Thank you for all your kind words. This week we have court twice, once on whether I can get a three year long restraining order against my daughter's boyfriend on her behalf, and once on whether her guardianship should be terminated (although on that one, I don't think anything will be decided just then). Any prayers or good thoughts on our behalf would be much appreciated.

I read every review and reply to everyone who is signed in and allows messages. I always do this through my computer. If you don't see a reply from me, try logging in through a computer if you can as there seem to be some ongoing compatibility issues between the app used on phones and the website. Notices of messages are not going out via email, so you have to actually click on "private messaging" and then "inbox" in your account to see them.

14.

As soon as I finished writing the letter, I folded it up in a matching creamy envelope and addressed it with the same pen, finishing it up by applying a gold return address label and a forever stamp. Then I walked the letter down my long driveway to my oversized, locking mailbox, placed it inside and raised the flag.

The whole walk back down the driveway, I questioned what I was doing, whether I had said too little or too much. As I checked my email, I had to fight the impulse to get up and go outside to retrieve the letter.

For better or for worse, then I received a proposed contract from a new vendor which was far from acceptable. I spent the next couple hours hammering out a counter offer with the corporate attorney over the phone before receiving a call from Rick with an update on the search for G.G.

Rick had traveled to Germany, following up on a lead, but it had led to another dead end. Rick sounded frustrated, "I understand why we got the tip, Ludmilla is just eighteen and bears a surface resemblance to G.G., similar build, hair and bone structure, and she left England via the Chunnel during the right time frame with an older guy, but I can't but think that whatever trail GG. might have left has gone cold in the meantime. Either G.G. is still hiding in England or is long gone." Rick sighed. "I'm just not sure what to do now."

I didn't have any good answers myself, but eventually we decided that he should return to England and follow up with law enforcement and G.G.'s school. Unspoken between us was the thought that if such effort did not yield fruit, it would perhaps be time for him to return home. I considered whether, perhaps, I should replace him there, but I trusted my cousin to have done everything he ought and probably other things besides that would not have occurred to me. Still, the idea of leaving G.G. to her own devices an ocean and continent away did not sit well with me.

Between these two things, this distracted me enough that by the time I really thought about the letter again, I knew the mail carrier would have already come and gone. Still, I went and checked. As expected, the letter was gone, replaced with new mail in the box.

The rest of the week passed by quietly enough. I returned to work in person on Tuesday with the plan of mostly staying in my office catching up on paperwork that first day. I received a few strange looks from my employees, but no one dared ask what was up with my face brace, no one but Mrs. Reynolds.

At about ten a.m., Mrs. Reynolds, our Vice-President in charge of Human Resources walked into my office after a quick knock and my "come in." Mrs. Reynolds was more than just an employee. She was a long-time family friend who was something of an honorary aunt to me and my sister. She had started at the company in the secretary pool before I was born. I only knew about that as it was I who was looking over her company records when deciding as one of my first duties as head of the company whether to promote her.

It was Mrs. Reynolds's phone which G.G. had purloined when Mrs. Reynolds had stopped by the mansion to drop off the applications of potential employees to replace my administrative assistant who had decided not to return after her maternity leave was up. G.G. had gotten the opportunity to get to Mrs. Reynolds's phone as I had invited Mrs. Reynolds to stay for dinner and then a movie in our home theatre. It was this phone that contained the naked pictures of G.G. and was still being retained by the police the last I knew.

It was Mrs. Reynolds's face that I studied over the intervening years when I wondered how age might have worn my mother's face had she lived, as my mother and she were of a similar age. In the last few years, Mrs. Reynolds's had developed some crows feet around her eyes, a couple of lines on her forehead and laugh lines around her mouth, and her tan skin (she was Puerto Rican by birth) was thinner and more translucent than it had been once, but her hazel eyes still sparkled with intelligence and mirth, and when she was talking about something she cared about, her enthusiasm was undimmed. Her salt and pepper hair looked good with her skin, and she could easily pass for a woman a decade younger than her age. The clothes Mrs. Reynolds wore were always of the highest quality, but as the years passed she opted for bolder colors and patterns and larger jewelry, which lent an air of the exotic to her.

