Mr silence

Some days ago I went to my nephew's birthday party, along with my daughters. Alicia (the 4 year old) has this irrational fear of uncle JM (she has two other uncles and everything's fine), so I had to keep kind of close to her, and watch her play. It's not as bad as it used to be, but still she's never comfortable when he's around. Apparently, nothing has ever happened even though I went to a psychologist once and she said he probably scolded her once or did something that scared her (not that it had to be something awful)... I guess I'll never know. I find him so strange, though. During our regular saturday family lunch at my in-laws he never says a word. He acts like a ghost. You never know when he's there, because he doesn't even say hello. He arrives with his wife and children, sits down to eat, gets up, sits down on the couch with the newspaper and eventually leaves with his family. Not a word. Not a sound, nothing. He's changed a bit in the last year, though. At his son's birthday party he did say something. I took a picture of his daughter coming down the slide with my little one and showed it to him. He said "mm". Well, to be precise, he said "m". Or was it more like "m"? I guess that meant he liked it.