Milo looked. “Yeah. I saw.” He shrugged. “You scratched yourself on something?”
“No.” Tom Alan bit his lip. “I scratched myself…with something.”
“Oh. When? Why?”
“Recently. Because.” Tom Alan took the chair next to Milo. “Because the last time I saw my mom alive, right before we moved to Japan and I abandoned her…” When Milo started to object, different words came. “When it felt like I abandoned her…the creep just got me a little on the sole of my foot, made the tiniest red mark, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Fast-forward a bit, to when I got the call she was…that he’d killed her.”
Milo offered a gentle touch.
“After that, once we fly back to Japan after the funeral, I become obsessed with that mark when we start reading The Red Badge of Courage in school. Mine are all gone. My mom is gone. My s