I doubted my mother would have dressed as Mrs. Reynolds did, or kept her hair natural. I believe my mother would have colored her hair to keep it blonde, although perhaps going a couple of shades lighter than her natural but enhanced hue. As to any lines, perhaps she would have opted to go under a plastic surgeon's knife, for though my father would have always called her beautiful, she might not have agreed, and certainly money would have been no barrier.

That day Mrs. Reynolds swept in, wearing a sari-like garment with wide sleeves. It had a floral pattern in shades of black, brown, white, hot pink and lime green, and she had paired it with a choker of brown cat's-eye stones about her neck.

Mrs. Reynolds looked right at me and asked, "My dear boy, whatever happened? I've been very concerned about what could have caused this long stretch of you working from home and now you come back all battered?"

I don't know what look I might have given her then, but while I was still seated she enfolded me in her arms like she had when I had cried many years ago during a trip to my father's work with him. That memory all came back in a flash, triggered perhaps by her familiar scent of some older perfume that Elizabeth Taylor used to hawk in my nose.

I must have been no more than four years of age the first time my father took me to his office. There had been some kind of mix-up about the preschool schedule and my mother was on a trip. My father had told me "Billy, Daddy has to go to the office and work. Can you be a good boy and play quietly in a corner of my office until lunch when your nanny can pick you up?"

Of course I declared "Yes, Daddy," in that high piping voice that all small children had. I was so excited to see where Daddy went all day and sometimes stayed until long after I had gone to bed, that I remember bouncing in my seat in the car.

Because I was a little boy, my promise didn't stick in my head for long. It was all I could do to hold his hand in the elevator and as he walked me down the hall to his office. We paused momentarily at his secretary's desk and he handed her what looked like a toy tape, for it was small.

Once we were through his door, he kept holding my hand until we had reached the far corner of his office. Then he let go of my hand and set down the bag of my plastic dinosaurs that had been slung over his shoulder. He instructed, "Now play quietly right here Billy, and if you do a good job I will let Nanny take you out for an ice cream cone after lunch."

I remember not playing for a few moments and instead letting my eyes look over the room. It was a grown up room, without any toys, but with a lot of books, a large desk, plants on the window ledge and piles of paperwork. I remember that I felt very small in that large office, and the Daddy who sat behind his large desk with a serious expression on his face as he stared at the computer, did not seem like the Daddy I normally had, who played and tickled and threw me up in the air.

I tried, I really did, to stay in the corner. I took each dinosaur out of the plastic bag and set them up in a row, but they did not seem happy that way. My dinosaurs wanted to explore their new habitat, to find where their prey might be. They wouldn't stay in a pen like pigs. No way!

The purple T-Rex was especially stubborn and kept venturing ever closer to Daddy's desk when I wasn't looking, while the blue brontosaurus was willing to just nibble at the books on the bottom shelf of my father's bookcase. The yellow pterodactyl was especially determined, flying this way and that, finally alighting on a corner of his desk.

When Daddy glared at me about that, I quickly retrieved the pterodactyl and scolded him, "No flying 'around. Go back home!"

Meanwhile, the T-Rex kept moving closer to his desk around the edges of the room while Daddy and his secretary discussed amendments to the draft letters she had typed up. It really wasn't my fault when she stumbled on a curious orange brachiosaurus, and narrowly avoided stepping on a pink dino frozen half-hatched out of her egg.

I suppose my father must have given me plenty of warnings before then, but following his secretary's squeak of alarm as she struggled to keep her balance, Daddy roared louder than any T-Rex. "What did I tell you Fitzwilliam Firth Darcy!?"

I fled blindly out of his office, barely managing to push the heavy door open enough to slip out, and ran smack into a woman. I couldn't even see who I'd run into, my eyes filled with tears.

The woman, who had her black hair in a ponytail and was wearing a blue dress with a high collar, gathered me into her arms even as she asked, "Whatever is the matter, young man?"

I was a mess of snot and gasping for air before I could answer, "Daddy's mad. Me and the dinos are bad. I want Mommy. I want Nanny. It's boring here. I wanna go home."

"Oh, the office isn't boring," she said, "not if you know where to find the fun." She released me and I scrubbed at my snotty nose with the cuff of my sleeve.

"Here, use this," she held out a tissue out of her pocket, holding it as I blew my nose. "I take it your daddy is Mr. Darcy, right?"

