Sleep came only in snatches of minutes as she twisted and turned on the hobnail bedspread. Great concern for the health of her only living relative moved like a mournful specter, floating around the room, lurking under the bed and behind the drapes. Even the childhood comforts of Ken and Barbie from elementary days, high school pennants and pom-poms, or the life-sized poster of Jon Bon Jovi during his long-haired reign, all of it here just as she had left it, gave her little solace. Following the death of her parents, Janet had been installed in this very room and raised with loving, but rigid standards, by the same lady who now lay weak and frail in her bed on the floor below. From the earliest times Janet was taught that the Lancasters do not retreat from life; rather, they meet it head-on and on their own terms. Elizabeth and Lionel Lancaster had been bound and determined that she learn the lesson well, and they would not let even the death of her parents distort her vision of the future.
