And then he put his fingers back on the strings, and he found the chord, and he played.
He came back in on the next line. His voice was a wreck now, wet and cracking. He didn’t care. He sang right through it, louder than before, and the voices along the walls got louder with him, as if they were holding him up.
I was still standing. I didn’t know I was still standing until the man beside me, the one with the sunburned neck, quietly set my fallen chair back up behind me. I didn’t sit in it. I couldn’t.
The second chorus came. And this time, the officers didn’t hold back.
Hold the light, hold the light,
I’ll be home before the night.
It filled the whole gym. Rough and out of tune and wonderful. Some of the dads in the audience didn’t know the words, but by the last line, they’d figured it out, and they were singing too. People who had never met my husband. People who had no idea who he was or why forty three police officers had just walked into their kids’ assembly.
