Part of her hadn’t really thought he’d come, though she’d wanted him to.
For the kid’s sake, she reminded herself hastily.
But she plastered a smile on her face and crossed the room.
‘Jake, Brady, I’m so glad you came. This way, please.’
‘What is it you want to prove?’ Jake muttered as they followed her through the centre and to the area she wanted them to see.
But Flávia was already paying attention to Brady, at the way his eyes widened, beamed and then focused as he glanced around the space. A Ferris wheel spun slowly, with a projection behind, showing different rainforest animals and their habitats and prey. There was an interactive area with knowledge-based quizzes, games showing mimicry in nature and challenging the player to tell one from the other and an arcade-style machine for the life cycle of a butterfly.
And Brady was utterly fascinated.
‘What exactly is the point of this?’ Jake demanded after ten minutes or so.
‘Give it time and you’ll find out,’ she instructed him. ‘Now, go to the gallery over there, get a coffee, sit down and just watch.’
She could feel his eyes boring into her as she deliberately turned her back on him, and the barely suppressed fury. Yet he obeyed. Clearly, despite the way he had presented the facts in the past, his nephew meant more to him than just a responsibility his sister had left on him.
Flávia filed that away for later.
Then, she watched as Brady made his way into the interactive area, taking in each game and experiment and weighing each of them up as he decided which one to look at first. Evidently torn.
‘This one is all about mimicry in nature.’ She tried to help him, selecting one of the games and taking a few steps towards it, to see if Brady followed her. ‘Do you recognise any of them?’
He practically skipped behind her.
‘That pair is a viceroy butterfly and a monarch butterfly—the viceroy mimics the monarch, which tastes horrible to predators because of its milkweed diet as a caterpillar. That pair is a bushveld lizard and an oogpister beetle, and the beetle tastes horrible to predators because of the formic acid due to its diet of army ants. And that pair is a wasp spider and a wasp, which it kind of self-explanatory.’
‘Good.’ Flávia nodded. ‘Although the viceroy and monarch butterflies are now thought to show mutual mimicry, as the viceroy can release its own toxins when stressed, which makes it equally unpalatable to predators.’
‘Really?’ Brady stared at her in wonder.
‘Sure. Look, if you press that button you can start the game and learn more.’
The boy didn’t need any more encouragement, and Flávia backed off to let him have his head.
For over an hour she accompanied him around the room, letting him choose what to try next, only giving guidance to information when Brady invited it. Nonetheless, it was a good hour later before he finally showed signs of becoming saturated, and she called him for a short break, watching as he enjoyed his slushie, his eyes still roaming the room, from the activities he’d enjoyed the most to those he evidently still wanted to try.
And then, unexpectedly, he turned his serious eyes on her.
‘Are you Uncle Jake’s girlfriend?’
‘I...no.’ Flávia fought against getting flustered. ‘I’m just a colleague.’
‘Oh.’
There was no mistaking the disappointment in his tone, and despite everything in her screaming to leave it alone, Flávia couldn’t help herself.
‘Does your uncle have lots of girlfriends, then?’
‘No.’ Brady took another sip of his drink. ‘Mummy told me that he might do, before she died. But he hasn’t. Not until you.’
He was so calm, so collected, but Flávia hadn’t missed the way he’d steeled himself before he’d spoken. Jake had told her that Brady didn’t seem to want to grieve at all for his mother, but she suspected that wasn’t right.
‘You must miss your mummy a lot.’
The little boy stopped drinking. He stared at his glass.