When Richard opened the door to his room he saw Clara sitting cross-legged on the bed, gun in her lap, the way she usually sat up with a book at night when he would come home. On the floor next to the desk, Tommy was sound asleep in the moonlight, on a pallet Clara must have made out of her pillow and extra blankets.

Clara smiled as he approached her, "I'm so glad you're here."

He sat on the bed next to her, looking down at his hands. The tiredness was washing over him, making it almost impossible to think clearly. The last time he slept was the morning he found out Angela was dead. Slowly he became aware of the feeling of Clara's fingers-warm, alive, moving-pressing against his.

"Jimmy is. Going to be. Okay." I cleaned his father's blood from the drawing-room, Richard thought. Once more in these days, I cleaned the blood of Jimmy's family member from the floorboards. There's no trace left. I cleaned the scissors you used. He looked at her small hand, and tried to imagine it plunging scissors into an old man's body. The hands that had tucked Tommy in, that slid into his, that typed out her stories.

He was a hypocrite, he realized. What did his hands do when he was away from Clara?

Clara nodded. "Good. Tommy thinks this is great fun, spending the night at your place."

Richard shook his head. "You should. Put him in bed. With you. I'll sleep on the. Floor."

"He's little, sleeping on the floor is an adventure. Besides, I..." She stared into the distance. "We just got each other back, and had maybe ten minutes of just being together. My friend is dead. Jimmy is injured. Everything is crashing down around us. I did a horrible thing to protect Jimmy and Tommy. You've been awake from days trying to protect Jimmy, I..."

Richard leaned against her. He couldn't remember the last time his brain had been so foggy, France, he supposed. Thoughts came into view and then disappeared just as quickly before he could grasp onto them. The silk of Clara's kimono brushed against his forearm. Her hair was slightly damp, and he could smell her orange soap. Her hands weren't as soft as usual, and he could see redness on the tops. She'd scrubbed them raw in an attempt to get the blood out, he thought and ran his thumb over them. He wanted to tell her so many things, but his mind wouldn't send the words to his mouth.

Clara had untied one boot and was busy on the second when he realized she had moved to the floor.

He jerked his foot away from her hand. "Mmm. What are. You doing?"

With one movement she moved so she was standing on her knees. "Richard," she said softly, "you've spent the last however many days taking care of everyone. Cleaning up Jimmy's mess. Keeping us safe. And now you can barely sit up you are so tired. Let me take care of you."

Richard shook his head, his mouth twisting, not able to meet her gaze, but finally letting his hands rest on her shoulders. "Mmm. You don't have..."

"No. I don't have to. I want to. You didn't have to do any of the things you did, tonight, yesterday, last week, this month, since the day you met Jimmy, either. You did it because you care about us, because you love us. " Clara reached up with one hand to cup his face, to pull him down so that he had to look at her, while her other hand smoothed the silk of her kimono as she tried to steady her nerves.

"I didn't think I would get this. I thought I'd spend my life would be trapped with someone like Darcy Blaine. Darcy, someone like Darcy, would have never helped me keep Tommy safe. I thought I had lost you, lost this, forever over my father and Jimmy's stupid war. Until you stood in my father's house and held your hand out to me."

Clara was silent for a moment, and she looked down like she was studying his knee. She spoke without looking up. "That moment meant I'm yours until the moment you decide you no longer want me."

Richard couldn't look at her. He wanted to tell her that her letter felt like a deliverance, that he was the one who needed to beg forgiveness. Instead, he said, "I would. Hmm. Never."

"I know we have to talk about everything that happened, all that we did. But right now, this is one of the worst times of our lives and I need to be with you. And right now, I'm going to take care of you. It's not like you won't do the same for me. It's not like you haven't done the same for me."

Her hands moved to his tie and she smoothly untied it. "See?" Clara whispered, and he could hear the smile in her voice. "I got better with practice."

