Elkton, Maryland
There was no dawdling the next morning. Tommy was staring at them from the doorway before the sun was up, confused about where he was and asking for breakfast. Consulting the train station timetable, they realized they could catch the second train north if they hurried. Convincing Tommy to cooperate wasn't easy, but between the two of them they had him dressed and everyone packed quickly. They only had to stop at the courthouse to pick up their marriage certificate.
"Get as many copies as they'll let you. I'd like five, but three at least," Clara asked when they arrived at the courthouse, since she planned to stay outside with Tommy, who was complaining about his lack of breakfast.
He nodded but had no idea why she wanted so many. Clara bit her lip.
"Sometimes official paperwork disappears. I feel like that's why Mr. Whitlock told us to come here, at least in part. Atlantic City's influence is much weaker in Maryland. But I'd still feel better if we had extras, just in case."
He came back with four and watched Clara divide them between their suitcase and her handbag. They caught their train and took Tommy to the dining car. A plate of waffles made Tommy happy, while he and Clara were content with coffee.
"I don't know how you drink it like that," Clara commented.
"Mmm. Through a straw?"
She smiled at him. "Very funny. I meant black."
"Mmm. I don't know how. You drink dessert for breakfast. You've had more. Milk then Tommy." Clara slipped her hand under the table and laced her fingers into his. He cleared his throat before he continued. "Are you. Worried about telling your father?"
It took her a moment to answer. "I worry about so much that sometimes it's hard to know what I should really worry about and what I'm being ridiculous over. Right now, especially, it feels like all my worries are twisted into a tangled ball of yarn and I can't quite separate them into distinct strands. But he can't do anything. We're both over twenty-one, we're married, it's in Maryland's roll book, we have copies of the certificate, we...made it official." Clara cleared her throat. "Twice. He won't like it, but what can he do? Besides, he has his own troubles to worry about."
Richard tightened his grip on her hand. He didn't know what Nucky would do, could do. But Leander Whitlock was concerned enough to tell him to marry Clara without delay to lessen Nucky's ability to punish her for choosing Jimmy's side, for choosing to leave with him that day.
And Richard had his own fears for Jimmy. If Nucky made it through the trial, Richard wasn't certain Jimmy would survive.
After all, everyone knew the punishment for treason was death.
***
Darmody Beach House
The smell hit them as they climbed out of the Ford. The acrid smell of burnt wood, paper, cloth. Another smell, more chemical, burned their noses. Richard flashed back to France, the pretty villages set aflame by stray shells, the scent of hundreds of years of history turning to ashes. He froze in place, no longer seeing the beach house.
Clara's hand twisted into her skirt and a feeling of nausea rose within her. It felt like she was boiling from within. Closing her eyes she repeated silently I'm in Atlantic City I'm in Atlantic City I'm in Atlantic City. Someone's burning trash someone's burning trash someone's burning trash. I'm in Atlantic City.
"Come on," Tommy said, pulling at Richard's hand. "I want to go inside."
Richard nodded, looking down at the boy and trying to refocus on where he was. Looking over at Clara, he saw the dazed expression on her face as she stared blankly toward the house.
"Clara?"
Someone was saying her name. Someone. She knew...I'm in Atlantic City, it's Richard, I'm fine, she thought and turned toward them, trying to smile.
"Are you. Okay?"
She nodded, pushing away the memories buzzing on the edge of her conscious mind. "I should have eaten something. That smell, it's making me sick."
The front door opened and a young woman came out carrying the kitchen rug. A little boy, a smidge younger than Tommy, peeped out from behind her.
Richard pulled Tommy closer to him.
"You must be Tommy," the woman said with a smile.
Richard and Clara shared a glance.
"I'm Mae Capone, I'm here with my husband? And this is our little boy, Sonny."
Clara stared without saying anything, so Richard took a breath and answered. "I'm Richard Harrow. And this is. Mmm. My wife, Clara."
