A violent shiver ran through her body and she hugged herself tighter to keep warm. It was a few minutes until Lynn opened her eyes. And in utter confusion she stared up at the stars. In a sleepy haze the young woman tried to figure out where she was and once she'd realized that, she wondered how she had gotten there. The fresh night air quickly cleared her head and Lynn became acutely aware of the dampness of her clothes. She stretched out her legs and drowsily stood up from the lounger she'd been sleeping in.
Lynn rubbed her arms for warmth and glanced around the fairy house's garden. It was too dark to see anything but the silhouettes of the hedges and the house. In sudden realization Lynn bent down and picked up the book she had been reading earlier. She felt so silly for falling asleep outside! At least, she remembered with enormous relief, she had helped Miss Blanche to bed before coming out here.
A cricket was singing somewhere, all other life had fallen asleep by now. Lynn had an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach. She felt so lonely, so completely alone like there was no one else in the world. As she looked up to the sky not even the bright and beautiful stars could erase this strange feeling.
Lynn turned around, knowing that this way she would be facing the house. And to her surprise she thought she could see a dim light behind the glass doors and the thin curtains. Sleepily she assumed that she might have left a light on before coming outside to get some fresh air, although she hadn't even a vague recollection of it at the moment.
Holding her hands out in front of her like a blind person—for in the dark she might as well have been one—Lynn started moving towards the house. Considering the conditions the night offered her, she was quite successful. She managed to trip only once, over the terrace, which was a step above the ground.
Lynn fumbled with the door for quite a long moment, and when she finally got it to open, she was greeted by a warm wave of air from inside the house and the confirmation that there was, indeed, a little light left on in the living room. Lynn hurried inside, away from the cold and into her room to put away her book.
Once she entered the gallery again, the light from the living room showed her the way, so she didn't bother to turn on another one. She wondered briefly and with great astonishment how Miss Blanche must have lived as a child when electricity had been rare. But she supposed in those times her sister had brought in enough money for the Hudsons to be able to afford such luxuries. Lynn stepped through the short gallery with only a few strides and looked into the living room. What she saw there was so shocking, so absolutely unexpected that Lynn gasped in horrified disbelief and had to put out a hand to the wall for support.
Lynn had for quite a while now known everything she thought she needed to know about Jane Hudson. What she did know for certain was that alcohol had played an important role in driving her into the state she was in now. Lynn also knew how Blanche had tried to keep her sister from its destructive claws and how much she hated and feared the drinks for what they had done to her sister. Never in a million years had Lynn thought she would walk in on Miss Blanche drinking. But there it was.
Blanche Hudson was sitting in her wheel chair in front of the liquor cabinet, which stood against the wall at this point farthest from Lynn. The young woman's eyes registered the actress's sharp silhouette, her trembling hands that held a large whiskey glass and occasionally brought it up to her lips. It was a sight so unthinkable that for a fleeting moment Lynn thought she might still be dreaming. But the terrible sense of intense worry that had crept up to her gave testimony of the reality of the scene.
As she stood and watched Miss Blanche down another mouthful, Lynn wondered with pained bewilderment what could possibly have driven the older woman to the point of resorting to drinking. It might very well have been the whole situation with her brother and the considerably fresh memories of Blanche's own sister, or it might have been the impact of the letter from the sanatorium that she had received today. Either way the sorry sight of Miss Blanche having stooped so low and of her violently shivering form made Lynn, for a moment, unbearably sad and also injected a certain amount of unexpected decisiveness into the young woman.
Forgetting to consider her position in Miss Blanche's life, Lynn strode over from her place in the gallery and to the wheel chair. Without so much as a warning, she snatched the glass from the actress's hands. Blanche jumped so vigorously that if Lynn hadn't known better, she'd have thought the woman had wanted to stand up.
Blanche looked up at her maid with wide startled eyes, sinking deeper into her chair. Her moist lips were moving to form some silent word, but Lynn paid no mind to them.
"Miss Blanche!" she had exclaimed the moment she had confiscated the glass. She was now glaring down at the older woman with appalled frustration, her hands had made their way to her hips. "What are you doing? You. Don't. Drink." She emphasized the last words firmly, and although she didn't notice it herself, she had raised her voice.
Blanche was trembling. So much, in fact, that when she finally found it in her to say something, it extended to her voice. Lynn witnessed her eyes filling with tears. One of them, a hot tear of remorse made its way down Blanche's right cheek, one that, only lying in bed an hour later, Lynn realized was probably lured out by her so uncharacteristic rage. Blanche must not have been feeling too well either, because even in this dim light the young woman could notice the woman's unnaturally flushed complexion.
