing more than the stories about the mermaids that Mabel who used to tell her, who after her mother's death would tell the stories to James or to her rabbit, making the stories more complicated over the years, he was supposed to let her once more be covered with blood? He had failed to protect her once, but he'd be damned if he failed to protect her again.

"Absolutely not, Clara. James might have thrown his future away, but you will not follow suit. I have plans for your life."

Clara's eyes flashed with anger. "I have plans for my life! Do you know how rare it is for women to have the chance to work like this?"

"Work? You need to worry about school and finding a husband."

"If that's your only goal for me, then what better place to meet men than working with the Army?" Clara answered.

"I didn't raise you to marry some enlisted solider," Nucky snapped back. "And if you want me to help the girl James has abandoned, you best give up the idea of going to France."

Clara blinked, her dream of an adventure of her own choosing dying. Damn it, Jimmy, she thought, but she knew she'd already lost. "Okay, but I still want to work for the War Department, even if I have to do it in New York or Washington. It makes sense, really. Angela and I can share an apartment, and I can help cover her expenses."

Nucky sighed. He'd rather she stay safely on the campus of Bryn Mawr, but Clara was already taken with James's stray. At least the girl could function as Clara's chaperone.

Princeton: July 1921

Clara took a deep breath when they stood in front of Jimmy's hotel room door. Richard knocked loudly.

"Jimmy, it's Richard and me. Open the door," Clara called out. There was no response. "Open the door, or we are going to get the innkeeper to let us in!"

They heard shuffling from inside the room.

Only years of her father's training kept Clara from gasping when Jimmy opened the door. The room, and Jimmy, reeked of sweat and whiskey. There was another smell underneath it, one Clara couldn't identify. It was Jimmy's eyes that startled her the most. They looked like oysters on the half shell that had been left out in the sun. Jimmy's eyes were almost completely dilated, even with the bright hallway light shining in them.

"If you came to tell me Angela's dead, I already know," Jimmy said, swaying on his feet. "I didn't make the deliveries, Rich."

Richard swallowed. Did the deliveries still matter, he wondered? He saw Jimmy's small notebook and went over to begin flipping through the notes.

"I'd ask if you are okay, but you clearly are not," Clara said softly.

Jimmy lifted another bottle to his lips and slid down the wall. "It's my fault Angela's dead."

New York City: July 1917

Nothing about the day had gone as planned. First of all, Gillian appeared out of nowhere, right as Clara ran out to call for the midwife. The midwife wasn't available, so a substitute had to be found. Suddenly their little apartment felt like it was transformed into something else, as Angela hit a point where she couldn't hold back her cries of pain, and women rushed about to help her. Clara was dispatched to hold Angela's hand while Gillian flitted about and made sure she was the first person to hold Angela and Jimmy's baby.

The new baby stared up at Clara from his little basket. She could already see Jimmy in the shape of his face, and Angela in his tiny little eyes. Hesitantly, she reached out and gingerly touched his cheek. Jimmy's baby, how odd, she thought.

"You can pick him up, you know," Gillian said from the doorway.

"I can't, actually," Clara replied, smiling up at Gillian. "I've never held a baby."

Gillian started to say something, but then crossed over to the basket and lifted the small blanketed bundle out. "Hold your arms out, and then fold your elbow under his head."

Clara hesitated and then reached out. The small warm weight settled against her. She felt some of her love for Jimmy pour over to his son. You're one of mine, she thought fiercely as she smelled the sweet, soft smell of his head.

"Don't you just want to run your lips all over his little body?" Gillian asked.

No, Clara thought, but she did lean down and let her lips brush his forehead.

The midwife finished in the bedroom. Clara and Gillian walked with the baby back to Angela, and Clara carefully passed the baby back to his mother. Angela had never looked more beautiful, Clara thought and felt a sharp pang of despair that Jimmy was missing these first minutes of his new family.

