Thank you to those of you who have been willing to join me on this journey with this traumatized Darcy. I know this story isn't for everyone, but in this chapter Darcy's life starts to turn around as he is able to take some of the first steps toward healing.

4.

I arrived at the first counseling session several minutes early so that I could fill out forms, but once that was done I felt impatient. I wanted to pace but the lobby was small and so I only jiggled my legs in an attempt to work off that restless, nervous energy which was plaguing me. Lately it had been so much more difficult to sit still. I felt much hinged upon this meeting, even though I had no intention of speaking to Ms. Berry about anything other than G.G.

Ms. Berry was punctual, which I appreciated. I noticed once again (as I had when I first met her with G.G.), that Ms. Berry had a kind face, with dark eyes that immediately sought yours out. She wore thin glasses with oval lenses in silver frames that seemed to magnify her dark eyes. She had salt and pepper hair that was cut close to her scalp but still seemed feminine in its natural kinky form. She had that middle aged thickness that some women get, but was graceful in her movements and wore loose, flowing clothing of a light blue cool tone that contrasted with her warm mahogany skin.

Ms. Berry led me to a pleasant room corner which contained a large grey couch, coffee table and subtly striped side chairs that would have easily fit into any living room. The chairs looked plush, almost overly stuffed, and promised to be comfortable. In one corner, near a children's play kitchen set, there were two red bean bags around a shorter, round yellow table. They sat close to colorful rug and several pillows were set against a wall, where I imagined a young child might be more comfortable sitting. There were also two large windows.

Ms. Berry started out by telling me, after closing the door, "I'm glad you called, Mr. Darcy, the situation with your sister affects far more than her alone. Since we are going to be spending some time together, we can be less formal if you wish." I lightly inclined my head. I was pretty sure a similar offer had been made to my sister, but she always referred to Ms. Berry as "Ms. Berry" or "that therapist" or on one memorable occasion as "that woman you make me see."

"You can call me Grace if you would like."

"Oh, that's pretty," I told her for something to say. "And it must fit, grace under pressure and all that. Most people call me Bill."

"Bill it is," she replied. Her tone was gentle and the way that she looked at me made me feel that all of her attention was focused on me but not in an overwhelming or oppressive way. It seemed loving, like she was a kindly relative.

I nodded and said nothing further. I knew I was there to talk to her, but it was hard to know where to begin. I couldn't even seem to make myself sit down. I wandered around her office, looked at the pictures and at a shelf full of games. I asked, "What's with the games?"

She responded, "Some are to just to give kids something to do while we talk, others are geared toward getting the conversation rolling. We can play a game if you want to."

"No," I responded, thinking I would feel silly doing that. I paused before her essential oil defuser, looked at the little bottles of essential oil. I knew I should sit down and get to it, but I felt antsy.

Ms. Berry (I had trouble thinking of her as "Grace") remained quiet, gave me time. Finally I settled myself down in one of the chairs, which was as comfortable as it looked. She took the chair across from it, with the longer length of the coffee table between us. I noted that we were as far apart from each other as we could be in that room while still seated in the same general area.

Ms. Berry began, "This is a safe place to share and we have time; there is no hurry. Now do you have any goals about what you want to accomplish in our time together?"

"Accomplish? I know what the word means, but I guess I don't know how it applies here. We are here to talk, but talking doesn't change anything. I guess I just thought if I talked about the situation I might feel better."

"Yes, accomplish. Said most simply, what would you like to get out of our time together, Bill? If all you want is to talk and have a friendly ear, that is fine. But we can also try to delve more deeply into issues below those surface ones. You cannot change what happened, but you can transform how you feel about it, gain some perspective and peace."

The words she was saying made me think about the situation with Caroline more than the situation with G.G., but of course she knew nothing about that. I told her, "I don't know what I want to accomplish. Can you figure that out for me?"

Ms. Berry replied, "Really, it will be up to you, but you don't have to know all about what you want to accomplish now. It can be a process that I can try to guide, but it is your process and not mine."

Then she began asking me questions. She started off small and I felt more relaxed when it was just about giving factual, background answers. But as time went on, she began asking me some more serious questions. As we went on, I began to tell her how guilty I felt in not protecting G.G.

Ms. Berry asked, reasonably enough, "Is there anything specific you did that makes you feel this way?"

There were many things, of course, but I seized on the most concrete example I could come up with. "I really messed up by not updating our house's security system. I knew George might have the code or have a way to get it, but it never occurred to me that he would try to come back in after my parents were gone. That picture of G.G. shows that he did get in, that he did things to her under my watch. I feel like I screwed up in not protecting her as a brother should. George got in our house because I didn't make it impossible for him to get in." Then I looked at her, waiting for some kind of reply.