"I… I-I couldn't sleep." Blanche wrung her hands as she spoke, her voice coming in weak sobs. "I had- had a nightmare again, and then I couldn't sleep."
Lynn felt her irritation melting into a terrible ache in her heart for Miss Blanche.
"A-And you weren't there. And the pills didn't help."
Lynn thought her heart might have skipped a beat. She nearly dropped the whiskey glass on the counter. A wavering dread in her voice, Lynn asked, "Pills?" Intently she looked into Blanche's sorrowful eyes. "Did you take sleeping tablets before drinking?"
Blanche turned her head away from Lynn's once again increasingly raising voice. To her great dismay, Lynn realized that the older woman probably wouldn't stop crying for a while now. Not at all for the first time Lynn felt as if she had somehow become a mother at an all too early age—perhaps the mother Miss Blanche had never truly had. Amongst the Hudsons' large pile of old newspaper clippings Lynn had found the article about the sisters' parents' untimely deaths. And although Miss Blanche had been getting more and more independent by the day before the Danny incident, as the two of them had started calling it, and she hadn't been too immature to start with, at this moment she looked just like a child expecting a scolding for some mischief.
With a sudden surge of confidence Lynn took Blanche by the arms, and when the actress still didn't face her, Lynn shook her as vigorously as she dared, although she couldn't have possibly been thinking straight when she decided to lay her hands on the poor invalid. "Miss Blanche! Answer me!" She was almost shouting. "Did you take sleeping tablets before you came here to drink?"
However, Blanche's head remained turned away. If someone had peeked inside the window at this late night hour, they would have witnessed a scene quite familiar to them from the stories in the papers this year. They wouldn't have known how sick the wheelchair-bound former actress was feeling or how utterly shocked she was at her friend's current aggressive behaviour. They also wouldn't have known how surprised Lynn was at herself or how scared she was for Blanche.
Fed up with the older woman's stubborn resistance, Lynn grabbed her chin with one hand and turned her head towards her. The expression on the normally beautiful face was so incredibly horrified that, despite her actions, Lynn felt a sharp twinge of pain in her heart. "Miss Blanche!"
There was a beat of stunned silence and the women stared at each other, a desperate plea in the large baby blue eyes smothering the fire in the girl's. Arduously the seized head moved and performed a slight nod against Lynn's firm hand. An empty sigh left her.
Without further ado Lynn sprung into action. She released her employer's chin and arms and made her way around her chair. Blanche was frozen with fright. "Miss Blanche," Lynn said, leaning closer to the older woman's ear and attempting a kind tone, "we're going to the bathroom now. We've got to get that stuff out of you."
Blanche raised her head in alarmed protest. "But I-"
"I won't have you dying on me!" Lynn cut her off, steering the chair towards the bathroom.
Lynn fastened the last button on Miss Blanche's new nightgown and looked up at the woman's pallid face. "How are you feeling now?" she asked in a tone of tentative care.
Blanche shook her head bravely. "I'm all right." But from the way her eyes flicked towards her bed, Lynn guessed she was all worn out.
Lynn hadn't had time to think of sleep at all. She'd been to concerned about Miss Blanche's life to worry about herself. Now that all that was past, however, she felt a familiar exhaustion in her muscles and noticed the unnatural weight of her eyelids. But she couldn't go to sleep just yet. She had to take care of Miss Blanche first.
As soon as she had finished with the nightgown, Lynn turned the chair towards the bed. As per usual she bent down and hugged the older woman to her before lifting her out of the chair and onto the awaiting bed. Like in a fairytale, as soon as Blanche's head touched the pillow, she was asleep. Lynn only hoped she would not have bad dreams again.
Lynn pulled the covers up to Miss Blanche's chin, and instead of hurrying to bed herself, she remained there, sitting on the side of her friend's bed. Very carefully she brushed a loose strand of hair out of Blanche's face. The latter held a tired expression of lingering torment. Lynn knew a scolding was in store for her in the morning, but she couldn't really care. Miss Blanche had been very obedient earlier and Lynn had a positive feeling she had saved the poor woman's life.
But all the while there was a haunting feeling of remorse in the back of her head. She couldn't help wondering if she should have opened the letter from the sanatorium herself before handing it over to Miss Blanche. And no matter how kindly the actress spoke about it, Lynn simply could not forgive herself for bringing her younger brother into her life.