It felt like the nights in the Ford, or wrapped in blankets in the woods. Clara warm and near and unbuttoning his clothes felt more like something from a dream than reality. He lost himself in the feel of her fingers swiftly unbuttoning his vest and pushing it off his shoulders. Carefully she lowered one side of his suspenders and then the next. She repeated the same actions with his shirt. The entire time, as her head hovered near his own, as her hands brushed across body, he thought he shouldn't let her do this. He didn't...he didn't deserve Clara's gentle caretaking. He had removed her from the safety of Nucky's house out of a moment of blind need for her, and thrown her into the hell of Jimmy's downfall. Angela had been brutally murdered in the beach house. He wasn't sure that anywhere was safe. So far he had subjected her to Jimmy strung out on drugs, the murder of the Commodore, covering up Jimmy's crime, fighting with Gillian, and, worse of all, fleeing at midnight with only Tommy while he tried to help Jimmy. And Richard had a sick feeling that this was just the beginning.

But the soft gentleness of Clara, of anyone, undressing him, brushing his hair from his face, and taking care of him wasn't something he ever expected to have again. She wasn't doing it because he was broken or bad, but because she loved him and he was tired.

Her hands moved up to his face and removed his mask while he was still in his reverie.

"Oh my god," Clara exclaimed. "What happened?"

Richard's hand flew to his face and his back stiffened. He knew he shouldn't have let himself relax into Clara. His face had finally horrified her.

"There's a rash, or sores..." her hands were on either side of his face, trying to tilt it so she could see better in the moonlight, and her voice was horrified. "Do you need a doctor?"

"Sometimes, the heat..." he started to explain. He had worn the mask almost nonstop for two days, scorching summer days, while cleaning multiple crime scenes, while driving back and forth to Princeton, while never having the time to sleep or take the mask off.

Clara left the room, and the bathroom door closed behind her. Richard let his head hang down, his left hand still shielding the damaged side of his face from view. He had always feared that even for Clara the injury would be too much to deal with, and now it was proven to be so. She was hiding in the bathroom, he thought, unable to look at him but without anywhere to take Tommy. He'd sleep in the car, he thought, and then tomorrow he'd make sure she never had to see him again. His right hand twisted into the fabric of his pants.

The door opened and then she was back with linen and a jar in her hand. She sat everything on the bed next to him and leaned before him with one towel in her hand.

"Is it okay if I clean your face and put salve on it? It looks so painful."

When he didn't respond she tried again. "Richard?"

He couldn't answer. No one had touched the bad side of his face in years, not like that. Not even Clara, when they were wrapped around each other and her hands and mouth slid across every other part of his body. He nodded, finally. Clara leaned forward and softly pulled at his wrist until he moved his hand, and then she began gently dabbing the ruins of the left side of his face with the damp towel.

"Tell me if I hurt you, or if there's a better way," she whispered

He felt her start patting his face with a dry towel, and then heard her open a jar. He could feel the uncertainty in her touch, and it caused him to swallow, once more convinced that the reality of touching his face was proving to much for her. Instead, he felt her fingertips slowly work their way around the perimeter of where the mask sat on his face, carefully patting in the lotion, and working her way across his face. He groaned without meaning to, causing her to stop.

"Am I hurting you?"

He shook his head, unable to answer so she continued. The sound of the lid closing over the jar made him realize she was done. He grabbed her, suddenly, kicking off the boots she had already unlaced and pulling her down on the bed with him. They couldn't do anything, he knew, with Tommy asleep on the floor beside them. It didn't stop the need to wrap himself around her, to get as lost in the smell and feel of her as possible. Without thought, he put his hand under her top knee and wrapped her leg around his hip.

Clara sighed.

"I love you," he said in a gravelly whisper. "I still. Want. Flower boxes. And a hardware store. With a desk. For you to write. At."

Wrapping her hand around his head she whispered back "I love you, too. That's exactly what I want."

Richard's heartbeat and breathing slowed as they lay together, but Clara's didn't. She kept replaying everything, trying to find her mistakes, identifying the flaws in her plans. How, she castigated herself, how had she not truly seen Gillian and Jimmy's relationship? Why had she not acted sooner? Why hadn't she insisted Angela leave with her the day Angela told her she was scared? Angela would still be alive, Clara thought. Tommy would have a mother.