"We need to name this little mite," Gillian said. "Obviously, we should name him for Nucky."

Angela looked up, surprised. She had been planning on naming him Joseph.

"Gillian, not only is that not necessary, but she can not name this baby Enoch," Clara said, struggling to keep her voice low. "And she certainly doesn't want to name him Malachi."

"Ah, of course," Gillian replied. "Well, what about Thompson?"

"It's just unnecessary," Clara protested.

"Thompson is such a big name for such a tiny baby, but I do want Mr. Thompson to know how grateful I am for all his help," Angela said softly.

"Well, we can always call him Tommy," Gillian said decisively.

"Hello, Tommy," Angela said softly, stroking her baby's cheek.

Later that afternoon, Gillian was napping on Clara's daybed in the living room, so Clara sat in the chair in the bedroom and watched Angela and Tommy sleep. Her own head was falling against the back of the chair when the bedroom door burst open.

"You finally have everything you wanted, don't you? You have Jimmy all to yourself," Gillian said in a voice Clara instantly recognized as her most angry. She was waving envelopes around, envelopes Clara recognized at a glance.

"He's in France, Gillian..."

"But he was with you in February, before he shipped out," Gillian said, handing a picture to Angela with menace written all over her face.

"He's in a uniform," Angela said in a quiet voice. "He's in a uniform, Clara. I thought you hadn't seen him since November, since he told you he enlisted."

Clara closed her eyes. "He sent me a telegram, asking me to spend a few days with him before he shipped out."

"He was here?" Angela asked with tears in her voice. "He was here, in New York? Did he know I was here?"

"He knew," Gillian said coldly. "He told her not to tell anyone, it was just for two of them to be able to see each other before he left."

"You said you were going to visit your friend Romola?" Angela said in disbelief.

"Jimmy didn't want me to tell anyone," Clara said softly. "I had to honor his wishes."

Angela looked down at her baby, tears falling on his face. Gillian looked up at Clara with something like triumph in her eyes.

"One day you'll love someone like we love James," Gillian said, "and you'll understand how this feels."

It was days later before Angela and Clara spoke about Jimmy. Angela wasn't surprised to find Clara standing by the bassinet. Over the last days, Clara often stood with her fingers lightly pressed against the baby's chest, like she was feeling for the rise and fall of his breathing.

"Tommy's not going anywhere," Angela said softly.

Clara looked up and bit her lip. "I'm so sorry, Angela."

"Why doesn't he want me, Clara?" Angela asked.

Clara sighed. "It's not that. I think he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to go if he saw you. It's the same with the letters. He barely writes me, just enough to say he's alive."

"You've written him about Tommy?"

"I have."

Angela looked up at Clara and swallowed her anger and hurt back down. Clara was the only friend she had at the moment. "Do you mind going to get bread?" she said, in an attempt to restore normalcy.

Princeton: July 1921

"I don't. Want to leave. You," Richard said as they stood against the door.

"I'll be with Jimmy," Clara answered. "If you have to make the deliveries, you have to make the deliveries."

Yes, Richard thought, but the butcher. The butcher is still out there. Jimmy has crawled down a bottle and other things besides. Angela's brain was shattered by a bullet in the bedroom she shared with Jimmy. A feeling of dread gnawed at him. Clara had been safe at Nucky's, or at least safer than she was now. He had pulled her into something darker and dangerous just because he wanted her.

Clara reached out and took his hand. "It's okay, really. This isn't the first tragedy Jimmy and I have seen each other through."

She looked back over at Jimmy, who was slumped against the wall. "It's not just alcohol, is it?"

Richard wouldn't look at her. She squeezed his hand.

"It's. Mmm. I think it's. Heroin."

"What's that?" Clara asked.

New York City June 1918

"I'm beginning to regret my decision to go," Clara told Angela while Angela slipped more of Tommy's belongings into a box." Tommy just started walking, and now I'm going to miss his first birthday. He'll be talking in complete sentences and have a favorite chop suey order by the time I get back."

