Is It A Dream?

We All Love You

Sunday dinner at the Reagans was going fine until Linda broke down in tears. She quickly excused herself and headed to the back door.
"Is she okay?" Eddie asked, sympathizing with Linda.
"She'll be fine," Frank answered.
"Fine?" Danny growled, "what part of that was fine? You guys only see her on Sunday's, where she has to be normal! But you don't see her in the muddle if the week. You don't see her cry herself to sleep every night. You don't see her cut herself, or take scalding hot showers till the water's colder than the arctic just so she can feel something! This week, I finally got her to eat a decent meal, to show some form of affection! You don't know what they did to her, but I do! She tells me after she wakes up screaming for them to stop, calling out my name! So if you think that's fine, then you need to get your heads outta your asses!"
"... Danny? Can I talk to her?" Eddie wondered hesitantly. "I think I could maybe help."
He shrugged, "you can certainly try."
Eddie stood up and walked outside.
"I'm okay, Danny, I promise."
"Good, but I'm not Danny," the newest Reagan took a seat next to Linda. "Not a lot of people know this, but I was raped."
"Really?"
"Yeah. By a guy named Jake. About," Eddie sighed, "four-ish years ago?"
"How'd you get over it?"
"Jamie helped me a lot, actually.... course, it helped that I threw his pathetic ass in the slammer..."
Linda chuckled, "how.... how long did it take you to have, um..."
"To have sex again?" Eddie smirked, "three months, I think. Why?"
"Cause I really wanna have sex with Danny, but... I don't know. What'll happen if I chicken out? Or I'm not good enough? Or it's not pleasurable? Or-"
"Linda, Danny loves you. He'll understand if you chicken out. And I'm sure I'm his eyes, you can never be not good enough. And he's a guy, of course it'll be pleasurable.... that's probably sexist."
Linda chuckled again. "We were close, though. But I freaked last minute.... he did finger me yesterday, though."
"Did you like it?"
"Yeah, a lot. He's really good at that stuff."
"I bet."
Linda looked at Eddie weirdly.
"Oh, I-I just meant you Reagans are good at every thing you do."
"Not every thing, but thanks."
"You will get better, I know. All in due time."
"It's just hard, y'know? I mean, you were raped once- and I'm not belittling you or anything-"
"No, of course not." Eddie nodded, encouraging the older woman.
"But me... for six months I was raped and tortured and malnourished.... and the thing of it is, I recognized the female's voice."
"Wait, what? You recognized it?"
"Yeah."
"You gotta come to the station tomorrow. Tell us the accent, inflections, everything you remember. And maybe we can find it through voice recognition?"
"Don't you have to have a recording of the voice in order to put it through voice recognition? Cause if I just go in there, that's gonna take forever, y'know?"
"Yeah...." Eddie sighed. "Damn."
"I know."
"What're you girls doing out here?" Danny wondered, standing behind them.
Linda looked behind her, "having a very good discussion." She stood up and smiled at her soon to be sister in law. "Thanks." She hugged her.
Eddie Hughes back, "no problem. If you need to talk or anything, don't hesitate to call."
"I won't." She took Danny's hand, "y'all are so nice! No one has given second thought to saying 'just call'!"
"That's cause we all love you," Danny kissed her cheek, making her smile.