I nodded, shyly. "How'd you know?"

"Mr. Darcy is always bragging about his smart and handsome son. Also, you came out of his office. Now what's your name? Is it Superman?"

I shook my head "no" my tears forgotten.

"Is it Ignacious Willfred Huxtable Rambo Balboa Darcy?" From the crinkle around her dark eyes and her smirk, I knew she was just being silly.

I shook my head again. "No way! You's joking."

"Yup, I know you're Billy Darcy, but I am pretty sure you have a grown up name, too."

"I do, but not supposed to tell strangers."

"Well then let's go see Mr. Darcy and see if he'll introduce us and then maybe I can help you find all the fun."

I liked that idea and was willing to face my father with the nice lady by my side.

But we didn't have to open the door, for it was already cracked open, with my father watching our interaction. He accepted my "sorry," introduced us to each other (I then learned that the nice lady was Mrs. Reynolds), and gave permission for her to show me around, telling her "Mrs. Reynolds you are on special assignment today and if anyone complains, they are to come straight to me."

Not many memories probably stick in the head of a four-year-old, but I remember that time in the office very well, perhaps because I thought about it many times over the intervening years.

Mrs. Reynolds said "Follow me, Billy." She made no attempt to grab my hand, respected that I could and would stay with her. "First, let's start with the tour. Have you looked out the windows?" We were up high, higher than I had ever been before. Looking out the windows took up a few minutes, and then when I was ready to be done, she asked me, "Can you count?" I proudly told her I could count to 100 and soon she had me counting the cars parked on the street below and then the windows of the building across the street.

Then Mrs. Reynolds asked if I could draw. "Course I can!" I wanted her to know what a big boy I was. So then she set me up with some printer paper on a book and asked me to draw what I could see out the window. I doubt what I drew looked anything like what was out the window, but I remember being very proud of the several drawings I made. When I got tired of drawing I asked, "Are there any toys here?"

She thought for a moment and then her eyes lit up. "Yes, I know a manager who has one. If you are very careful, he might show you how it works and let you play with it."

Mrs. Reynolds walked me down a long hall. I remember wishing I had my toy cars because that hall would have been perfect for a race!

She took me to see a balding man whose name and title I immediately forgot. On his desk was what I now know to be one of those perpetual motion toys, but at the time I just saw shiny silver toned marbles hanging in a row. I counted them, one, two, three, four, five. The man was nice. He showed me how pulling a marble back on one side to smack into the others would result in the marble on the other side gliding up, and how the motion traveled back and forth. He let me play with it as he and Mrs. Reynolds talked.

After that, Mrs. Reynolds took me to the kitchen. There was a box of donuts sitting on the counter and she got the box down and held it out to me and told me to pick one, Then she put the jelly donut I had selected on a plate on the table for me. I remember kneeling on an orange plastic chair to make it easier to reach the table while she fixed me a hot chocolate. I recall that it took a while until the hot chocolate was cool enough to drink, but when I could finally sip it, being disappointed that it was not nearly as good as Mommy's. It had taken me years to realize that was because the office cocoa was made with water instead of milk. Still, Mrs. Reynolds had been so nice that I finished up the cocoa without complaining.

Then she took me to the bathroom and waited outside while I handled things myself. After all of this, I was sleepy and Mrs. Reynolds took me to a couch in the reception area to lie down for a nap. She showed me pictures in a magazine and made up stories about the ads. I fell asleep to those stories.

I remember waking up when Daddy shook me awake. He told me, "Nanny is here. She's going to take you home now."

I remember that Mrs. Reynolds was there, too. I scrambled to my feet and asked, "Can Mrs. Reynolds come, too?"

Daddy said, "Not this time, Billy, Mrs. Reynolds has a job to do. Now thank Mrs. Reynolds for taking care of you."

"Thank you Mrs. Reynolds," I dutifully said, but then reached out to hug her around the legs.

"It was my pleasure," said she as she ruffled my hair. "You come visit me again sometime."

The pictures I had drawn were on the coffee table by the couch. On impulse I held out my favorite to Mrs. Reynolds. "For you."

She took it with a smile.

Over the years, when visiting my father at work, I always went to see Mrs. Reynolds, too.

