It blended almost perfectly into his skin.
I touched it.
Something hard was underneath.
Every instinct in my body shifted instantly.
I carefully lifted the edge.
Beneath it was a tiny black disc.
Smooth.
Hard.
Barely bigger than a grain of rice.
It looked like a tiny piece of black glass.
I had no idea what it was.
But I knew one thing.
It had no business being behind my child’s ear.
“Ethan.”
I forced myself to remain calm.
“Who put this here?”
His entire expression changed.
The bright, talkative boy standing in my kitchen vanished.
“I don’t know.”
“Ethan. Look at me.”
He stared at the floor.
“Who put it there?”
His voice became barely audible.
“Maybe the man from school.”
My blood ran cold.
“What man?”
He still refused to look at me.
“The one who knew Dad.”
Everything around me seemed to tilt.
Because Ethan’s father, Ryan, had been dead for three years.
Ryan died when Ethan was six.
It happened quickly.
He became sick in the spring.
By the end of summer, he was gone.
Ethan understood death in the broken-up way six-year-olds do.
He understood that his father was gone.
Then, every few months as he grew older, he understood it again in a different way.