"Nice to meet you," Clara said.
Walking inside was walking into a house transformed. The curtains were ripped from the sunroom windows, the shelves were missing, and broken glass crunched underfoot. The walls were missing Angela's artwork.
"Somebody broke my house!" Tommy cried out.
"Don't. Touch anything," Richard said, seeing the broken glass was not just underfoot but on most surfaces..
"I'm still trying to get all the glass up," Mae said.
"What happened?" Clara asked.
Mae looked down. "It seems Al and Jimmy got to the house at some point yesterday and, well..."
"Daddy!" Tommy cried happily when Jimmy and Al came into the sunroom.
"Skeezit," Jimmy said, and bent down to put his arm around the boy.
"I didn't tell about the secret, and I was ring bringer again, and we ate cake in the hotel room," Jimmy told his father in a rush.
Capone and Jimmy stared. "You got married?" Jimmy asked finally. "That's why you went to Maryland?"
"Well ain't that something, Frankenstein. Married this one, did ya? Best of luck."
"Al, you don't wish Mr. Harrow luck. You tell him congratulations and we give our best wishes for a happy future to Mrs. Harrow," Mae interjected.
"Mrs. Harrow, Jesus," Jimmy muttered.
"What happened here?" Clara said in a voice so level and pleasant that it caused Richard to automatically step toward Tommy. It was a voice she only used when she was angry. When she was beyond angry.
"Just taking out the trash. You know, cleaning up some."
Richard pulled Tommy out of the room, and Mae Capone asked Tommy if he would like to play outside with Sonny. She nodded at Richard, who patted Tommy on the shoulder. He wasn't certain he should let Tommy out of his sight, but he was very certain Jimmy and Clara shouldn't be left alone for long.
"It's a shame you didn't start with a shower. I swear I can smell you from here. And did you burn things? What did..." Clara's eyes went back to the bare walls, to the bare wall over the sofa where the painting of Angela and Tommy playing on the beach should hang. It was Clara's favorite of all Angela's paintings, because it captured Angela and Tommy's relationship so perfectly.
"No," Clara said. "Jimmy, tell me you did not do it."
The look on Jimmy's face momentarily quelled Clara's anger. The pain and anguish was so raw that she took a half step towards him, her very oldest instinct always to help Jimmy when he was hurt.
"You'll never guess what I found when we were burning things last night," Jimmy responded. "The stationary was fancy. At first I thought, Jesus, Angela was fucking a higher class of woman than I thought. But alas for poor Angela, it wasn't one of her women but Clara's."
Capone looked from Jimmy to Clara nervously. Brothers and sisters brawled. He and Mafalda fought like back alley cats. But Mafalda didn't have Frankenstein ready to fight for her. And Mafalda was sweet and pious. Clara was, in Capone's opinion, a raging bitch who would benefit from a slap in the mouth.
"Rich, you've heard Clara speak of Rose Grenville, right? She says her name so off-handily. Just her school chum."
Richard half-nodded, barely listening. His attention was on the pile of debris, the remnants of a bonfire, outside the sunroom window. Angela's art. He could still see the paint that was usually under Angela's fingernails in his mind's eye, and the serious look on her face when she sketched him. Her art was so much a part of her, so much a part of this house, how could Jimmy have destroyed what was left of her?
"Well, she's really Lady Rose Grenville, daughter of the Earl of Danby. Clara doesn't mention that, does she? Our Clara, she slums it with us. But don't worry Richard, Lady Rose won't turn her nose up at Mrs. Harrow. See, Rose is now Lady Rose Malley, wife of her father's former employee. Clara marrying you barely rates as rebellion compared to Rose's marriage. Oh, I'm sorry, Lady Rose."
"Jimmy," Clara said.
