In this chapter, this story only grows darker and more disturbing (and no, Caroline is not pregnant). This includes a different interpretation of what occurred between Caroline and Darcy and additional details about what's been going on between G.G. and George Wickham, so sensitive readers, you have been warned. Proceed at your own risk.

If you still wish to continue and last read Chapter 1 when this was a one-shot, I suggest you reread it as I have edited and expanded it to fit better with what happens next. I still consider this story complete as I am not sure how long I can dwell in this world.

2.

I was busy once I returned to the city and did not see much of Bingley. Although his brother-in-law invited me for dinner at their home, I politely declined as Caroline was certain to be in attendance. I felt ashamed of the whole situation with Bingley's sister and was determined to avoid her.

Caroline repeatedly sent me texts seeking some sort of interaction between us, which I answered tersely and then later ignored all together. I felt a brief stab of concern for Bingley when she mentioned to me that he still seemed to be dwelling on "his infatuation from vacation with the ridiculous family" and asked me to help him find someone more suitable, but as by then I had not seen him for more than a month, it hardly seemed like he would want my advice, and furthermore I had no advice to give.

Sometime later, I heard from another friend that Bingley decided to relocate to the country permanently. I envied him the opportunity to pursue a deeper relationship with Jane Bennet, even as I suspected he would ultimately be disappointed in that relationship as he had with all others before. While I had no interest in Jane, I could well imagine he would see her sister Elizabeth often and imagined what it would have been like to interact with her, without Caroline around.

But I had no time for regrets for what couldn't be with a woman I barely knew. I had to focus on my work and use the rest of the time to see what could be done about George and protect G.G. While she was still staying with Uncle Dick and Aunt Angie and their fourteen-year-old, Emily, I was supposed to get G.G. back over her Christmas break. I hired private investigators to track down George, but although they were able to determine he was in Nova Scotia two weeks ago, after that the trail went cold. I had a feeling he was near and just biding his time to sneak G.G. away.

I also did research to find out if G.G. and George could get married without my permission before she turned 18. I thought it to be an impossibility, but then learned to my shock that in states like North Carolina and Maryland, if she got pregnant she could marriage George with court approval. It seemed crazy that a statutory rapist could become her husband.

I also needed to investigate the list of schools my aunt and uncle provided and make a decision, as Rick said any on that list would be fine with him. The one that seemed the most promising to me was a private school geared toward troubled girls for her to attend in England starting in January. The school was academically rigorous and included weekly individual and group counseling and horseback riding lessons. I flew to England, met some administrators, the woman who would be her counselor and observed some classes. Everything I saw made me certain it was a good program, but I had mixed feelings about sending her so far away, to associate with other girls who had gotten in trouble for sex, fighting and drugs, but I knew we had to do something.

G.G. had already threatened her aunt and uncle that if they sent her away to another school, she would find a way to get herself expelled. With me, when I took her for the Thanksgiving weekend, she took a different approach, trying to play upon my sympathy. She insisted, "I've learned my lesson, really I have. I want to earn your trust again. I'll be good, don't send me away, that school sounds awful. I want to stay with you, Bill." She looked up at me with her big eyes, making a show of being sincere.

I wanted to believe her, really I did, but there had been too many incidents already. Before school got out, school administrators caught her using a friend's phone, but of course she had an excuse, she was just using it as a calculator. Then there was the time when she'd taken Emily's bicycle to sneak out at night, at almost midnight, but was just coincidentally caught when my uncle came home late from work and was about to turn onto their private road, only to see her zip across in front of him. The one earlier weekend she had spent with me, security footage had caught her trying to login to my computer while I was in the bathroom, but fortunately she couldn't guess my password.

We were now at the point that other than when G.G. was in her own room, she pretty much had to be kept an eye on, all the time. Even with trying to do that, since she'd been back with me for three days of the Thanksgiving Break, Mrs. Reynold's phone had mysteriously disappeared. Of course G.G. denied having anything to do with it, "I didn't take her phone, I am trying so hard to be good! Why won't you believe me, it is so unfair!"

Mrs. Reynolds wanted to immediately cancel her service and I thought to change the password on the wifi (which was saved in her phone), but Rick suggested, "Let's let her think she has gotten away with it and then see if we can collect it later and use it to help track down George." We searched her room the day after she went back with the Fitzwilliams for the last two weeks of the semester, but didn't have any luck (although we did find holes she had made in her mattress that had written love notes from George). One read:

Dear G.G.,

How sweet it is to be loved by you! You bring meaning to my life, you're my inspiration. I'll love you with every beat of my heart and I mean it from the bottom of my heart. When you are with me again I'll make love to you, like you want me to.

