Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

The Monster Inside Part Two-July 1921

Clara knew how to observe the properties. It's why she stood in all black  at the Saint Bernard Clairvaux cemetery in Dorothy. It wasn't love for her grandfather that made her stand in black on the Jersey mainland on a summer Saturday morning.

Her uncle's eyes were on her from almost the moment she parked her father's Buick and stepped across the first grave, but Clara attempted to ignore him. She regarded her cousins thoughtfully. Poor little lambs, they looked so upset, she thought. How was it possible they loved their grandfather so much while she found him so despicable?

Aunt June invited her for lunch after the internment, but she refused the invitation. Clara could not eat at her uncle's table, now.

"Dollface," Eli murmured, approaching her as the mourners dispersed.

"Don't. Don't. Not after what you were part of," Clara looked at him with fierce anger in her eyes.

Fuck Jimmy, Eli thought. How do you fuck up sending a gunman? His words to Harrow stood, he thought, because he still believed they would all be better off with Nucky gone.

"So you've written us all off?" Eli asked.

Clara's eyes flashed. "You all conspired to have my father killed. What should I do?"

He regarded her thoughtfully. Clara was the first kid he'd watched grow up. When he and June were courting, they'd go eat dinner at Nuck and Mabel's, and then they'd play with Clara. Eli always thought he fell in love with June in part because she was so natural with Clara. It made him see what a good mother she'd be to their children. It's why he could see how the pain tearing at his niece was destroying her, and why the anger in Clara's eyes cut him so deeply.

"It was Jimmy," he said, hoping for forgiveness.

"Try that line on Father. Jimmy can barely decide what pastry to order at Formica Brothers. Someone led him into this." Clara stared into the trees, seeing the man in the Ford without realizing it. "It was that awful little troll from Chicago, wasn't it? He pushed Jimmy into this."

Capone, sure. He wondered why Clara despised him. "Yes, he pushed Jimmy into it." It wasn't even strictly a lie, Eli thought, looking at the church steeple behind Clara's head. Jimmy pushed back against him, but once Capone, the little one, and the one who was screwing Gillian started in, Jimmy folded fast.

"It doesn't change anything," Clara said. "The three of you...you still conspired to kill my father."

"Harrow, too?" Eli asked, thinking of the broken man sitting in the VIP room at the party.

Clara shot her uncle a venomous look. "Do you think I don't know what Richard's part in this was, to keep me occupied while the gunman did his work? Do you want to know how he kept me busy?"

"Clara, that's a sin," Eli said in a shocked voice. She was his niece. He often had to remind himself she wasn't an eight-year-old in a crinoline. The last thing he wanted was to picture...that. Although he was suddenly possessed by the urge to ask her if she made Harrow keep the mask on.

"That's a sin?" Clara asked with a hysterical note of laughter in her voice. "You conspired to kill your brother, my life is paid for by a river of blood and illegal booze, but my bedding a man I," her voice broke, but she forced herself to continue, "love, that's the sin that worries you?"

"It's not true, Clara," Eli said, thinking if nothing else, he could spare her that pain. "There were three men in that room who love you, but Harrow was the only one who was thinking about you. He tried to convince Jimmy not to order the hit, and..." Eli skipped over the point where Harrow had asked him how he could kill his brother, and focused instead on what Jimmy told him later, "he thought he had succeeded."