The Top Gun's Return

Epilogue

"Look," said Sammi June, "it's the Wishing Star-see it?" She lifted an arm to point, and Cory gently brought it back into the circle his arms had made around her.

"Hmm," he said, bumping the top of her head with his chin, "that looks like Venus, to me."

She lay her head back against his shoulder, shimmering inside, while the boat drifted on the quiet lake. "I told you…I used to wish on it, when I was little," she murmured, and after a while added hesitantly, testing her new-found happiness, "and…when I wasn't so little. Sometimes I still do."

"Tell me how you do that," he said softly, melting her heart. As if it weren't already totally mush.

"Okay. First, you say the poem, 'Starlight, star bright, first star I've seen tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.' Then you close your eyes, and…you make a wish."

"Okay, let's do it."

She squirmed around to look at him. "Are you serious?"

"Sure, why not?"

She smiled and settled herself once more against his chest. She could feel his heart beating against her back as she drew a careful breath and whispered the poem and heard his deep voice echoing the childish words. She closed her eyes and after a moment felt his warm breath tickle her ear.

"Okay, what'd you wish for?"

"Uh-uh," she whispered, tilting her face to his, "you're not supposed to tell. Otherwise it won't come true." Then he chuckled and touched her smile with his, and she knew it didn't matter because what she'd wished for was already hers.

"What did you wish for when you were a little girl?" Cory asked, sometime later. "Did those wishes come true, too?"

"Oh, I always wished for the same thing." Across the star-spangled waters of the lake, in the last of the twilight, she could see her mom and dad standing together on the dock, the two of them making one silhouette. Her chest quivered, and suddenly she could only whisper. "I guess it's okay to tell you, though. Because I think it's coming true…"

Holding her tightly, maybe because he felt her tremble, he bent his head and murmured gently in her ear, "Tell me."

Sammi June drew a quivering breath, and as tears slipped down her cheeks she smiled. "I wished my dad would come home."