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to say, ‘Don’t be silly, I’m your dad! What are you talking about?’—but he didn’t.
    For the remainder of the ride back home, the silence was deafening.
    When Specky’s dad pulled into their driveway, Specky quickly jumped out of the car, ran inside, and bolted up to his bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him. A minute later he could hear his father enter the house calling for Mrs Magee. Specky lay quietly on his bed, trying to listen to his parents’ conversation below. There was a lot of muffled mumbling coming from what sounded like the kitchen.
    ‘Simon, come down here, please. Now! Your mother and I want to talk to you,’ shouted Specky’s dad.
    Specky hesitantly made his way down the stairs, wishing he hadn’t said what he did to his father.
    ‘Sit down,’ instructed his dad, who was sitting beside his mother in the lounge room.
    Specky looked at his parents’ faces—they seemed all squished with stress.
    ‘Your mother and I weren’t planning to tell you this until you were a little older. But in light of you finding the photo and what you just said to me in the car…’
    ‘Dad, I’m sorry about that, I…’ Specky wasn’t quite sure if he was ready to hear what they were going to say.
    ‘No, let me finish. We want you to know that we love you very much. You will always be our son, but we think you should know something. Something we never intended to keep from you.’
    Specky’s father looked back at his mother, then directly back at him. He took in a deep breath, and then spoke the words that Specky had suspected all along.
    ‘You were adopted, son. You came into our lives soon after that photo you found was taken, and we are so blessed that you did. I am still your father and your mother is still your mother—we want you to understand that.

10 ADOPTED!
    A sudden flood of tears streamed down Specky’s cheeks. The realisation that he was adopted had hit him like a ton of bricks. His mother put her arm around him.
    ‘If there’s anything you want to know we’ll tell you, okay? Please don’t cry, Simon—you’ll always be my boy!’ She began to cry.
    ‘But why didn’t you tell me before this?’ Specky asked, trying to hold back his tears.
    ‘This isn’t easy for us, Simon. I suppose we wanted to avoid it for as long as we could. Not to hurt you but to protect you. Your happiness is what’s important to us.’
    ‘Protect me from what? What do you mean? I can’t believe this. How? Why?’
    ‘Look…’ Specky’s father stepped in. ‘This is probably not the time to go into great details. It’s been an emotional night for all of us.’
    ‘Your father’s right. Why don’t you go and wash up and I’ll get dinner ready, okay?’
    Specky reluctantly agreed with his parents. It was all too much to take in right now. He wandered back up to his bedroom in a daze, and threw himself onto his bed, unaware that his beloved black cocker spaniel, Sammy, had followed him. Sammy jumped onto the bed and nestled in beside him.
    ‘I knew, I knew it!’ Specky sighed to himself.
    ‘Can I come in?’
    It was Alice tapping at Specky’s bedroom door. Specky muttered ‘no’, but Alice entered anyway.
    ‘I overheard it all, and I can’t believe it either. Look, you’re still my little brother and I’m still your sister, okay?’
    Specky flopped his arm across his face. He didn’t want Alice to see him tearing up again.
    ‘Um, my notebook is fixed, so the computer in the study is all yours,’ she croaked awkwardly on her way out.
    Specky decided to stay in his room until dinner was ready. An hour later, he made his way downstairs to find that the rest of the family had started eating without him.
    ‘There you are! We thought you’d dozed off so we didn’t want to disturb you. I kept your plate warm, sweetie,’ said Specky’s mum, acting all breezy, as if nothing major had happened.
    Specky pulled up a chair and sat at the table, while his mum placed his dinner in front of