Ms. Berry responded, "I am not going to tell you not to feel guilty. It is okay to feel guilty, but I hope you don't always feel that way. Bill, you are allowed to forgive yourself for any small part of what you did or didn't do which gave George the opportunity to strike. You love your sister and never would have intentionally harmed her. You had so many things to do in the wake of your parents' deaths that it doesn't surprise me in the least that the security system wasn't utmost on your mind. You aren't a predator and you don't think like one. He saw opportunity, he struck when she was vulnerable; that is what predators do. He is responsible, not you."

"But I knew George wasn't a good guy," I protested. "I knew he didn't really care about me or my family. He used people, among them both me and my father. I recognized what George was doing and did my best to disassociate myself from him, but despite trying to talk to my father about it, he was unwilling to listen. When it came down to what George was really capable of, I don't think my father had a clue."

Ms. Berry took a moment to wipe her glasses off with a cloth before she responded. "Let me ask you, Bill, is your father responsible for what George did to G.G. because your father did not recognize he was being used?"

I immediately answered, "No, of course not. My father wanted to see the best in George and excused his behavior as that of an unthinking, impulsive youth rather than recognizing his malevolence."

"Well then, are your parents responsible because they could not protect Georgiana from George after they died?"

"No!" It made me mad that Ms. Berry could ask something like that. "No one asks to die, certainly not like that. I don't understand what my parents have to do with it at all. As far as we can tell, all the bad things occurred on my watch."

"Bill, don't be so naïve. You've said that George hung around for years, became friends with G.G. even when you were no longer friends, was almost another brother to her. Don't you see? Whether or not he abused her when your parents were still alive, he was grooming her for years. The manipulation did not suddenly start when they died."

I said nothing while I thought about that. How Ms. Berry see all of this so clearly, when I who was in the midst of it all had not? Although perhaps I should not have been so surprised as she was a well respected therapist who had many years of experience.

"And what's more," Ms. Berry added, "from what you told me your older cousin was her co-guardian as well, but he hasn't been very involved until recently."

"Yes, but I'm G.G.'s brother." I could not, would not absolve myself.

"Yes you are," she acknowledged, "but don't put all the blame on yourself. At a young age you were suddenly thrust into the position of taking care of your sister, of having to hold everything together while you were still grieving and she was, too. There is plenty of blame to go around, but very little if any of it should fall on you. You did the best you knew how at the time. I doubt your cousin is as caught up in a sense of guilt as you. As I said, Bill, you don't have to let go of that guilt right now, but don't cling to it forever; guilt makes a horrible blanket."

In the next couple of sessions we worked on my guilt over G.G. and to my surprise she also began to focus on some of the grief I had been holding inside of me over my parents. I thought I was over it, was very defensive when she started to probe at that scar, which turned out to just have the venire of intact flesh over a festering wound. I said things like, "I don't see why I should waste me time talking about that. It is over, gone. I grieved, I coped and I moved on."

"Did you really?" Ms. Berry asked me, looking me in the eye and waiting. I don't know why, but simply seeing her compassion undid me.

I looked down at my clasped hands, idly noticing that I had a bit of darker hair along the back of my hands and a couple dark hairs between my first and second knuckles. In a smaller voice I said, "I thought I did. I haven't cried about it since the first few days after it happened."

"Grief is a process," Ms. Berry told me. "You certainly grieved at the time, but as life went on there were other aspects of their deaths to grieve, too. I think, and certainly I might be wrong, but in having to take on all sorts of responsibility after their deaths that you had really never had a chance to fully open yourself up to that pain and loss. I imagine that you threw yourself into dealing with the logistics, the immediate tasks at hand because someone had to do them."

"True," I admitted. "I had to purchase their plots, arrange for the funeral, choose the headstones, get all the paperwork signed, deal with their outstanding bills and talk the bank into letting me assume the home improvement mortgage so that I didn't have to arrange for the sale of our home when the outstanding cash had to go to pay the copays on their medical bills, I had to take care of all of that and more as their executor." I knew that was only a small chunk of what I had to do in the immediate aftermath.

"And how did you feel about having to do all of that?"

"It was hard. I thought my aunt and uncle would help more, but all they really helped with was keeping G.G. when I was dealing with things, but after a day, G.G. begged for me to take her home. I loved her, she was my sister, and I knew I was supposed to be the one caring for her, but I had hardly any reserves left to deal with more."