Send me some pics.

Love,

XXOO

George

Rick grimaced and commented, "I think he is quoting song lyrics to her; how can she be so dumb?"

I shook my head. I had no clue.

We planned to contact Rick's parents and have them search their home when Gigi was at school the next day (and then search her and her backpack and purse after she returned from school in the afternoon), but before we could even suggest it to them, Rick got a call from his mom. His eyes grew wide at whatever she was saying and he quickly said, "Mom, slow down. Let me put you on speaker so Darcy can hear, too."

"Oh Rick, Darcy, I can't believe what happened today. G.G. was spending a really long time in the bathroom and I heard her in there, it sounded like she was talking to someone. When I told her to come out she took a really long time and I noticed she was walking gingerly on one of her feet while wearing her boots, like she'd hurt her ankle or something. It was weird because we usually don't have shoes on in the house. I made her take them off and found a phone under one foot and grabbed it. The wallpaper photo was her and George, seemingly nude under a sheet, with him grabbing her breast. But that's not the worst. Your father looked through her texts on some app Emily showed us G.G. had and there was an extended conversation between her and a G.W. and in it were nudes."

"Of who?" I asked. I really didn't want to know, but I needed to know at the same time.

"There weren't any faces, but I think it was George and G.G. They sent each other pictures of themselves. And sometimes, " her voice cracked then, "they were together with the photo taken from the side, mid-act, doing just horrible things. He'd text, reminding her of how good it was, and how much he wanted to do it again. He'd also suggest other acts and send links to what we suspect might be porno videos. But that's not the worst."

My aunt's voice shifted, got thick with emotion. "One of the pictures he sent her to remind her of what they had done, it . . . it had G.G. from the neck down with her nightgown pulled around her armpits. I knew it was her for sure because I recognized that nightgown. It was the purple one with unicorns and stars."

I heard a sharp inhale from Rick beside me and felt a wave of despair flow through me even as I gritted my teeth and fought for self-control, obscenities waiting at the ready. I couldn't believe any of this was happening.

"Did you hear me?" Aunt Angie asked.

Rick murmured a strangled, "Yes."

Aunt Angie continued, "She . . . she . . . she . . ." my aunt sounded nothing like herself, "she had only started to grow breasts and had no hair there yet. He had her posed with her legs spread."

I felt anger, but also an overwhelming sense of shame and guilt. G.G. had been under my care when this horrible thing had begun. While I had thought my greatest regret was what had happened with Caroline, that was a small splashing wave compared to the Tsunami of me failing to keep my sister safe.

I remembered when we had bought that nightgown. Aunt Angie, Rick and Emily had come to help us go shopping for clothes. G.G. and I were still uninterested in living, more going through the motions than anything, while Aunt Angie and Rick were acting extra cheerful and Emily, who was a year younger than G.G. and hadn't known our parents well, was her normal self. I remember that Emily, who had been scouting ahead of us, ran back and grabbed G.G.'s hand, and we followed. Emily was showing G.G. that nightgown, "You like unicorns and purple, too. This one is perfect for you."

"So do you want to get it?" Aunt Angie had asked. We all waited and were rewarded with a nod and a soft smile. That moment had seemed like a turning point, the moment it was clear that eventually we would reach normalcy, when not every moment together without our parents would be painful.

Rick, apparently thinking more rationally than me, instructed "Whatever you do, Mom, don't delete those messages and pictures."

"Okay," said his mother.

He turned to me and said, "Don't you see Darcy? The police can't ignore this now. It might even be a federal case. Child pornography charges at the very least, solicitation, who knows what else."

"I couldn't even if I wanted to," Aunt Angie continued. "Her phone is locked now, and she won't give me the password.

"I . . . this is just too much for me to deal with. That poor child, but I've got to think of Emily. I can't have her around this. I need you to come get G.G. now."

I took vacation time so that I could drive G.G. the hour each way to continue at Emily's school for those last two weeks. Once the break began, I tried my best to make our time together fun. I took G.G. to the movies, planned game nights, took her ice skating and on hikes. I tried to give her a good time doing the sorts of things that were appropriate for a girl her age. I tried to act as if nothing had changed, but something in me was broken.

