The connection to the twelve-year-old boy might be the key.
And they did- one of them was a twelve-year-old boy.
The first of the cases had been the twelve-year-old boy.
Two of them had no more chance than a twelve-year-old boy.
Do you have any idea what it's like for a twelve-year-old boy to watch his father waste away?
Not very badly, but enough to have the mind of maybe a twelve-year-old boy.
"You have been through quite a lot for a twelve-year-old boy!"
How was a twelve-year-old boy to know all these things?
But it was also the face of a twelve-year-old boy.
He was no longer a twelve-year-old boy in body, but a powerful man.