"So I'm thinking, why the hell was Lady Rose writing Angela back in January of '20? Turns out Her Ladyship was very concerned about Clara. How melancholy she seemed in her letters. How miserable she sounded about her engagement to Darcy Blaine. And how she didn't quite seem to be recovering from her little wartime romance."
"Stop," Clara said through gritted teeth.
"See, Rich, while you were getting shelled in a tree and I was getting my leg blown to pieces do you know how sweet, pristine, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth Clara did her bit for the war effort? After all her conniving to get to Europe, do you know how she contributed? By spreading her legs for some injured officer. Did you even know his name, Clara, or did you...."
"Enough," Richard said, his attention now back on Jimmy and Clara.
"How fucking dare you," Clara breathed out.
"What I could never figure out is why you agreed to marry Blaine. Were you just hot for it? Any man on legs would do?"
Richard took another step towards Jimmy but Clara was closer and faster. She shoved Jimmy with all her strength.
"SHUT UP! Do you know why I had to let Darcy Blaine paw at me and breathe all over me and why I had to agree to marry him? Because that was the only way Father was going to let you back in Atlantic City! You were a fucking wreck in the hospital, so how dare you talk about my melancholy? You were a disaster, hell you are a disaster, but Tommy and Angela needed you. So that was the deal I made. A deal you totally mucked up, what, a month later when you and your little friend here played robbers in the woods and set off a war with Arnold Rothstein and you ended up banished to Chicago!"
"Nucky didn't want me back?" Jimmy asked quietly.
Clara pressed her hands over her eyes, trying to push back the tears. "Who the hell knows what Father wanted, wants. Maybe he just knew you are my weakness, that I'd agree to what he wanted if I thought it was the only way we'd get you back. What a fantastic choice on my part."
The silence was so heavy it lay over the sunroom like a thick quilt. Al wasn't good with silence, it made him uncomfortable, and he didn't like to be uncomfortable. It's why he liked people who were quick with a joke or a line. It's why he liked Jimmy Irish. Clara Thompson, well, Harrow, she was a whole different thing. And Frankenstein. Well, Frankenstein...
"Doncha worry about your officer, Clara. Jimmy here, he hired a whore for Frankenstein and Frankenstein gots the hots for her. Always wanting to know how she's doing. Same answer every time-she was a whore, she is a whore!" Al chuckled at his cleverness.
Five eyes moved to look at him. What the hell was wrong with these people, he wondered. He came to cheer Jimmy up, although the man had screwed up killing Thompson, screwed up a sure fire liquor deal, and he, his bitchy sister, and the freak were going to glare at him?
"Are we gonna talk business or what?" Al said, glaring at Clara.
Clara looked around the room, walked to the beach door, and proceeded to slam it so hard behind her the house rattled. How lovely, she reflected, to be able to send away another adult like a wayward child when you were tired of dealing with them.
She watched Tommy, who was chattering away, play with Capone's son. This is my life now, she realized with a start. I'm going to be sent outside or upstairs when it's time for the grownups to talk. Perhaps they'll let me serve dinner before I'm banished.
"Tommy is a very sweet boy," Mae Capone said.
Clara swallowed. "He is. Sonny seems very sweet as well." Very quiet, Clara thought. Tommy is talking his ear off.
"May I tell you a secret? Well, not a secret exactly, but something I don't tell most people?"
Clara turned and looked at Mae Capone, this time really looking at her. Mae was very pretty, and looked to be about Clara's age. Her dress was simple but lovely, and she was quite well spoken. In all ways she was far more refined than Clara would have expected the wife of that little troll Capone to be.
"Sonny isn't mine. That is, I didn't give birth to him. But I couldn't love him anymore if I had. My friend, she and Al...well. Her parents were Irish like mine, lace curtain Irish, and they didn't approve of their daughter with an Italian. They wouldn't consent to the marriage, and they sent her away when she was expecting. Then she died, and they refused to raise the baby. They dropped him off on the Capone stoop in Brooklyn. Just left him. Al came to tell me, and...