"You've been plotting to get yourself to Europe since the moment I met you," Angela said, pushing down her anxiety about leaving the little world they had made on the Upper East Side and moving to Atlantic City while Clara steamed across the ocean. "There's no way you aren't going to go."

"Thank goodness Daddy is such a relentless social climber. The letter from Rose's mother, telling him how much they hoped he'd let me come to Europe and how I could spend my leaves at their manor house was like catnip. He couldn't resist. The fact that they've allowed Rose to work as a nurse on the front lines also helped, although he's still made me swear to stay away from France. I'm fairly certain Daddy's busy planning my marriage to the eldest son of a duke, and how he'll spend the rest of his life talking about his daughter, the Duchess of A Drafty Old Castle."

Angela laughed. "You're horrid. Your father loves you."

Clara smiled a little sadly. "He does love me. But Daddy... he's like a gambler, the kind who can't stop gambling."

Angela looked up at her, puzzled.

"The casino, sometimes Daddy would take us and I'd sit and watch people gamble. Some people gamble because they were having a night out and it was a fun thing to do, some people gamble to show off to their friends, but some people gamble because they couldn't not gamble. They were incapable of not making a bet. Daddy's incapable of not seeing the world by what advantages are available to him. So, yes, he loves me, but he's planned my entire life by what advantages I can bring him. When I was little, my mother and I made him look like a dependable family man. Then I was the motherless daughter holding her brave father's hand, which bought him votes. Sending me to Foxcroft brought a new echelon of people into his social circle, and gave me entry into social levels that he can't reach. Even working at the War Department, he pulled strings and found me a job where I meet people he considers desirable. Uncle Eli says he talks in hushed tones about letting me leave school and work for the good of the country when that's not anything like what he thinks. I know he basically smacks his lips when he thinks about marrying me off, to someone who will raise Nucky Thompson's profile, or bring him new political contacts, or get him written about in the society pages of the New York Times."

"What advantage does looking after Tommy and I offer Nucky?" Angela asked quietly.

It puts Jimmy in Daddy's debt, Clara thought with a flash of clarity. We won't be children when this over, and Daddy's still furious with Jimmy. He'd like Jimmy to feel indebted.

"Daddy takes his responsibilities very seriously," Clara answered.

Princeton July 1921

Clara woke up with the side of her face pressed against the floor and her blue knit sailors dress clinging to her body. She peered at the clock on the mantel and saw it wasn't quite midnight. Some days last years, Clara thought. It was just that morning she'd bathed, dressed in this blue dress she now never wanted to wear again and went with her father and Margaret to retrieve Emily from the hospital. It was just after lunch that Richard appeared in Margaret's foyer and said he loved her, that he needed her.

You were right, Angela, Clara thought. You'll be pinning flowers in my hair for my wedding. A wave of grief slammed against her so hard her body clenched in pain. It was selfish grief, she knew, but it still sliced against her with razor-sharp blows. Who was she going to tell about Richard in that foyer, who was going to celebrate when her Bobbsey Twin book was published, who would she giggle with over red wine or whiskey sours? Who knew all her little secrets?

"She was so beautiful," Jimmy said blearily.

Clara rolled over so she could see him. He was lying on his stomach with an empty whiskey bottle so near his mouth it made her think of Tommy as a baby, when he'd fall asleep with a bottle on the pillow next to him. She blinked at the idea of Angela being beautiful in the past tense.

"When I met her, she had these long brown curls, and she was just the sweetest person I'd ever known. I hurt her so much. I was the worst thing that ever happened to her."

Tell him that's not true, Clara thought, her urge to fix things for Jimmy rising. "She loved you," was what she landed on. Clara's mind fixated on the that it was their fault Angela was dead.

I promised to take care of her, Clara remembered. I failed. We failed.