I recalled G.G. clinging to me when I came to see her, saying from where she'd squished her face against my side, "Please Bill, I just want to go home. I want my own bed and my own brother." And then when I took her home that she followed me around as if we were connected with a five-foot cord. She even wanted to sleep in my bed, telling me, "I'm scared you will disappear, too," but given our age and gender difference that seemed too odd. Instead, I ended up setting up an air mattress so that I could sleep in her room. But although she dropped off soon enough, I just couldn't sleep. I remember trying to sneak off when she had fallen asleep and collapsing in my bed, only to wake up perhaps half an hour later to the sight of G.G. standing beside my bed, staring at me. I walked her back to her room, tucked her in, and then resigned myself to lying down once again on air mattress.

"You've told me it was hard, Bill, but hard in not a feeling," Ms. Berry probed. "What did you feel?"

"Frustrated, overwhelmed. Like I would never get any sleep again."

"What else?" Ms. Berry pushed.

"Angry," I admitted, surprising myself. "I was angry that it was all on me. I wasn't ready for any of it. And my extended family used the excuse that I was handling it competently to keep them from needing to offer any substantive help. I was trying so hard to hold it all together for G.G., to try to keep some normalcy for her, but I remember crying while I showered, knowing the hot water would wash all the signs away."

"Anger is very understandable and very rational," she acknowledged. And as odd as it was, just that little gesture of understanding from her broke something inside of me wide open.

I added, "And I felt guilty that I was still there instead of my parents. She needed them, not me. I was a poor substitute. There were plenty of times that I wished I had died instead. I even thought about how nice it would be to just take a bottle of sleeping pills and not wake up. My mother had sleeping pills and it would have been easy, but I was too rational for that. I had too many responsibilities and I couldn't do that to G.G. But I used to think that if she was gone she would become part of the Fitzwilliam family, gain a sister and a brother, along with new parents. In my mind that life was better than what I was giving her."

"Did you ever talk to anyone about these feelings?" Ms. Berry asked.

"Not really. Rick wasn't around then, he was posted overseas, doing some kind of covert work that he couldn't talk about. He wasn't even able to come home for the funeral. I did talk to my friend Charles Bingley a bit. He lost his parents early, too and we bonded over it some. He tried to be there for me, but mostly I wouldn't let him in. But he tried more than most. Sometimes I really wanted to share more with him, but it was as if I were a house of cards and pulling out just one card would make the whole thing collapse, so I really didn't."

"Do you still have thoughts of self-harm?" Ms. Berry inquired.

"No, not really," I told her, trying to be honest but knowing the wrong answer would get me sent to a shrink for antidepressants. "Things have been rough with the whole G.G. situation and some other things, but I'm stronger now than I was then. I know that feelings won't stay forever and I just have to be patient and things will improve."

"That's good," she said in a soothing voice, "but if you ever have those feelings, it is okay to get help. The ER is the first line of defense if it is bad as it can take weeks to get in with a psychiatrist otherwise. You might benefit from medication and I can refer you to someone good."

"No thanks," I told Ms. Berry. "Like I said, I'm not in that place now. And talking with you, I think it is helping."

The next time I saw Rick I told him that I was in counseling and explained some of the issues we had been discussing about G.G. I told him some of my feelings, the guilt, the anger, the grief. He told me, "I've always regretted that I couldn't be there for you during that time. I don't know that I could have done what you do."

"Are you kidding me?" I asked. "You faced death and stuff with all that secret opps stuff. You've had buddies die in front of you."

"Yeah, that's true," Rick admitted, "but you learn some distance in that kind of job and there's the whole idea that we all know what we signed up for. I don't think it really makes it easier, but . . . it is definitely different than having your parents unexpectedly die and then have to raise your little sister while her co-guardian is away on a tour. It is why I was so eager to get involved now when I was in a better position to do it."

I shrugged. From what I could tell, Rick had been eager to hand G.G. over to his parents rather than shouldering the whole load himself, but what did I know.

"Anyway, I think counseling has been good for you, from what I can see. I've never heard you talk this way before. You seem free-er, more at ease with yourself. It is good to see that. It seems like it is working." He gave me a pat/slap to the shoulder.

"Yes, seeking out counseling was good advice. You might try it yourself."

"Seeing what it has done for you, I just might." Rick paused and gave me a look. I waited for him to address "it" even as I hoped I was wrong and that he wouldn't. But he could not resist that little extra push, "Eventually, do you think you might tell her about the other thing?"

I considered it, not giving a knee-jerk "no"; I knew it was at least worth considering. I had thought about whether I should tell Miss Berry off and on for a while, she had been so kind. I thought, perhaps, I could trust her with it. "I don't know. Yes, probably, someday, when it feels right. I don't know when."