Years later, when I had a summer job at the company, I went into Mrs. Reynolds's office and found that taped to the side of her filing cabinet, facing her desk (where no one else could see it but her most of the time), was my drawing. I remember it was of the adjoining building and what should have been straight lines were all crooked, with what must have been windows all different sizes that only vaguely resembled squares. In one of the windows, there was a stick figure with raised, waving hand and a big smile.

In the present time, the hug with Mrs. Reynolds only lasted a few moments before (perhaps remembering herself), she broke away. "Are you okay, Mr. Darcy?"

I wasn't. The relief of having someone truly care had undone me, and I was crying. I shook my head "no" not trusting myself to speak. As she had so many years before, she retrieved a tissue from her pocket, but just handed it to me.

I mopped at my eyes and then blew. One tissue was not enough, so I got up and retrieved a box from a spot on the bookcase.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Her warm eyes held nothing but compassion, which was almost enough to make me cry more.

My bleary eyes looked up to her and then swept over to make sure my office door was closed. "Lock the door," I instructed.

Mrs. Reynolds did so and then sat down in one of the chairs before my desk after I sat back down in my office chair. She asked "Did something else happen to G.G.? And how did you get hurt?"

"Yes," I admitted, "something did happen to G.G., but it is so much more."

"Oh no. You not coming in, I was sure something was wrong. Every evening Frank had to stop me from calling you perhaps half a dozen times, tried to tell me you were probably just taking a well deserved vacation."

Frank was her husband.

"I felt so alone," I told her.

Mrs. Reynolds got up from her chair and came around the side of my desk. She lay a hand on my shoulder. "You aren't alone, Bill. I'm here for you, whatever you need."

I found myself reaching for her and soon enough I was getting another hug, with her hands rubbing at my shoulders and my tears falling again like water from a spigot.

"I don't know what to do about anything!" I declared.

She pulled back a little, "Well, first you are going to wipe your nose and calm down a little, and then we are going to talk it all through, and then you will see that it can't be the end of the world. I will help you get through whatever it is."

I wasn't ready to let her go just then and tightened my grip on her with one hand, even as I reached out my other hand to retrieve a tissue, to wipe my face and blow again. I went through half a dozen tissues that way before I let her go and she resumed her seat across from me.

First I told her all about G.G. running away, but even as I was telling her this, I knew that she knew that there was more to my reaction than just that. But she was appropriately horrified on my behalf.

"Oh Bill, how awful. G.G. used to be such a sweet girl, is at heart, but that George Wickham has got her turned all around." Mrs. Reynolds shook her head. "She's chasing after love so hard that she can't even see that she is already loved, by you, your cousin, your whole family. She is turning her back on real love in favor of a lie. I am so, so sorry. I can only pray that if she has found him, that eventually her eyes will be opened. But what else has happened?"

Mrs. Reynolds looked at me expectantly. I could not face seeing her eyes, her reaction, but I knew I wanted to tell her about the whole mess with Caroline. I also feared, though, her reaction. I took up a pen on my desk and started to spin it, stared at it, concentrating on it to the exclusion of everything else until I felt calm enough to speak. I stopped my spinning and let it fall into my open palm. Then I took off its cap and started to draw concentric circles on a pad of paper before me as I began to talk. Once the words started coming, I let them flow out, barely stopping for breath and certainly not long enough for her to make any kind of reply.

I told her, "A few months back, when I was vacationing with Chuck Bingley and his family, really wallowing in everything that had happened with G.G., Chuck's sister Caroline got me drunk, staggering drunk, took me home, undressed me as I couldn't manage even that, and then took advantage of me. I felt like I screwed up, but then Rick told me that it was she that was in the wrong. I've been very messed up over that, but once I knew the truth, I felt like I had to tell her brother about her, since I didn't want her to do that to anyone else. He didn't believe me, and punched me, broke my jaw. Rick dragged me to the doctor's about that, and that was when we learned G.G. ran away. I had to stay in the country to follow up with a specialist and dumb me, too stubborn for my own good, I thought that this might be a good opportunity to to report what Caroline did to the police, but they didn't believe me, either. Then I ran into this woman I really like, and managed to mess things up with her, too.