"Being back here, it's like I can feel her, like she was before the war."

"Like she was when she was scared and told your she was going to have a baby and you responded by joining the Army and not speaking to her or even writing her for a little over three years?"

"Fuck you, Clara," Jimmy hissed and then turned away from her. She heard the sound of paper rustling.

Clara pounced and landed with a thud on top of Jimmy.

"God damn it, Clara, get off me."

"What the fuck, Jimmy? Remember Tommy? This is how you make it up to Angela for what we did to her, by crawling into some drugged out numbness?"

He grabbed her arm and twisted with a quick move, which resulted in Clara with her back on the floor and Jimmy looming over her.

It was the way her bright eyes looked up at him, with her fair hair falling over her cheek and her chest rising with rapid breaths. For a moment, he forgot it was Clara underneath him. For a moment, her hair took on a reddish hue, her freckles disappeared, and he didn't see his sister.

For the first time in their lives, Clara wasn't safe locked in a room with Jimmy, because for the first time, he didn't see her.

He saw his mother.

Atlantic City: November 1918

Angela startled awake, her head feeling like a drum was beating inside of it. She and Clara had finished off a bottle of red wine after Tommy went to sleep. Clara had fallen asleep in the bed next to her, but now Angela was alone. Rubbing her eyes, she saw Clara was sitting on the floor next to Tommy's cot, rubbing his back.

"Is he okay?" Angela whispered when she crawled to the end of the bed.

"He woke up, so I rubbed his back until he fell back asleep," Clara whispered back.

The moonlight streamed over Clara's face, and Angela desperately wanted her pencils. When Clara stepped off the train two days ago, Angela had been taken back by how different she looked from the young woman who left in June. The apple-cheeked fullness was gone from her face, the circles under her eyes were so dark they looked like bruises, and she'd clearly lost a lot of weight.

With the moonlight casting shadows, Clara looked even thinner and more delicate. Her clavicle was worrying visible under the open neck of her pajama top, and Angela imagined her skeleton was noticeably visible under the thin skin of her face. It was only two years since Clara had walked into that Princeton diner, but suddenly she looked at least ten years older.

"I'll put the kettle on," Angela said quietly. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she sliced bread and spread jam across it.

Clara sipped the tea and toyed with the bread. Angela tried to remember if she'd seen Clara take more than a bite or two since she'd been back.

"What happened?" Angela finally asked.

"It's not like I was in the trenches or anything," Clara answered.

No, Angela thought, but something happened. It was written in the darkness in Clara's eyes.

"You know, that day I found myself following you back to Atlantic City, I was in your room thinking, what have I done. I barely knew Jimmy, and I didn't know you at all. And then I saw Seventeen on your bookshelf, picked it up, and thought, this girl has terrible taste in books. But then you came back into the room, asked what I thought about living in New York, and asked if I had read that book because it was hard to believe the same man who wrote The Turmoil wrote that tripe. I knew any girl who hated Seventeen was a girl I'd get along well with."

"Well, and after living with you, my taste in art definitely improved. I didn't understand futurism at all until you took me to every exhibit in the city," Clara answered with a smile. "We had fun, didn't we?"

Angela covered Clara's hand with her own. "Clara, I never was in one place long enough to make a real friend, not one like you."

"You, Rose and Romola are the only real girl friends I've ever had," Clara said quietly. "And as close as I am with them..."

They sat quietly as the first light of day started filtering through the kitchen window.

Clara took a deep breath. She carefully chose her words, because, as the pain in her heart knew all too well, what she experienced wasn't a patch on what Jimmy experienced. The place where warmth used to live in her soul felt barren, so what was Jimmy going through? How could she add to Angela's worry?

"We were setting up a communication station and temporary headquarters in an area with a field hospital. The end of the war," Clara swallowed, "it was just...relentless. The Huns knew they were losing, but they wouldn't stop. They attacked the hospital." She stopped talking.

