A/N: I am a monster.

"Just go," Clara whispered when they got into the Ford, her fingertips smoothing and smoothing the pleats in her dress.

Richard glanced back at the house, half expecting Sleater or Thompson himself to come out shooting. They were silent on the ride to his room, but Clara's shoulder pressed against his arm, even though she looked straight ahead the entire time.

The silence continued when they reached his place. Clara felt shy as they walked in, like they hadn't done it dozens of times before. As she looked around she realized all traces of her were gone. The pillow, the quilt, even the toaster were missing.

"All. Of your things. Are in. Your dresser. I..." his voice trailed off. He didn't know how to tell her that he missed her and that seeing her things made her absence hurt even more.

Clara closed her eyes, and felt Richard behind her moments before she heard the sound of tin striking wood. His hand was still there, carefully lining up the mask with the edge of the desk. She ran her hand down the green tweed of his jacket, past the blue poplin of his shirt cuff, and on to the skin of his hand. A sigh escaped without her notice.

These were the last moments of their before. Everything that was about to happen, Clara thought as she drummed her fingers softly against his hand, it was going to propel them into the after. She didn't know what the after would be, and her stomach twisted in peremptory agony.

But right now, right now Richard had come to get her. They were no longer a secret. They were no longer apart, she was back in his room, where she had been so happy. Slowly Clara began to turn until she faced him.

He wasn't making eye contact with her. Clara reached up, running her right hand across the left side of his face.

Her hand was warm, and on instinct, he leaned into it and brought his own hand up to cover hers. He reveled in the warm softness of her hand, how alive it was, as he tried to banish the cold, dense feeling of Angela Darmody's hand from his mind.

"Clara," he tried to begin.

She shook her head. "Not yet, okay? I know...there are all sorts of things we have to talk about. And I know there's something else waiting. But not yet."

They stood without speaking. Richard finally looked at her. "I knew. You would. Look pretty. With a bob."

"So far I haven't pulled the hair out of my scalp," Clara answered, mustering a weak smile. But that might change soon, she thought.

Richard looked back down. A storm of feelings brewed inside him, more feelings than he could name or identify as the adrenaline rush that had seen him through leaving the Darmody house and going for Clara faded away. Now Clara was back with him, but standing in front of him looking lost and unsure. He wanted to tell her what having her hand on his face meant to him, that he couldn't believe she was back standing with him in his room, that missing her had hurt so badly it felt like physical pain, but he couldn't think of how to say it. Then he realized Clara had already given him the words.

"I thought. Mmm. About kissing you. A lot. Did you. Think about kissing me?"

Clara blinked as she recognized her own phrasing, and whispered, "Every day."

He put his hand on the back of her head and pulled her to him, hearing the half-breath Clara always drew before they kissed as he did. Part of him was afraid that after being away, after kissing Luciano, Clara would finally be disgusted by the ruined side of his mouth. Instead he felt her mouth open under his, and her right hand reached up to brush along the thick scar on the left side of his face, until her hand entwined in his hair and she used both hands to bring his face down more firmly upon hers. He felt himself melt into her, into the feeling of sweet escape from the prison of his mind that the physicality of Clara always offered, and finally he put his other hand against her back and gently pushed her torso against his.

What she wanted most was to drown into the kiss, to sink to the floor and pull Richard down with her, to forget about Atlantic City and families and booze and everything that wasn't the two of them, alone, in his room. If she had her wish, she'd stretch out on the floor and pretend to close her eyes while Richard unclipped her stockings, but really she'd be watching from under her eyelashes because she adored the serious look on his face at such moments, the way his eyebrows knit together as he undressed her or touched her.

Instead, when they broke the kiss so each could breathe, like swimmers emerging for air, Clara placed her forehead against his. This the end of this part of us, Clara thought. After this moment, I'm going to be different. We are going to be different.

"It's Jimmy, isn't it?" Clara said, her voice already heavy with emotion. "Something's happened to Jimmy."

Richard tightened his grasp on her arms and gently pushed her back, until she was sitting in the desk chair and he was kneeling in front of her. Clara's eyes were already bright with pain, and he wondered how many times this year he'd already seen such blinding pain on her face.

"No," he finally forced out, and he saw questioning look on Clara's face. "It's. Mmm. It's Angela."

"Tell me what I can do," Nucky snarled at his lawyer while he upended yet another box of his daughter's possessions onto the bed. Everything from purses to notebooks to an old stuffed velvet bunny fell out.

"To get your daughter back?" Fallon asked, turning to look at Mrs. Schroeder and Owen Sleater, who both stood in the corner watching Thompson destroy the room.

"Yes, to stop my daughter from ruining her fucking life!" Nucky barked back as he went through the purses, finding a small album of pictures.

"Well, not even a judge you bribed, if you could even afford to bribe one, is going to believe she's mentally deficient. How old is she?"