"I'm just not fit or capable anymore. I am just a shadow of who I used to be, when I knew all the answers, was competent, could fix things. I am being sucked down in a whirlpool and treading water isn't enough to help me escape it. I feel like I am drowning, and work is the only thing that makes any sense right now, when I can manage to focus on it."

"Oh Bill!"

I was still looking down at my paper. The concentric circles had been long ago been obscured over as I worked on filling the page with scribbles of black ink. I had to move the pen, cover every bit of white. I did not pause, not at all.

I felt her hand grasp my left hand, which was resting on the desk as the other hand worked. She squeezed at this hand and in my periphery vision I could tell she was leaning forward, over my desk. Almost unbidden, I turned my left hand palm side up and held her hand.

Mrs. Reynold squeezed my hand tight as she declared, "You are fit and capable, but this is too much for anyone to handle. Have you gotten any help? I am glad you are talking to me, but I think you need more than that."

"Yes, I am seeing a therapist. She wants me to see a psychiatrist, get me put on meds, but that will take a while."

"Bill, I want you to listen to me. I am very worried about you and that drowning feeling. I am here for you, and should you need me, whether here or at home, you call me and I'll be on my way to you, talking to you over the phone the whole time. I don't care if it is 3 am, you need to call me. You aren't alone.

"But if it is ever so bad that you (I hope you wouldn't of course, not ever) . . . if you ever think you might hurt yourself, you need to call 911 and tell them."

I thought about that for a moment, what it would be like to call a dispatcher and say I needed help. I imagined being taken by ambulance and injected with something and letting it all go blurry as I forgot myself and my pain. As I contemplated this, my right hand continued to scribble.

"Bill, I'm going to tell you something that I almost never talk about. It is too painful. I had a brother that killed himself. He had underlying issues with depression and his girl broke up with him, and he was in so much pain that he just decided to end it all. I . . . if only he had asked someone for help. He wasn't thinking straight, he would not have always felt like he did then, he thought only about ending his pain. He hurt everyone around him by doing that. We were trying to do right by him, in letting him grieve, but maybe instead of understanding what we were doing, he thought we didn't care. We did care! He left a huge hole in all of us. So please, please, promise me you'll ask for help if you need it!"

By now Mrs. Reynolds was holding my hand so tight that it was almost painful, but it was also reassuring to hear in her voice how much she cared.

"I'm sorry about your brother," I told her. "I don't think I am anywhere close to wanting to end it all, but I promise I would get help before I'd ever do anything like that."

Mrs. Reynolds's grip loosened a bit then. My right hand ached from how hard I had been scribbling. The white was all gone from the page except at the edges, where it was hardest to color it in. I forced myself to set the pen down. I saw ink stains on my hand.

We talked for the next couple of hours. I filled in a lot of the details which I had only provided broad strokes before. As the conversation went on, I finally told her about meeting the Bennet sisters on my hike, what had happened and the letter I had written afterwards.

Mrs. Reynolds told me, "That Elizabeth sounds like a fireball. With all that is going on with you, you clearly aren't ready for a relationship with anyone, but keep an eye on her. The strength of her annoyance with you, it shows me that she has strong feelings about you. They may not be the kind of feelings that you want, but she's hardly indifferent. I hope the letter will make a difference."

On Wednesday afternoon, I saw Ms. Berry and told her about confiding in Mrs. Reynolds. I also discussed with her that I wanted that referral to the psychiatrist. Ms. Berry told me, "I'm glad. You know that asking for needed help is actually a sign of strength, not weakness. Unfortunately, it may take some time for you to get in. But your coworker is right, if you ever think you might hurt yourself, you need to get evaluated and admitted to a hospital."

I continued to come into work each day and ever day was a little better than the one before. Mrs. Reynolds always wandering into my office at some point in the morning and we would talk. It was very helpful, to know that someone cared. On Friday, she asked if I wanted to meet for coffee on Saturday. I thanked her for the offer but told her, "Rick is coming back into town tonight and we are meeting together on Saturday. I will call you, though, if I need you."

When I went home on Friday evening, I retrieved the mail as I always do. In with the bills and advertisements, there was a letter with my name and address handwritten. I noticed that the return address was for a Mary Bennet. With no expectation for what the letter would contain, except that she was undoubtedly trying to be polite by promptly responding to my correspondence, I sat down on my couch and opened the letter.