We turned Mrs. Reynolds's phone over to the police. Aunt Angie, Uncle Dick, Rick, Mrs. Reynolds and I all made statements to Detective Tupuola, who ended up in charge of the case. Mrs. Reynolds also gave them written permission to access her phone. Detective Tupuola told me, after we were all done, "I can see that there is a lot more to this case now."

Detective Tupuola assured us that an investigation had been opened and explained how things would go from here on out. The police were going to apply for a warrant for the phone, just to make sure if G.G. claimed a property interest in the phone that their case would still be air-tight. He was certain that their tech people would be able to get into the phone (the particular brand with an Android operating system was not a difficult one for them to sort out, we were fortunate it wasn't the latest iPhone), and he was hopeful that the app G.G. had used had her user name and password saved in the phone, but it would take time to sort everything out and get a warrant for George.

While this was good news, I felt worn out, rung out, trying to deal with the G.G. situation, which consumed my thoughts. It didn't help that I hadn't been sleeping well at night.

I had a series of vivid dreams that sometimes turned into nightmares. They had gotten worse since we found out what George had done to G.G. Both George and Caroline took leading roles in tormenting me.

One dream ended with me waking damp with sweat, my heart pounding as if I had run a sprint. As I reassured myself that none of it was real, the jumbled images came back to me. It had concluded with George looming over me as I lay in G.G.'s childhood bedroom with its purple sheets and glowing globe (it was a lamp with a bulb inside a globe of the world which nicely illuminated it which she used to sleep with on instead of a night-light in those early years after our parents died). But I recalled that I was not me exactly. I was smaller, younger, naked and cold. I said, "No! Stop!" in a voice that was not mine.

It had sounded like . . . G.G. In a flash of sudden insight, now that I was awake, I murmured, "Oh my God! I was G.G. and George was about to rape me."

I sat up and took great big gasps of air. I could not get enough. My heart pounded and pounded, a staccato rhythm that refused to slow, and I felt myself trembling.

Then I recalled more of the dream. Before that, I had been me in the guest room at Bingley's vacation rental home, and Caroline had been on top of me, about to . . . but in the dream I was sober, fully aware, but somehow I could not move, could not resist and she did what she wanted, took what I was not willing to give even though my cock was hard. She rocked and moaned as she shoved herself down on me, uncaring that I was as still as stone.

Perhaps I should have seen someone about these dreams as clearly I was stressed, but my focus was on G.G. and trying to do whatever I could for her in the brief window before I had to take her to England to start at her new school. I had arranged for G.G. to go to counseling three times a week, in the four weeks she had left before her school started. At first the counselor had claimed lack of appointment time, but she came around when I offered to pay her double to add a 6pm session to her booked schedule.

But counseling hadn't gone well during that time. The counselor reported, "I've done my best to build trust, but G.G. is very resistant to talking about the abuse. She won't acknowledge that anything he did was wrong and still says they are in love. Mostly she just wants to complain about you and getting sent away."

When it was time to take G.G. to her new school, I flew with her on my uncle's private plane. While the crew treated her pleasantly, they had been warned not to listen to her nonsense or provide her any way of contacting anyone. When I left her at school she was sullen, refusing to look at me or say goodbye. It killed me to leave her there, but it seemed like the best of bad options.

After G.G. started boarding school, I was going through the motions of my life and trying to get back to some kind of normal. I was trying to keep myself preoccupied with work so I would not have to think about things.

At the end of January, Rick came over to my home for dinner one evening. It was pleasant enough I suppose, my cook makes a great porterhouse steak which is one of Rick's favorites, but I was distracted, still haunted by my dreams and wondering how things were going at G.G.'s school. I had received weekly reports and told she refused to voluntarily participate in discussions in class, refused to talk in group, but apparently enjoyed the horseback riding and had signed up and gone on some group rides. Her counselor said to give her time.

G.G. didn't have a cell phone, none of the girls did, but they could receive calls from their guardians on a prearranged schedule. However, G.G. had refused my calls, so I had sent her letters, but still had not heard anything from her.

After dinner, Rick proposed, "Let's go to a bar. A drink or two, perhaps flirting with a beautiful girl, ought to make you feel better."

I stiffly replied, "I think you are mistaking me for you. I have no interesting in going anywhere or doing either of those things."

"Yeah, you aren't much for flirting but come to think of it, I haven't seen you even have a beer lately."

"New Year's resolution," I said as an excuse. "Trying to be healthy and all that."