Every part of her body went stiff. It was her own fault her mother was dead, of course. It was her oldest sin. If she had come straight home from school, if she hadn't stopped to play in the park with Jimmy, if she had walked upstairs to check on her mother when she got him, her mother would still be alive. Still be alive, she reminded herself, if she had been enough for her mother. If she'd been a boy, if she'd been better, then her mother wouldn't have gone mad. If Clara had been enough, she thought, her mother would still be alive. Jimmy and her father would have stopped the war when she begged, they wouldn't be in this hell, they wouldn't be...

The feel of Richard's hand moving up to rub her shoulder startled her, but the warmth of his sleepy body next to her finally relaxed her slightly. She tried to match her breathing to his as she settled into his embrace, but even as she finally drifted off to sleep it was to a litany of all the mistakes she'd ever made.

***

Someone was looking at him. Richard's hand reached for Clara, assuming she was awake, but he realized he was on his back and in the bed alone.

Tommy stood next to the bed, his eyes moving between the mask Clara had set on the bedside table the night before and Richard's face.

"Your face is on the table," Tommy said quietly.

Richard's hand flew up to the damaged side of his face, the memory of the screaming Emily Schroeder coming back in a flash.

"You snore," Tommy continued.

The snoring was terrible, Richard knew, due to the destruction of his sinus cavities. He didn't know how Clara bore it.

"Why is your face on the table?" Tommy asked, still standing still.

Richard tried to find his voice. "The mask. Hmm. Is uncomfortable. To sleep. In."

"You take it off when you put on your jammies?" Tommy asked.

Not knowing how else to respond, Richard nodded. Where was Clara, he wondered.

Tommy looked back at his pallet. "Can I lay down with you?"

Richard moved over, and Tommy and the cow sat on the bed next to him.

"Daddy says you lost your face in the war," Tommy said, staring at Richard, who still had his hand over his face. "Did it hurt?"

Swallowing nervously, Richard tried to come up with a good answer.

"Does wearing your other face make it feel better?" Tommy asked, using his cow to gesture towards the mask.

"Mmm. It makes it. Easier."

"Your elbow is hitting me," Tommy complained as he squirmed around on the bed and kicked Richard's leg repeatedly.

"I'd. Have to move. Mmm. My hand," Richard said, completely unsure of what he should do.

"Okay."

Richard took a deep breath and slowly moved his hand from his face. He felt Tommy's eyes on him, looking with great interest at the mass of scar tissue that made up half his face. The seriousness of Tommy's expression made Richard think of Angela, and his heart ached for his friend.

"It looks melty," Tommy announced. "Can you tell me the mermaid story?"

"Mmm. I don't know..."

"Yes, you do. A long long time ago Atlantic City was a kingdom under the sea called Atlantaca..."

"Atlantis," Richard corrected.

"See! I knew you knew it!"

The door opened, and Richard sat up with a bolt. Clara stood in the door with a box of drinks and food in one hand and a shopping bag over her other arm.

"Richard's face is over there," Tommy announced. "Also, he says he doesn't know about mermaids, but he does, Clara."

Clara's eyes went to Richard, and then she smiled the bright smile she saved for Tommy. "Richard's mask is on the table because he doesn't sleep in it. His face is on his head, silly."

Tommy looked like he wanted to follow that statement up with more questions, so Clara quickly continued. "I brought breakfast! I went to Formica Brothers."

"You got lobster tails!" Tommy said excitedly but saw Clara raise an eyebrow. "You got sfogliatella."

"Close enough, here, come eat. Try not to make a mess." Clara put his drink and food on the desk and helped him into the chair before crossing to sit next to Richard, who had slipped his mask on.

"Are you okay?" she whispered, knowing what he was thinking about. "Tommy's not Emily. He's known you for over a year, and you are one of his favorite people. It's not the same."

After Tommy changed into the play clothes Clara had bought at Woolworth's, he took his new ball and went to play in the yard. Clara took her breakfast and coffee and sat on the porch, feeling that Richard could use time away from the chaos of the Darmody-Thompson clan to eat and get ready in peace.

She heard the Ford-Jimmy really did need to get that clutch fixed, she thought-before she saw it.

"Daddy," Tommy said, and threw himself at Jimmy before he could get out of the car.

