Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Dearly Beloved Part One-August 1921

Although he was no longer the Treasurer of Atlantic County, the hoi polloi recognized their ruler when he arrived at the church. Dressed in his darkest summer-weight suit, Nucky Thompson hadn't forgone wearing his trademark red carnation even on this most somber of occasions. Slowly Owen Sleater cut a path through the well-wishers and escorted Nucky and Margaret to Nucky's preferred pew. As people, most of them traitors who had thrown their lot in with Prince James, lined up to pay their respects Nucky's eyes never stopped moving. Leander Whitlock sat with the remnants of the Yacht Club, suddenly looking very old. Well, Nucky thought, Leander was the only one who liked the old bastard.

A fucking joint funeral, Nucky reflected. The audacity. Gillian must have planned this, no way was James capable of it, and he couldn't imagine Clara wanting Angela's funeral sullied by the presence of the Commodore's remains. Although, hell, it wasn't like he actually knew his daughter. His eyes betrayed him by seeking sight of her among the crowd, but he didn't see her. Undoubtedly she and the freak were closeted with James and his son until closer to the start of the service. He did note Torrio's little troll Capone, and those puffed up children Arnold Rothstein doted on sitting in attendance.

When he told Torrio and Rothstein that their pups had grown fangs he hadn't realized his own daughter had been sharpening her teeth alongside them.

Clara. He'd like to get his hands on his wayward child. She'd called Margaret and asked if she could "beg a favor" and have her things sent to James's beach house. The house where Angela had been brutally murdered by some two-bit Yiddish gangster because James had no ability to attend to details and run his business like an adult. James, the bastard who had plotted his downfall, who had entrapped him in a legal nightmare. That's where Clara was, with James, his bastard child, and some cretin who had crawled out of the backwoods of Wisconsin.

Clara, taking the side of the man who betrayed him, who had sunk him into a legal nightmare. A legal nightmare that could end with him in the chair. Nucky forced his thoughts away from the murder and racketeering charges the bitch in the Post Office had hanging over his head.

At a time when he needed preserve what little capital he had left with people like Waxey Gordon and Arnold Rothstein, he had had to call in favors to make sure James's (James Fucking Darmody, who had betrayed him and sent an assassin after him) beach house was known to be off-limits so that some half-assed gunman didn't shoot Clara while trying to kill James. Like poor Angela had been shot. His jaw tensed. Had Clara thought about what she was asking when she called Margaret and blithely asked for her things? Of course not. Clara had just left with that remnant of a man to run to James's side and look after the boy. Why Clara couldn't leave it to Gillian to look after her misbegotten brood was beyond Nucky.

The music started and the two coffins were born up the aisle by flocks of altar boys. Behind them was Gillian, wearing the most ridiculous mourning veil Nucky had ever seen in his life. Beside her, James stared straight ahead, but his eyes were bright red. The little boy clung to his father's hand and looked dazed, like he wasn't sure what was going on around him.

That's the way Clara had been, he remembered. Standing in a little gray dress, because he couldn't bear for her tiny self to be clothed in black, her hands smoothing the skirt over and over as she stared straight at her mother's coffin.

Nucky pushed the memory away. This child was much younger than Clara had been. Just four, if he recalled correctly. He probably wouldn't even remember this day. Behind James was Clara, this time dressed in black. In fact, she was dressed in the black dress and hat Nucky had insisted she buy last spring. She'd shown up for a funeral in some pre-war relic and he had wasted no time sending her down to Belle Jolie for more appropriate mourning wear. Since she was a damn adult, he had no idea he should have told her to replace the dress this year. But there she stood, in a year old dress and hat she'd worn to countless other funerals and wakes. The girl had no sense.