"Yeah, I don't think so." He gave me a knowing look; Rick can be remarkably perceptive. "What gives? It seems like you've been in a mood for months. I thought it was all about G.G., but shouldn't you feel better with her in school, safely well removed from that pedophile and getting help?"

"Yeah, I suppose."

"Did you have a falling out with Bingley?" Rick continued to press. I wondered if I presented an intriguing puzzle just then. Rick always did like figuring things out.

"Not exactly," I hedged, "I'm really just trying to stay away from his sister."

"The tall bitchy one?" Rick guessed.

"Yup."

"Was she insufferable when you went on vacation with them?" Rick persisted.

"You don't know the half of it." I saw Caroline before me again, clinging to me in the bathroom after I had thrown up, wanting more of me even then.

Rick must have guessed from my expression that Caroline had been up to more than her normal antics as he kept trying to draw me out. Finally, I relented and began to tell him what had happened. He asked a question here and there, how much I had been drinking, whether I could have undressed myself, things of that sort.

Afterwards, he raked his hand through his sandy hair, shook his head and then said, "Oh man." He put his hand on my shoulder, gave it a little squeeze followed by two pats. As Rick is not a demonstrative fellow, this was quite a lot from him.

Rick looked me in the eye for quite a while and then looked down. I was expecting further words of sympathy but he remained silent for the longest time as if deep in thought. He then looked up at me for the briefest moment, an unfamiliar expression on his face, before looking away.

Rick kept staring at the wall or something well to the right of me as he spoke, "I don't know how to tell you this, but Darcy, I think you were raped."

I was astonished at his conclusion. "What? No! It was stupid and dumb but no. A woman can't rape a man, not like that."

"Darcy," he said gently in the tone he used with his little sister when trying to explain something basic to her, "I looked up all of our state's statutes on rape when trying to figure out what George could be charged with. The statutes use the word 'person' for any perpetrator and the victim is just 'person' too. There is a lack of legal consent when one person has sex with another person who lacks the capacity to consent, from age, disability or intoxication. From what you've told me, you couldn't even undress yourself."

"But I was hard," I told him, trying to get Rick to understand. "I insisted on a condom, even."

"It doesn't matter," he explained patiently. "Hell, even if you'd said, 'Yes, let's do it!' I don't think it would have made any legal difference. Think about this from a business standpoint. If you'd signed a contract while that intoxicated, that would be sufficient grounds to get out of it."

I tried to wrap my mind around what he was saying, but it just wasn't making sense.

"Look, having a hard-on doesn't mean you want to have sex, not really," Rick reasoned with me, "just like a woman being wet doesn't mean she is consenting." I gave him a slight nod of acknowledgment.

"It's the animal, instinctual part of your brain and it's more in control when your mind isn't working. Yes, Caroline is attractive, but you've never been interested in her in that way. So why would you voluntarily have sex with her even if you were drunk? I'm not saying you should try to go get her charged with anything, that's not a case any prosecutor would take, but Darcy, it wasn't your fault."

"But I got drunk," I insisted.

"Yes, that was probably unwise. You're a light-weight and everyone knows it; you're the sort who has a beer while eating nachos and watching a game. And you've learned that you can't handle, what was it, at least six drinks?"

I nodded; I was never getting drunk again.

"But Darcy, if a woman did the same thing, got drunk after being plied with drinks, and some man took advantage of her, it would still be rape even if he tried to say she was asking for it; even if she asked him to use a condom and he did. In some ways you were more vulnerable than that woman, not physically of course, but because you had not a clue what could happen to you, because your sort of situation is rare. Tell me, would Bingley let some guy who was all into his sister, who she didn't like that way, get her drunk and then take her home?"

"No," I responded without hesitation, "he never would have. No brother would, no sister for that matter. But it wasn't rape. Maybe Caroline took advantage of me, but it is over now, nothing to dwell on. Live and learn."

I didn't tell Rick about my nightmares. I had my pride. I didn't want his pity, or for anyone to see me as a victim, not even me.

"If you say so," he said, giving me a concerned look.

"Just please don't tell anyone," I begged.

"No, of course not," he told me. "I wouldn't do that to you."

Afterwards we ended up streaming a dumb movie. It was something to do that didn't involve talking. When Rick left that evening, I hoped I would never have to talk with him again, or anyone else, about what had happened with Caroline. I didn't want to think about it, but I continued to have horrible dreams.