"I loved Al. I'd always loved Al, but he only ever looked at Kathleen. But when Sonny showed up on his doorstep, he needed a mother for him and so I got them both."
Imagine pining after that potato-faced troll, Clara thought to herself.
Mae saw the look on Clara's face. "I thought you'd understand loving someone when others might not see the attraction."
How dare this woman compare Richard to Capone, Clara thought furiously. Richard was lovely and...Oh. Somehow Capone was all of those things to Mae.
"You are right. My apologies," Clara stood for a moment watching the children. "As much as I love Tommy and Jimmy, I couldn't have married Jimmy, though."
Mae laughed. "Of course not! But you are effectively Tommy's aunt, are you not? Jimmy is very nice, but he's not steady. Your Mr. Harrow, he's steady. That boy is going to need steady, and he's going to need mothering."
Clara felt the world closing in on her. What had she been thinking, that Jimmy would suddenly be capable of doing all of this alone? In her heart she knew in a flash that if she stopped caring for Tommy Jimmy would undoubtedly hand him back over to Gillian, convincing himself that what happened between Gillian and Jimmy would never happen to Tommy. Clara refused to take that chance with Tommy.
"My mother in law, sister in law, and brothers in law all live with us. It's not perfect, but I have enough of what I want that it works out. Families don't have to be a mother, father, and their children. It can look how it needs to look."
***
The Capones had left, Tommy was napping upstairs, and Richard was trying to salvage what he could of Angela's possessions. Clara was sweeping, but she knew she wasn't doing a very good job of it.
"I'm happy for you both," Jimmy said quietly from the doorway.
"Yes, I can tell," Clara answered without looking up.
"So you are mad at me," Jimmy said.
The self-pity Clara heard in his voice made her want to pick up one of the glass shards and throw it at him. "How could you do that?" Clara asked. "I'd told Richard, but what if I hadn't? That was my story, Jimmy, and you just shared it with the world. Capone now knows about it. And it wasn't like...I didn't just. I wasn't in the trenches, and I've never compared what I went through to what you or Richard experienced. But I wasn't sitting around pouring tea and smiling at soldiers, either."
Clara leaned down to pick up spoons off the floor. The bottoms were burnt. "What happened to these?" she asked.
"I'm sorry, okay?" Jimmy responded, ignoring Clara's question about the spoons.
"I've been the kid who had to put herself to bed," Clara said, throwing the spoons in the sink and seeing dishes coated in white powder. Mae must've tossed dish powder on them but not added water, Clara thought, but when she added water no suds appeared. She added more dish powder. "Have I ever told you about when I had my monthly for the first time?"
"Jesus, Clara, I..."
"Shut up and listen. I was younger than most, and I suppose it hadn't occurred to Aunt June or Gillian to prepare me yet. So I wake up, my stomach was upset, my back hurt, and, well, blood. I didn't know what was wrong with me. A maid found me, and she was so kind. She brought me tea and a hot water bottle and told me what was happening and obtained supplies and explained to me what to do. She told Father I was ill. I don't even know her name, Jimmy, but she was the one who took care of me. I don't want that for Tommy. I want someone to read him stories and tuck him in and take care of him when he's sick. It will forever be wrong that its not Angela, but it has to be someone, it has to be consistent, and it can't be Gillian."
"So you and Richard are in this for good?" Jimmy asked.
Richard walked in, two slightly scorched paintings in hand. "These didn't. Burn. The others. Are lost."
Clara picked up one of the burned spoons and started scrubbing in earnest in an attempt to channel her fury away from strangling Jimmy where he stood.
"I just," Jimmy reached for a bottle of gin and took a swig. "I'm angry at her for leaving us. And for loving someone else."
So you destroyed her legacy, you made sure Tommy won't have any way to reconstruct who his mother was, Clara thought angrily.