Angela felt all the empty spaces were the words Clara should be speaking but wasn't. "Is there something else?"

Clara pulled her hand away. "It's foolish."

"You aren't a foolish person," Angela thought for a moment. "A man?" she asked softly, watching Clara's hands destroy the toast into crumbs." You fell in love?"

"I always thought falling in love would be ball breakfasts and walking through the moonlight and kissing in the rain," Clara whispered.

"You were with him?"

Clara nodded without looking up.

Angela exhaled deeply. Suddenly, she was seized with the desire to tell Clara about Mary, to tell Clara how desperately lonely she had been after Clara climbed the gangway of the ship that was going to take her on a grand adventure in Europe. Angela decamped to a small apartment in a city she'd barely seen. Gillian, Jimmy's mother, who looked like an older sister, was the only person she knew. Gillian had limited patience for a messy baby, and the lonely girl her son had knocked up. And then she had taken Tommy into the photography studio to have his picture made and fell into conversation about the elements of composition in photographs with the pretty assistant.

Mary. Suddenly her life had new purpose, new meaning. Conversations with someone who cared about art, about creativity gave new depth to her days. Going to bed with Jimmy was terrific, but with Mary, it was even better. Mary knew exactly how to use her hands and mouth to play Angela's body like a violin. It was a level of connection and pleasure beyond anything Angela ever knew. As soon as Mary left, Angela started counting the moments until they could see each other again.

"Is there any chance?" Angela asked, seized with worry.

Clara shook her head. "I've had my monthly since then."

Good, Angela thought. Clara was strong. She would survive a broken heart. An out of wedlock child was harder to overcome.

"There's no chance?"

Clara shook her head again. They continued to sit quietly in the gentle morning light, Angela noting subconsciously how her kitchen looked as the day slowly broke over Atlantic City.

"Where is Jimmy?" Angela asked suddenly.

At Walter Reed, Clara thought, he almost died, the doctor's saved his leg only by the miracle of modern science. I don't know that he'll ever walk again. I don't know that he'll ever break through the shell of his anger. It's why I accepted the job in D.C., so I can go visit.

"Waiting for transport back to the States like everyone else," Clara responded, keeping her promise to her oldest love and breaking one to her dearest friend.

Princeton: July 1919

For one wild moment, Clara thoughtJimmy was going to kiss her. Was that lust in his eyes, she thought, shock freezing her in place for a moment, and then she felt him growing against her the top of her thigh.

"Jimmy, stop! Get off me!"

He stared at her blankly, and Clara's stomach soured with fear and confusion. "It's me, Jimmy! It's Clara! It's me, Clara!"

Clara, he thought, her terrified face coming back into focus. Oh, damn, Clara. He rolled off and fought the urge to vomit.

Clara scrambled to her feet and moved across the room.

"I was happy, Clara. I had Angela. I liked school. And then Ma came."

Oh no, Clara thought, no. In her wild anger and hurt that night at Babette's, she had hissed at Richard 'he is extraordinarily loyal to the woman he beds.' She had known in her soul, she had worried, she had thought, but she hadn't known for sure. Not until now.

"Jimmy, I'm so sorry," she breathed out. She meant she was sorry it happened. She meant she was sorry she had mocked him.

"There was this professor, I really liked him. When Ma came, we went to this party and she said he did things to her. He didn't realize she was my mother, he..."

He didn't do it, Clara instinctively thought. Gillian couldn't bear to see Jimmy flourishing away from her, in a world where she would never have a place.

"I'd introduced Ma and Angela, and she kept asking if I loved that skinny girl..."

A ghost of a smile crossed over Clara's face. Gillian's jealousy. "Gillian's always been jealous of anyone you cared about." She's been jealous of me since I was probably still inside my mother's body. But when my breasts came in? Clara shuddered at the memories.

"She said how lonely she was, Clara, that she was the loneliest person in the world."