"Clara will be twenty-three in two weeks," Margaret said.

"So she's an adult, and you can only make medical decisions for her in certain situations. I think you need to let Clara make her own choices, and focus on your trial."

"What about Mann violations? If they leave the state, we could have them arrested, correct?" Nucky asked.

"You want to have Clara arrested on sex trafficking charges?" Margaret asked in disbelief.

"Nucky, the last thing you want is for your daughter or a man who used to work for you to fall into Esther Randolph's waiting claws with charges hanging over them. Especially if they are angry with you." Nucky was furiously flipping the pages of his daughter's photograph album and didn't respond. "I'm going back to the hotel and we'll resume work tomorrow."

Margaret tried to smile at the attorney as he left.

"Look at these pictures," Nucky said angrily.

Margaret pushed down a sigh and looked. Clara handing Mr. Harrow a lit candle as they stood in front of a Christmas tree. The two of them dancing. With the good side of the Tin Man's profile facing the camera, they were quite an attractive couple, Margaret thought. A picture of Mr. Harrow alone, but he was looking full faced down at the person taking the picture, his hair was mussed, and the good side of his face relaxed. Clara must have taken it.

"Don't you see?" Nucky asked her.

"No," Margaret said, as she fought the urge to say, don't I see that your daughter has been madly in love with Mr. Harrow for months, that practically everyone else in Atlantic City knew? Yes. Only you missed it.

"This has been going on since what, Christmas? No," Nucky said and turned back to face Owen and Margaret. "Teddy said Clara had always loved the Tin Man. Was Harrow taking liberties last summer?"

Out of those two, chances are it was your precious Clara taking liberties, Margaret thought.

"I don't think so, no. It was just obvious that Clara and Mr. Harrow were friends. She was different with him than she was with us, more open, like they'd known each other for years."

"They'd barely met!" Nucky said through gritted teeth, and looked at the pictures again.

"She screamed for him," he whispered.

"I'm sorry, sir?" Owen asked.

"When the fucking d'Alessios attacked her," Nucky said. "James and Harrow were with me. She saw us in the lobby, she was leaving out the side street entrance with O'Bryan, going to the damn library. We went out the main door, I was getting in the car, and then Harrow started running. Even before she screamed, he was running.

"When she screamed, she didn't just cry out. She didn't scream for me. She didn't scream for James. I would have expected Clara to scream for James," he said, looking up at Margaret and Owen like they would understand what he was saying. "It would have made sense if she screamed for James. But she screamed for him."

"Harrow?" Owen confirmed.

"And then she let him pick her up and stay with her, like her trust in him was just..." Nucky's voice drifted into nothingness, and then he started throwing Clara's belongings from the bed onto the floor, looking for something, until he found a copy of Tennyson's Idylls of the King and snatched it up, showing the cover to Margaret and Owen. "It all makes sense, don't you see?"

Neither Margaret nor Owen spoke.

"Clara's always loved stories about King Arthur, about courtly love. It's Mabel! It all goes back to Mabel. It's left Clara afraid of normal relationships, so she's concocted this fantasy where she's the princess and Harrow is the courtly knight whose love is pure so she doesn't have to worry about the unseemly side of a relationship. It's why she broke things off with Darcy Blaine. I don't know why I didn't see it before."

"Clara's concocted this fantasy?" Margaret asked.

Eddie walked in at that moment, so obviously upset he didn't even notice the destruction of the boxes from the Ritz that an hour before were neatly stacked against the wall.

"Nucky, Angela Darmody has been murdered," Eddie said breathlessly.

"Dear God!" Margaret exclaimed, feeling sick.This life, she thought. They were all paying. Emily paralyzed, Angela Darmody dead.

"That explains it, don't you see?" Nucky asked. "It's really because of James, not Harrow."

Neither Margaret nor Owen looked at him.

"That's not all. Your brother has been arrested."

"Damn it! Get the car, Eddie, I'm going to the hotel to talk to Fallon," Nucky snapped, stepping around the disaster of Clara's room.

After he left, Margaret and Owen stared at each other.

"I suppose no father wants to think of his little girl enjoying being bedded," Owen said with a smirk."But Mr. Thompson is reaching new levels of denial."

Margaret looked around the disaster of a room. She thought of Nucky, last year, when he found the Listerine douche she was using, when he threw it against the dresser mirror, breaking it.

"Do you know what a Dutch Cap is?" she asked quietly.

Owen looked up at her, surprised. "I've heard of such. Why?"

"Clara has one. We have to find it before Nucky decides to search her room again. It's better if we don't disturb his fantasy."

Their eyes met, and Margaret knew what they were both thinking. If Nucky was this unhinged over the idea of Clara and Harrow, what be his response if he found out about them?