The next couple of sessions we mostly focused on my parents. Ms. Berry gave me an assignment to write them a letter, sharing all I felt about them leaving, even if some of it was ugly. I fumbled around with writing it a time or two that week, each time deleting what I had written on the computer. Finally I wrote to them in longhand. There was no editing and censoring myself that way. I just wrote and wrote, letting it all out.

Mom and Dad,

I know it wasn't your fault that you ended up in that car accident and died, but it still hurts, both that you left and that you left me to pick up the pieces when you were gone. Why didn't you fight harder? Weren't we important to you? Dad, after Mom died, it was like you gave up. Weren't we worth fighting for?

It was so hard to be left alone and I didn't know what I was doing. Why didn't you have some better plan in place? I wanted to honor your wishes, I wasn't ever going to turn my back on G.G. like you did, although a lot of times it felt like it would have been easier if I died.

But why was it all placed on me? Why didn't you take it out of my hands? You wrote that will just after I turned 18; why would you think I would be ready to take on that responsibility if you died then?

I wasn't ready to step in and be a parent; I don't know that I'd be ready even now, if I had a wife and all that. I was just finishing college, I was hardly ready to have an adult job, let alone try to raise my own kid sister. And G.G. needed so much, it wasn't like babysitting at all. She needed love and to grieve, she needed parents. I was a lousy substitute for two parents. I had not a clue. I wasn't ready to go from brother to father, to take on all responsibility. It really wasn't fair of you.

Why didn't you give her to Aunt and Uncle? They knew about raising a daughter, she would have gotten a sister, I could have had time to grow up, still been her brother.

I might have been mad if you made that decision, made them her guardians in your will, but I would have accepted it. And even if I hadn't, no court would have preferred me over them. Better for me to have been mad at your choice, than for her to fall, fall, down, down, into an abyss that I cannot rescue her from. I have thrown down the rope, but she just walks away from it.

I think G.G. hates me. I deserve to be hated. I have failed her so much and I keep failing her. I didn't keep her safe from George. I had no idea he would want to be with her in such a way. It is sick, disgusting, and you let him be friends with her. Shouldn't you have known better? You were the adults, you were the parents. I have screwed everything up because I couldn't give her what she needed and did not recognized the danger.

Mom and Dad, he violated her in our home, in her bed, in her unicorn pajamas. And then he kept coming back for more and she didn't trust me or anyone else enough to say anything. It is your fault that she now thinks she loves him, and if she runs away, gets pregnant and marries that snake it will be your fault, too. But what is the point of blaming you? You are off the hook.

Your lives might be over but my life isn't, hers isn't. Sometimes I think we would all be better off if we had all been in that car that night and if we'd all died. I am sure that being injured like that and dying hurts but then it is over. Either we just aren't or we are at peace. Either way, the pain is gone, we don't have to keep hurting, have wounds that never heal but, bleed, bleed, bleed.

I tried my best, you did nothing for these past five years but lay moldering in the ground. If you are in heaven looking down, why haven't you helped me? Maybe I would not have lost her; maybe I would not be so lost myself; maybe it wouldn't have happened to her or me.

Why haven't you helped her? She is your beloved daughter, the one you prayed for.

Help us. Help us! HELP US! Why won't somebody help us? Why won't anyone do something?

We're on the verge of drowning but only I seem to realize it. and no one will come rescue us. G.G. keeps trying to dive down into the deep, after something that looks like treasure but is just an illusion. As for me, I keep floundering around, holding her up with one arm as I tread water with my other limbs or try to swim. When I am doing my best, sometimes it seems like I am making a little progress, but the ocean isn't kind. It wants to bury us beneath its waves, smooth over us until there is no sign we were ever there. It doesn't want us to escape. We keep getting caught up in a riptide, or a whirlpool. It takes all I have to keep from being sucked under but the shore keeps receding and soon it will be too far away to see if I don't keep pushing my failing body as hard as I can.

If I scream, my mouth will fill with water and I'll drown. I'm alone, I'm alone, I'm alone. Sometimes I don't want to keep swimming, but I just do. It I have to, because if I don't, she will drown, too.

Will Darcy

The next session I brought the letter to share with Ms. Berry. She read it and asked, "Is that how you are feeling right now?"

"No," I told her. "You threw me a life preserver, Grace. That letter was more about how I was feeling both right after they died and right after we learned all the bad things George did to G.G. Now, I feel like if sometimes I am in the ocean, that I am floating in a little rowboat and the ocean is calm. I still have to learn how to paddle to shore, but disaster isn't looming right now and the storms in the distance might never reach me."

"I'm glad," she said.