Of course she said that, Clara thought. She's always made her happiness, her contentment your job in life. You should have stayed in the Army. You should have stayed away from Atlantic City, from her, from us.

"She was really drunk, and I was just helping her, and then Clara, somehow I was, I was, and she's my mother.."

"No," Clara said, crossing the room and grabbing Jimmy's hands. "She's your mother, you are her child. It's not your fault, Jimmy, she was always, even when we were children she would..." Clara grasped for the ability to put into words what she had known since childhood. "She didn't behave like a mother would."

"Was that the only time?" Clara asked, remembering their childhood, remembering Gillian's jealousy, how she needed to own Jimmy, to always be the first thing in his life, the first in his heart, the first...

"Jimmy," she asked again. "Was that the only time?"

He shook his head slowly.

Atlantic City: December 1919

How many times had she attended her father's parties at Babette's, she wondered as she stood on the balcony and watched the party her father had thrown to welcome her home spin? He'd started teaching her how to plan them when she was ten or so, her first task using her convent school handwriting to address envelopes. Clara smoothed the blue satin underdress under the spiky, black velvet vest that covered the dress's top. It was like the war never happened, because the party certainly never stopped.

"Having a good time, kiddo?" Nucky asked. He had been watching her all night. He had fucking known that he shouldn't let her go to Europe. She'd looked skeletal and haunted when she'd returned last year. Clara always looked like Mabel, but in those horrible days she'd looked like Mabel towards the end. Nucky pushed the thought away. Clara was a Thompson. She'd survived that girlish foolishness, and look at her now. Healthy and wearing a beautiful Worth evening gown, looking like the princess she was. Oh, she was quieter and less spirited than she had been at eighteen, but that was just maturity. She had grown up.

It's how he knew he had made the right decision.

"It's a lovely party, Daddy, thank you." Clara took a deep breath. "We need to talk about Jimmy."

Nucky gritted his teeth. "James made his decisions. Now it's time for you to make yours."

Clara didn't say anything. What decisions? The men were back, she'd lost her job with the War Department and moved back from D.C. There wasn't much she'd remember fondly from the last year. Jimmy's pain and fury, her own numb darkness...and then the nights in her room, where she started writing a novel about pirates that was absolutely terrible as an attempt to stave off the nightmares from her childhood that had returned in the aftermath of Europe. Writing that awful book made her write other things, though, and she'd sold her first article in October. She knew she didn't want to stop writing. She knew her father wasn't going to be happy. He wanted her to be the society girl he'd raised her to be now that she was back.

"Did you meet Darcy Blaine?" Nucky asked

Clara thought back over everyone she had met. Ah, she thought, the good looking young man who was spent a few minutes chatting with her talking only about himself and the things he owned.

"Yes."

Nucky's eyes narrowed. Clara was so different, what was wrong with her? It came to him like a revelation.

"There was someone during the war?"

Clara's cheeks flamed, and she wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Who?" Nucky asked. "Who was it?"

Clara didn't answer. There's no way to explain it, Daddy, she thought, the memories she'd worked hard to push down threatening to bubble back up. "It's not like I had a real war, it's not like what Jimmy went through," Clara half-whispered, barely aware she'd spoken.

"You've seen James," Nucky breathed out. Damn it, he thought. After all these years, after he impregnated Angela and had Tommy to look after, now was when James breached the childhood bond between he and Clara?

Clara's hands traced the handkerchief hem of the vest. "He's been at Walter Reed since January. Rather, he was. He was discharged a couple of weeks ago and disappeared. But Angela and Tommy are here, he'll come home soon enough."

God damn James, Nucky thought. "You've known where James was this whole time?"

Clara bit her lip and nodded.

Now he was confident he was doing the right thing. "I know what I'd like for you to give me for Christmas."

"Okay," Clara asked, a little thrown by the quick change of topic. "What is it?"

