This time after the case, I end up talking to Fin.
And it's almost strange, because on a personal level, I haven't ever really talked to him.
Not because I don't like him, because we've never had a problem.
He's a cop, same as me, we both have at least one kid, we're in the same unit.
But, as he put it during that conversation, we grew up in different places.
He's right, in a way.
We did, but we both ended up here.
The conversation goes towards our kids, of all things.
I'm not too surprised.
Most of the time I talk to any other cop I know that's a parent…
It always goes back to the kids.
He asks me if I'd know if something serious were going on with my four,
And I have to tell him that right now, I don't know,
Because I don't.
And he looks at me for a long moment, and then shakes his head before telling me
That at least I get to talk to them pretty much as often as I want.
This makes me wonder, but I don't ask.
He says after a moment he wishes he had a better relationship with his son,
And I don't know what to tell him, because
My relationship with my son isn't all that great right now, either.
Guess we really do have more in common than I thought.
Not too sure that's something to be happy about, given what it is.
It's funny, I tell him, how most things going on, you know about,
But they're little, and hardly seem to matter, and then,
The big things, you're clueless about, and those are the things
That you need to know about, because if you don't,
There's no way you can come and help them when they need it,
Even though they never seem to think they need it.
They think they're invincible, he says, and then, that it takes something like this
For them to realize that they're not, and by then,
It's too late, because they've lost someone, and some of them only want to keep going.
Silence.
It's something that neither of us want to think about, but we do, anyway.
And part of it's just 'cause we're cops, and that's what we do.
But the other part is that we're both parents, and even if we weren't cops, we'd worry.