Author's Note: I mean, there's more angst. It's just that part of the story.

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 he finished greeting Teddy.

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.