"Darcy Blaine is going to ask you to marry him. You are going to accept."

Clara half-laughed out of shock. "What? We've barely exchanged a hundred words."

"He's the son of one of the most powerful political families in the state, Clara." My world is going to change, Nucky thought. You'll be better off away from me, in a family with their own estates, before Prohibition changes everything. Before James comes back.

"I can't marry someone I don't love," Clara said, horrified.

"Apparently you loved someone but it didn't bring you happiness," because James is still an irresponsible child who wasn't content with saddling you with his mistress and his baby, he needed to toy with you as well, Nucky thought furiously. "So why not chose to make a life with someone who can make you happy?"

"Darcy Blaine couldn't keep me interested for five minutes of conversation."

"Don't be childish, Clara. You've had your great adventure. It's time to grow up and live the life you were meant to live," Nucky answered. "After all, you are going to want me to take James in when he returns, aren't you?"

Clara gasped. "You want me to marry someone I don't love, that I don't even know if I like, and in return you'll let Jimmy work for you?"

"I'll let him exist in Atlantic City."

She stood on the balcony and watched people she'd known her whole life dance beneath her. Was that all love was going to be for her, she wondered, a bright flame that disappeared so quickly sometimes it felt more like a dream? And now she was going to give up any chance of finding it again to marry a man her father picked out, to make him happy, to secure Jimmy's future? To make sure Angela and Tommy were provided for?

What did it matter, she thought tiredly. She couldn't remember the last time she really felt anything anyway.

"Merry Christmas, Father."

Princeton/Atlantic City: July 1921

Richard watched his car on the road in front of him, where Clara was driving carefully through the New Jersey night with Jimmy next to her. Tiredness bit at him, but he pushed it away as he drove Jimmy's car (the clutch on Jimmy's car had been acting up for months, and he hadn't wanted Clara to have to deal with it, so he had handed her the keys to his car. There was no way Jimmy was in any shape to drive). He'd been awake for thirty-six hours, but he had been awake for longer.

But had any thirty-six hours ever felt longer? Angela's cold, pale body. Mr. Thompson glaring at him while he stood in Mrs. Schroeder's house and told Clara he loved her. Clara back in his room, and then going after Jimmy, who had fallen down into a bottle of booze and one of Luciano's paper packets of heroin. Trying to make sense of the deliveries in Jimmy's notebook.

When he opened the door to the room at the Inn, exhausted to his core from running back and forth to Atlantic City to fulfill Jimmy's orders, he saw Jimmy and Clara sitting together in the back of the room. For a moment, a fierce pang of missing Emma sliced through him.

Richard didn't know it, but it was the way they sat aschildren when life went wrong. Against a wall, Clara's knees pulled up to her chest, Jimmy's legs akimbo, leaned against each other, the only nod to adulthood the cigarette they silently passed back and forth. Light had flooded the room and receded once more, but neither knew what time it was when Richard opened the door.

Clara walked out with Richard when he took their unopened valise to the car.

"Is he. Okay?" Richard asked.

"No, he's not," Clara turned, so she was looking out over the railroad. "Jimmy is going to need our help."

Richard waited, feeling Clara was going to say more. "With whatever it is the two of you are going to do, but with Tommy."

"His. Mother won't help. With Tommy?"

Clara turned to him, and the look on her face was fierce and haunted. "If it takes every last breath in my body, I'll make sure Gillian won't get her hands near Tommy ever again," her voice broke. "I failed Angela. I lied to her, I chose Jimmy over her, I wasn't ever as good a friend to her as she was to me. And Jimmy...he failed her, too. So this is what we are going to do. We are going to protect Tommy."

Richard thought about those words as they entered Atlantic City and parked in front of the Commodore's heavily turreted mansion, and Mrs. Darmody opened the front door.

Author's Note: This is the end of following canon more or less faithfully. From now on, anything can happen. I'd love to hear what you think is about to occur!