"No," Clara said with despair in her voice. "Angela's fine. I saw her yesterday. We're going to Rhode Island tomorrow, to stay with Rose Grenville's grandmother. We are taking her friend Louise and Tommy. Angela's going to paint, Louise and I are going to write, we'll all help take care of Tommy. I was going to tell you, because I need to go get them settled, but then I'll go back and forth..."

Richard swallowed, wishing that just for once he could go back to speaking normally. "Clara. Someone broke. Into the beach. House. Angela and her. Friend. Were shot."

"No. Because that's not right. Angela was happy, she really liked Louise, I could tell. She had just started a new painting. And Tommy, in another year he'll be starting school and Angela will have so much more time and she can really paint seriously...." Clara rattled off, desperation in her voice.

Richard squeezed her hands.

"Tommy?" Clara asked.

"He's fine. He was at. His grandparents. He's with. Gillian."

Clara's stomach twisted and she thought was going to be sick. Tommy was with Gillian at the Commodore's terrifying mausoleum, because Angela was dead. Angela, dead. The words were in her mind but they made no sense. How could Angela be dead when her life was so unfinished, when there were paintings to create and Tommy to raise and a whole life still to find?

Tommy, Clara thought and fear and grief rose up. "No, she can't be dead. Tommy just turned four, he needs his mother. He's just a baby, Richard. Sometimes she still has to rub his back to help him get to sleep. How can a four-year-old's mother be dead? He hasn't even started school or made a best friend or broken a bone or played a sport. Angela has to be there for those things, he's going to need her there. Little kids need their mothers. Angela would never leave Tommy, she would never leave her baby, she's not like that, because..."

The sobs finally over took her, and she clung to Richard. He knew his own tears were intermingling with hers. Angela dead, Tommy left motherless. He hadn't thought about that, and tightened his arms around Clara, knowing it was the motherless child within Clara making her understand the pain that little boy was about to go through.

Clara wasn't sure how long she lay against Richard crying. Angela's dead, her brain kept chanting, making it hard for her to think. "Angela said Jimmy went to Princeton? Booze run?"

"Yes," Richard said.

"Does he know? Is he coming home?"

"Gillian. Called him. He's not, he..."

He's not handling it well, Clara thought, and she felt a new flash of agony thinking of Jimmy's pain.

"Who killed her? Were they after Jimmy?"

Richard didn't answer.

She turned to look at him. "We can't have secrets. You came to get me, so now you have to tell me."

Richard swallowed, and began to tell her the tale of Manny Horvitz, Philadelphia butcher. How Mickey Doyle helped Jimmy make a deal with Horvitz to sell him booze. The warehouse that blew up with the promised booze inside. Jimmy's refusal to return Horvitz's money to him, Jimmy throwing Mickey off the balcony at Babette's, Mickey landing almost at Horvitz's feet. Finally, Jimmy paid the butcher but sent Mickey with the money instead of going to see the man in person.

We all killed Angela, Clara thought. I, because I keep Jimmy's secrets no matter what. I should have gotten her out of Atlantic City when this started. Jimmy, because he refused to deal with a situation he created. My father, because he blew up that warehouse. Gillian, because she manipulates Jimmy for her own reasons. And my father again, because he made Gillian.

Angela was dead, Clara's thoughts continued, because twenty-four years ago my father handed a twelve-year-old Gillian over to the Commodore. We are all paying for that original sin.

"Okay, let's go get him."

Richard looked at her.

"Tommy needs his father. Jimmy has to come home, and Jimmy is...hurting. He needs us." Clara stood up. "Do you have a valise? It's so late we'll probably have to spend the night in Princeton."

Clara went to the dresser and started pulling things out. Richard had packed everything away carefully, she saw. Her toiletry bag had all of her things inside except for her bar of soap, which he had wrapped in paper. The book she was reading the night she left, clean step-ins, stockings, her old favorite summer dress she'd just gotten back from having altered and hadn't even worn yet, her kimono, all were still here.

"I knew. You left your. Favorite. Things. I didn't know. How to get them. To you."

She reached out and put her hand on his wrist. "I'm glad all of my favorite things were still here waiting for me.

Richard put the leather bag that he'd once used to carry the German sniper mask around with him on the bed. Clara handed him a pile of her things and he put them in the valise next to what he was taking.

The phone rang while Clara was taking her stockings off and changing into her straw flats for the drive.

"Mmm, Mrs. Darmody. I..."

Clara was across the room in a flash. "Let me," she whispered to Richard. "Gillian, how is Tommy?"

There was silence on the line. "Clara?"

"Richard and I are about to go get Jimmy. How's Tommy?"

"Tommy is with his Mema, so he's fine. He hasn't even asked about Angela. Do you think it necessary you go with Richard to get Jimmy? We don't really need your help, Clara."

"We'll call you. Tell Tommy we love him." Clara hung up and stared down at the phone. It felt like ice water was running through her veins.

"Are you. Ready?" Richard asked, valise in hand.

Clara nodded.