"But I think I have a plan to fix this. Richard, we are going to give Chalky White what he wants. I'm going to pay him, I'm going to pay him extra, for every person he lost in that KKK raid. And you and I? We are going to find the KKK members who killed Chalky's people and deliver them to Chalky personally. That will end the strike. And then I'm going to ask him to setup a meeting with Nucky. I can still make this better."
"And then what, Prince James? More deals with Capone, more liquor, you go back to work for my father, what?"
"I don't know what next is, Clara." I don't know if there is a next, he thought. "But I think this might be the start of salvaging all of us. Of fixing things. Of making what can be made right, right."
Clara nodded, and the sound of Tommy moving around upstairs made her go to him, fearful he'd come downstairs without putting his shoes on. She didn't trust her sweeping.
"You can't ever. Talk to her like that. Again," Richard said, forcing himself to look Jimmy in the eye.
"She's my sister, Rich, she's..."
"She's my. Wife."
Jimmy nodded, and refused to think about how he felt. Instead, he had another swig of gin.
***
It was much later that night before Clara and Richard were alone. When Clara came into the bedroom from the bath, Richard was waiting on the bed.
Clara knew what they were both thinking. She moved to sit next to him. "We weren't children when we met. I'd told you about what happened in the war. I assumed you'd been with someone, or someones, before."
"Just one. Really," Richard swallowed hard. "You didn't tell me. You were in Europe. During the war."
Clara looked up, surprised. "I wasn't trying to hide it, I thought I had. I just don't enjoy talking about it."
"I understand."
"It wasn't," Clara closed her eyes. "It's not like how Jimmy made it sound, except..." Except I lost my mind and thought I fell in love in the space of hours and did end up losing my virginity on the floor but why am I only made to feel guilty about these things.
"I kissed boys at parties and had crushes, but until that day, and then until you the only man I'd ever been in love with was Jeff Tesreau, who pitched for the Giants when I was a girl. We went to dinner with him once when I was fourteen or so. I'm fairly certain I embarrassed myself," Clara said with a smile.
"Mmm. There was a girl. In Plover. Jenny Hastings. We rode horses. Together. She wrote me when. I was in the. Army. She knitted me a scarf," Richard stopped talking for a moment. "She married my. Cousin before I got. Back."
After she found out what happened to you, Clara realized. If I ever meet this other Mrs. Harrow she's going to get a full dose of the very worst Princess Clara has to offer. Every trick I learned from my father, from Rose's grandmother, from every society dragon I've ever had to deal with.
"What an idiot she," Clara said softly.
They were quiet for a moment.
"The woman. Capone was talking about," Richard began haltingly. "She was very. Kind. About not minding..."
Oh, there's a limit to how much of an adult I can be, Clara realized. "I'm glad she was kind. And there was nothing wrong with visiting her. But no more chorus girls or anyone other me from now on, okay? I don't much fancy sharing."
He looked at her with horror. "Clara we're married. Mmm. I would never. Betray you."
She leaned her shoulder into his side. "Good. We should go horseback riding together, I haven't' been in an age and quite enjoy a good hack."
Please let us get past this point in our lives, she thought, and live a life where we go horseback riding and go up to the mountains and swim in ponds and have whole years of blessed boredom. Please, Clara prayed to a God she'd stopped believing in when she was eight years old.
Author's Note: What's known for sure is that Sonny Capone was born before Al married Mae. Some historians believe Sonny's mother died in childbirth, and was an Irish friend of Mae's whose parents didn't approve of the Italian Al.
The burnt spoons are from cooking heroin, and the white powder Clara assumes is dish powder is cocaine. Al and Jimmy went on quite the bender that ended up with Angela's belongings burned and the beach house trashed.
So there's actually a picture of Al and Jimmy burning the beach house furniture and Angela's paintings. It's a deleted scene from "To the Lost." In that episode, the beach house is notably empty and destroyed it wasn't in the scenes after Angela's murder when Richard and Gillian were in the house.