Jimmy wasn't wearing a shirt, just his suit jacket over a complicated bandage covering his chest. He looked so awful, Clara thought, his pupils still dilated and his eyes rimmed with red.

"Hey, Skeezix," Jimmy replied, ruffling the boy's hair.

"I ate a lobster tail, and slept on the floor, and Richard keeps his face on the table."

Jimmy looked up and smiled at Clara, who was trying not to laugh. "I'm glad you are having a good time. I need to talk to Clara, okay? Is that a new ball?"

Tommy went back in the yard to show off his new ball tricks, which to Jimmy looked like Tommy was throwing the ball straight up in the air, rarely catching it, and laughing hysterically when the ball fell back down to Earth.

Jimmy sat next to Clara silently, lit a cigarette, and passed it to her. They were on the second cigarette before either spoke.

"Outta all the things we have in common, both of us stabbing my father on the same night wasn't something I foresaw," Jimmy said quietly.

"Well, needs must," Clara responded. "Want to tell me what happened?"

"Not particularly. She was just sitting there, Clara, talking about Tommy wouldn't remember Angela and how she was his mother now and we would raise Tommy together. Like Angela never even existed, like..."

Clara grabbed Jimmy's hand and squeezed.

"That's when I had my hands around her throat. I just wanted her to stop. For once, I just wanted her to stop. And then the Commodore stabbed me, and I had my trench knife out. Ma, she was cheering me on, she wanted me..."

Of course she did, Clara thought. Angela was gone, and now she was getting rid of the Commodore. You and Tommy were going to be all hers.

"She'd already told Tommy Angela had gone to Paris and left him with Gillian, and that Gillian was his mother now. I'm just sorry you didn't finish her," Clara said, with a tone in her voice Jimmy had never heard before.

"I don't think..." Jimmy began, the need to defend his mother strong.

"Are you willing to bet Tommy's well-being on that, because I'm not. I'm serious, Jimmy, I'll kill her myself before I let her get near Tommy again. I'm sorry for everything that happened to her, but that doesn't mean I can't see she's a monster in her own right."

"That's why you did it? You set it up so Leander would think she murdered the Commodore to get Tommy away from her?"

Clara looked at him. "I did it for you, too. The look on her face, Jimmy, as she stood over you and the Commodore laying on the floor. Like a new queen reaching for the scepter. She was going to hold it over your head for the rest of your life. Plus, it was going to weaken Mr. Whitlock's support for you, and cost you what's left of the Yacht Club's backing."

Jimmy snickered. "These are the things you were thinking about as you stabbed the Commodore's dead body?"

"I did what I had to do. Just like you do. Just like Richard does. Just like my father does. I'm supposed to apologize because I'm a woman?"

"No, I'm just lucky you are a girl. God help me if you'd been a boy and sided with Nucky."

Clara took a long drag off the cigarette. "Glad that worked out for you. Look, I have a plan."

Richard opened the door.

"Just in time," Jimmy said. "Clara's about to tell us her plan."

Richard moved to Clara's other side.

"Look, Tommy needs to go home. So I'm going to call Margaret and ask her to send my things to the beach house."

"Your father. Will put the word. Out the beach house. Is off-limits," Richard said, realizing Clara's idea.

"That's right. If not out of love for me, then out of concern for his own reputation."

"Any other plays?" Jimmy asked.

"Yes. Richard, I'm assuming Mr. Whitlock paid off the coroner's man to write up the Commodore's as an accident?" Clara asked.

Richard nodded, uncertain where Clara was headed.

"Jimmy, you are going to thank him, and then you are going to tell him you are going to tell one man the truth. Well, part of the truth. Tell Mr. Whitlock you are going to tell Nucky that your father is dead and you killed him."

Jimmy stared at her, then smiled. "You want me to tell the actual truth to Nucky?"

Clara shook her head. "No. I want you to tell him the Commodore was recovering, that he wouldn't stop trying to bring Nucky down, that the Commodore was making the war worse. To save Nucky, to stop the war, you killed your father. I want you to offer up the Commodore's death to my father as a peace offering."

"The two of you, you are moving into the beach house?"

Clara and Richard looked at each other and nodded. All three of them sat on the porch and watched Tommy play, pushing away reality for a few quiet moments.