"You ever wish on a star before?"
The question startles her. It's late, and the sky outside is dark, and they're sitting in the squad room, because neither of them want to go home just yet, and there's paperwork to be done, and so they work on it. And she looks at her partner, and shakes her head.
"No," she says. "There was never any time. I was always doing homework, trying to stay away from home, cleaning up after my mom…Have you?"
He nods, and it's this that makes her imagine her partner at six or seven years old, staring up at the sky and wishing for something that isn't likely to happen.
"Gave it up when my dad found out," he says, vaguely, and she knows better than to ask him what this means, because she has the feeling she already knows.
"You know, sometimes I wonder why kids even bother," she remarks. "It never seems like anything is going to happen. Like their wish is ever going to come true."
"That was my problem," he says. "I never saw the point. I did it, but I never expected anything to happen."
She gives him a sideways look, and wonders what her partner could have ever had to wish for, and decides she wants to know, so she asks. "What'd you wish for?"
He looks at her for a long moment, and then looks down at his paperwork. His hands are bruised, and she knows he was in a fight with his former partner a week or so ago, but she doesn't know the details and hasn't asked. Finally, he answers her.
"I wished for release," he says, quietly. "For an escape. A moment of peace where my father wasn't breathing down my neck and I actually got along with him."
Silence. It is the last thing she has expected to hear, and yet at the same time, the first thing she thought she would hear.
"What would you have wished for, if you'd ever had the chance?" he asks, and she looks over at him and shrugs.
"That my mom hadn't been raped, that I'd been the product of a normal relationship…that she'd never started drinking…" She trails off and shakes her head. "Guess we were both a little more grown up than we had to be."
He offers up a wry smile. "The funny part about it is that I was the youngest," he remarks. "Technically, I shouldn't have been wishing for what I did."
"Then why did you?" she asks, and instantly regrets it because she knows as well as he does that there are some places that they don't go, and yet she's gone there.
"Because whenever I did it, I was at the point when I didn't think I could take it any more," he says, and doesn't tell her that he gave it up for a little while before that incident back in the fifth grade, because that night, it had started up again.
She gives him another sideways look and then speaks. "You know, I got to that point more than any kid should have had to, and I can't help that it's what helped make me into what I am now."
"Someone who lives to help the people around them, particularly the children," he says, and she nods, and he does, too.
"I used to think when I was a kid that I would become a cop because my father had been one, and then my senior year happened."
She knows what he means. "And then what? You obviously never gave up on that."
"I went into the service," he says. "Marine Corps. And then I became a cop, because we needed the money, and it was pretty much all I could do."
"But you love your job?"
"Yeah, I love it." At this point, he trails off, and stares out the window, squinting slightly, because the lights in the squad room are reflecting off the glass, making it hard for him to see.
"It's hard," she remarks, as she watches him, and he nods, without looking at her.
"Yeah, it is." He pauses, and then speaks again. "One of those things that always makes me want to wish on stars."
"Do you still?" she asks, and when he nods, she asks another question. "What do you wish for now?"
He hesitates, and she knows he does, because there is an expression on his face as he finally looks at her again that tells her that he doesn't really want to answer, but that he's going to.
"Now? Now I wish that every child has someone to hug them, that I'll be able to go home at the end of the day and know that someone's waiting for me…that sort of thing."
He trails off for a long moment, and then goes on. "I also wish that every child has a chance to wish on a star at least once."
An admission that he wouldn't make to anyone else, and he knows it, and so he looks back down at the paperwork and pretends to be working on it, but out of the corner of her eye, she can see him looking at the picture of his children on his desk.
And she takes the chance, while he isn't looking at her, she takes her own chance, and wishes, and when she looks up again, he's smiling faintly and she knows he's seen her.