DISCLAIMER: Dark Shadows and its canon characters are the property of Dan Curtis Productions; no copyright infringement is intended.

This story ties in with my earlier fics "Bitter End," "Thorns Along the Way," "Namesake," and the work-in-progress "Sacrificial Wolf"; but it doesn't require that the reader be familiar with any of them. Gavin Collins, a brother of Elizabeth and Roger, is my original character. There will hopefully be an "explanation" of why he was never mentioned in the series--I know what the "explanation" is--but it hasn't been written yet.

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~~~1937~~~
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It never would have happened if the boys hadn't been playing ball indoors.

"You know you're not supposed to do this. You have all of outdoors!" Elizabeth had half-scolded, half-pleaded.

"It's too cold out," said Gavin. "Who died and left you boss, anyway? You've gotten really snotty now you're a 'teenager.' Big deal--I'm already as tall as you are!"

She knew that wasn't true. But it was embarrassingly close to the truth, considering he was only nine.

"Going to be as tall as I am," Dad says. "Roger has my coloring, but Gavin's going to have my height."

So proud of them, and they act like obnoxious little brats the minute his back is turned.

"I wanna play," said 7-year-old Roger.

Elizabeth took a deep breath. "Listen, boys, Daddy did ask me to keep an eye on you while he's over at the cottage with the caretaker." A half-dozen servants in the house, and they won't even try. "There will be hell to pay if Mama comes home and finds you up here with a bat and ball--"

"She won't," said Gavin. "Those lunches with her dumb friends always take hours."

"If you break something--"

"What're we gonna break, in the hall?" The hall in question was a long, bare corridor with four doors on each side, a staircase at one end and a stained-glass window at the other.

"The window, maybe! And you haven't even closed those doors--"

"I wanna play," Roger repeated.

"Okay, buddy." Gavin handed him the ball. "Scoot down there and toss it to me." Taking a practice swing with the bat, he stuck his tongue out at Elizabeth.

Roger tossed the ball.

It wasn't much of a toss. It reached Gavin on the second bounce. But his bat connected.

The ball sailed to the left. It struck a door frame, caromed off it, and disappeared through an open door on the other side of the hall.

Something shattered.
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"Shit," said Gavin.

Elizabeth was livid. "Now see what you've done!"

"It coulda been worse," Gavin said sullenly. "At least it was Daddy's room, not Mama's."

Mama was the strict one.

Roger had briefly looked close to tears. But now he wondered aloud, "Why don't they sleep in the same room? Other kids' parents sleep together."

"Because we have such a big house," Elizabeth told him. "Married people sleep together if they don't have the space to do anything else."

Why tell a 7-year-old I don't think our parents love each other?

"Why do we have a bigger house than other people?"

Dad says I must never talk about being wealthy. It's tactless to mention it to anyone outside the family, and Roger's too young to understand that, so I can't explain it to him yet.

Though Mama, of course, talks about being wealthy all the time. If Roger hasn't heard her, it's because the boys shut out everything she says.

"Because our family has always lived in the country," she told him. "People who want to be in town have to live close together. They're all clustered around the harbor, and there's no room for big houses."

Gavin's sneer told her what he thought of that explanation.

She scowled at him and said pointedly, "Guess we'd better see how much damage you did."

But he still looked unrepentant as they entered their father's room.

Not as bad as I expected, Elizabeth thought with relief. The ball had taken out a hurricane-style lamp, knocking it off the dresser before it smashed on the floor. The lamp was one of a pair, but she doubted it had sentimental value. And it wouldn't require immediate replacement, like a broken window.

The windows' being intact meant the ball was still in the room somewhere.

It didn't seem right to have servants clean up a mess the children had made. But Elizabeth didn't want the boys to cut themselves, so she did the sweeping. Still concerned about glass fragments, she stopped Roger from crawling on the floor to hunt for the ball.

Yet another task for her.

Flat on her belly, with the boys standing over her, she spotted it under the bed.

Way under the bed. She'd have to move other things to have a chance of getting her arm in there.

She pulled out a shoebox, rolled over and sat up so she could lay it out of the way.

She glanced casually at the shoebox.

And then she forgot about the ball.
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The box was tied tightly with twine. But the most striking thing about it was the label, written in a careful hand she recognized as their father Jamison's.

One word.

"Elizabeth."

The boys were crowding in to look over her shoulder. "Whaddya got?"

She wasn't sure which one had spoken.

She stared at the box, imagining that the faded letters of her name squirmed and writhed.

Oh God, no.

Rosemary. Rosemary Baker.

It was only six weeks ago that her classmate had begun coming to school with red eyes and a pale, drawn face.

Elizabeth didn't know to whom Rosemary had confided her problem. But soon the story was all over school.

Rosemary had gone in her parents' bedroom for some reason. Found a shoebox labeled with the single word "Rosemary." Opened it.

The box had contained adoption papers.

Rosemary was shattered. Her friends were sure she'd never recover.

Now Elizabeth shrank in horror from this box.

It can't be, it can't...

But what else could it be?

She knew her parents weren't infertile. She was old enough that she could remember Mama being pregnant with Gavin and Roger.

But I was the first. Don't they say couples sometimes can't have babies because they're trying too hard? Stress or something. And after they give up and adopt, they relax and really do have their own.

Jamison and Celia Collins, wed in their teens, had been together a very long time before Elizabeth was born.

She heard Jamison's bragging voice again. "Roger has my coloring, but Gavin's going to have my height."

No one says anything like that about me. I don't look like Dad or Mama.

She knew that didn't rule out her being their child. Her hair was the same color as Gavin's, and the blond Celia had undoubtedly given birth to him. But she didn't have the easy assurance of a child who knew she resembled a parent.

And here was the box, a twin to Rosemary's. Proof that she, like Rosemary, was at the heart of some dark secret...

"It looks like it's addressed to you," Gavin said. "Aren't you gonna open it?"

"N-no."

" 'Fraidy cat!" Suddenly, he had grabbed it and was ripping off the twine.

"You give me that!" she yelled, jumping to her feet and pursuing him.

She got her hands on it and they grappled for it, with a tittering Roger trying to help Gavin. All the twine was on the floor now.

Over the boys' heads, she saw their father in the doorway. Jamison Collins recognized the box and screamed, "No! Don't!"

But it was too late. The box flew open, Elizabeth fell backward into a sitting position on the bed, and the box's contents landed in her lap.

Her ear-splitting shriek sent the boys racing for the door. Jamison ignored them and rushed to his daughter.

She had a fleeting impression of his white, stricken face before she passed out.