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“Didn’t take her long because I didn’t hear her crying.”
Lincoln looked back over at West, a small smile tilting his lips. “No, it didn’t take her long at all. As soon as she brought Hope to her chest, she went back to sleep.”
“Sometimes, it blows my mind how much medication can help someone,” I quietly admitted as I took a seat in one of the chairs at the kitchen table.
Lincoln shrugged. “They put me on meds when I first came back home,” he informed me. I frowned. I hadn’t known that. “Until I went through enough therapy to not wake up in the middle of the night screaming my fucking head off, I was on medications to force me to sleep and to help my rage.”
“You never talk about what happened to you over there.”
He shrugged. “I talked about it enough with a therapist,” he told me. “Sorry, bro, but frankly, I’ll probably never talk about it again. Shit was bad. I watched people die—watched kids get murdered because the adults tricked them into thinking they were doing something good by strapping bombs to themselves.” A shudder wracked his frame.
I stayed quiet. What the hell were you supposed to say to that? I knew Lincoln wouldn’t want to hear, ‘I’m sorry.’
“I couldn’t handle another contract,” he told me. “So, once my time was up, I got out.”
I nodded in understanding. Someone knocked lightly on the front door, dragging me from my thoughts. Lincoln set down the wooden spoon he’d been holding and went to go answer it before the knocking woke West up.
We used to have a doorbell, but Lincoln quickly uninstalled it when we moved out here. He hated the loud noise of it. Axel had used it once when we were preparing to bring West home from the center, and after that one time, Lincoln was done with it.
Makes sense now though, after hearing a tiny bit of what the hell he’d gone through while he was overseas.
I wouldn’t want to hear that loud shit, either.
“Oh, hey, Meghan,” Lincoln greeted. He stepped aside to let her in. “Are you here to see West?”
Meghan stepped inside. “Yeah. We’ve tiptoed around this subject of us being sisters for way too long already.” She frowned when she saw West was asleep. “But I’ll come back another time.”
“No,” I said as I moved to stand up. I set Hope in her pack ‘n’ play. “West probably won’t sleep long. She just needed a power nap. Come sit down,” I told her. “She needs to talk to you about this, too.”
Meghan drew in a deep breath. “Can one of you text Axel or Julian and let them know where I am? I slipped out without letting them know. Otherwise, they’d come with me and hover, and this is something that West and I need to talk about without everyone else present.” She drew in a deep breath. “This talk isn’t going to be easy for either of us.”
Lincoln clenched his jaw before he forced it to relax. I pushed my hand through my hair. West was just beginning to get better, to come out of her shell. And I was terrified that this talk would set her back again, no matter how much it needed to happen. She was still in a fragile state of mind.
“West has…” Lincoln sighed as he tried to figure out the right words to say. “The last few weeks have been pretty rough on West. She was diagnosed with postpartum depression.”
“I know,” Meghan told us. “West called me a few nights ago while you guys were sleeping. She was really upset, terrified that she was fucked up, so I came over.”
Lincoln snapped his eyes to mine. We hadn’t been aware of this at all. If we had, we would have comforted her and stopped her from freaking out. We would have been there for her, just like we promised her we always would.
I hated that she felt like she was fucked up because she wasn’t.
But, as Dr. Gresham had warned us, it was one of the feelings she would have with postpartum depression.
“It was the first time we’d talked since I came to see her and Hope after Hope was born,” Meghan told me. “I knew she would come around; I was just hoping it would be under better circumstances.” She rubbed her arms as if she were chilled, though the house was actually warm, especially here right by the kitchen since Lincoln was cooking. “Axel and Julian have been really worried about me, but I know West. She won’t talk before she’s ready.”
“But since she opened up to you about her postpartum depression, you feel that she’s ready now,” I noted.
Meghan nodded. “Our blood may have let us down, but we’re cut from a different cloth. We’re both trying—trying to be good moms, good women, and every single day, we’re trying to be the best versions of ourselves.”
