“I know. We don’t have them here in London, thankfully. This one lives in South America.”
“Where’s that?”
“I can show you on the globe, if you’d like.”
“Oh, yes please,” Noah said enthusiastically.
She shifted the book into his lap and crossed the library to the globe that stood in the corner. Rotating it around, she placed her finger in the right place. “This is London,” she told him. “The blue here is the sea.” She traced her finger across. “And South America is right down here.”
“And these beetles can’t fly, right?”
“Well, I think they probably can, but not that far,” Violet told him. “They’re too small. They would run out of energy, and there would be nowhere for them to land. So don’t worry. They can’t come here.”
“I’m notworriedabout it,” Noah said. “I think it would be fun to see one! Maybe they’ll get on a boat.”
Violet had to laugh. “Anything is possible, I suppose.” She returned to sit beside him on the chaise. “Do you want to keep going with the book?”
“Yes,” he said, placing it back in her arms and reaching over to turn the page. “Moths!”
“Do you like moths?”
“Yes, they’re more interesting than butterflies,” he said. “I think they’re sturdier. I don’t know that for sure. But they seem sturdier, don’t they?”
“I think you’re right,” she told him. “Because you see moths flying into walls and things sometimes, and it doesn’t really seem to bother them. I’ve never seen a butterfly do that.”
“I wouldn’t mind being a moth,” Noah mused. “I think that would be interesting.”
She laughed. “You want to be a moth? And not a little boy?”
“Well, maybe only for a while,” he said, grinning at her. “Because I guess I can do all kinds of things a moth can’t do.”
“Like read.” She turned the book so it faced him. “Read this section here, okay?”
He frowned. “This book is too hard for me, Violet. You know that.”
“I think you can handle this part. I just looked at it, and I think you know all these words. Give it a try, at least, all right?”
He looked down at the book in front of him and bit his lip.
Violet waited. She knew Noah and knew he could do this. He was letting himself worry about it so much that he believed he wouldn’t be able to handle it. But if she was patient and gave him some time, he would move through his worry. He would manage it.
“Moths may live on…” he paused. “Only. Moths may live only a…”
“Keep going.”
“Fff…is it ‘foo’?”
“Almost,” she said. “Try the next word. See if that helps.”
“Days,” he said. “Oh!Fewdays!”
“That’s good!”
He looked up at her. “Really? They only live for a few days? That’s sad.”
“It’s all right,” she told him. “That’s how long they expect to live. They think about time differently than we do. We do things more slowly, because we have years and years. But moths…they do their whole lives in a couple of days. They’re just very fast about everything.”
Noah looked at the page for a long moment, biting his lip—Violet wondered what he was thinking. He was so pensive sometimes. She could imagine him putting together all kinds of pieces in his head.
