A/N: There's just a lot of angst, here.

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

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

Jimmy and Richard looked up at each with alarm.

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

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

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

"Is. She. Okay?" Richard asked, each word an agony as he thought of Emily running after him calling him the Tin Man, and of Clara alone in the middle of a nightmare. Of several nightmares.

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

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

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

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

"Of course I can..."

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

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

"I'll walk," Angela answered.

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

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

Richard turned to look at the little boy.

"Did she like it?" Tommy asked again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's not true."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clara blinked. "Angela, I..."

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

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

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

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

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

Clara struggled to keep her voice even. "Angela, I'm sorry. I thought...I thought I was doing the right thing."

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

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

"Clara Thompson?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You came by yourself?" Esther asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And yet your father wasn't there?"

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

"What's odd, Miss Thompson, is that your father filed paperwork saying he was taking your grandfather's body to Ireland, Belfast to be exact, for burial, leading me to wonder who you buried in New Jersey? According to his ship's manifest, a coffin supposedly carrying your grandfather's body was loaded into the cargo hold."

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

"You love your father?"

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

"Of course I love my father."

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