Children of the Elementi Read Free

‘seen’ where his aunt and uncle kept his parents’ will. Tonight, he decided. He would look for it while his aunt and uncle were asleep. Adoption was far more important than just another beach party.
     
    Later in his room, Jake waited until he heard the click of the landing light. Great, they were in bed. Quietly he opened his door and listened intently for a few moments. Hearing no movement, he stepped tentatively on to the cream carpet in the hall. Slowly he crept down the wooden staircase, keeping to the left to avoid loose floorboards. He hesitated every few steps to listen for movement on the landing. At the bottom of the steps, Jake breathed a sigh of relief. He seemed to be the only one awake.
    Now in the downstairs hall, Jake didn’t dither but headed straight for the sitting room. Light from the street streamed through the net curtains into the small room.
    Jake walked towards the bay window. As he reached the sandy-colored sofa he knelt down and pushed it a few inches to the left. Yes! The carpet was loose there. He pulled up the corner and saw a small floor safe with a combination lock. Talk about security overkill.
    Jake thought back to the afternoon. What was that security code? Oh yeah. He entered the numbers he remembered lifting from Emma’s mind into the keypad. The lock whirred and clicked and he froze for a second. The sound too loud in the silent room.
    Success! He moved a little to the left of the window to gain more light and opened the safe fully. It was filled with colored folders, which he stacked on the sofa arm one by one. Beneath them lay his parent’s and, below it, another folder with his name.
    He removed the two folders and carefully put everything back the way he’d found it and closed the safe. Silently, he moved the sofa back and tiptoed eagerly back up to his room.
    Once in his bedroom, he kicked his dirty clothes across the floor and stuffed them against the crack under his door. Sure that no light would creep out into the landing, he turned his bedroom lamp on and tilted it to get maximum light on his bed. He sat down and looked at the two colored files.
    The blue one bulged with something hard and solid. Jake emptied the contents over the duvet. An envelope, a crystal pendant and some loose paperwork spilled out. Ignoring the paperwork for now, Jake picked up the envelope. It was addressed to him in his dad’s untidy scrawl. Underneath his name, he read that it was meant to be opened on his own eighteenth birthday. Taking the letter out of the yellowing envelope, he absent-mindedly smoothed the creases out of the paper.
    His eyes roamed the page, scanning the type quickly, eager to know more.
     
    Dear Jake,
     
    First of all we want to say how proud we are of you, we love you and you will always be our son.
    We couldn’t find the words to tell you before but you were adopted when you were a baby. We will support you in every way we can if you want to look for your birth parents.
    We included a pendant with this letter that was found with you. We should have given it to you years ago. Social Services insisted that we had to because your birth parents wanted you to have it. We can only say we are sorry for not giving it to you before now but if we had we would have had to admit that you were adopted. We love you too much and thought we would lose you if we did that.
    We hope you can forgive us.
     
    Mum and Dad
     
    The paperwork looked like adoption documents. They had both his mother and father’s signatures on them but no information about his real parents. The will in the last file only told him what he already knew - that in the event of his parents’ death, his uncle, Ben, would look after him.
    And there was the crystal.
    It hung off a black leather thong, suspended in a circle of white metal. The crystal itself was small but clear. Holding it up to the light, he couldn’t see any flaws. It looked like a perfect globe. Engraved on the edge of the metal, Jake could