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He had been staring at her for the past ten minutes. She could feel his cold stare, even when she glanced away. Maybe it was the fact that she hadn't eaten a bite since she entered, or maybe he knew that his notebook remained under her pillow in her bedroom.
"You haven't eaten, sister?" Tatiana asked.
Ana nodded, "I'm not hungry."
She couldn't bring herself to say that she had eaten only half an hour earlier- she would have thought they'd have known. Not only that, but the thought of the priest sitting across from her with his eyes burning holes across her body, more than unsettled her. She felt sick to the stomach. Especially when he insisted on trying to talk to her.
"So you met the Shelby's, what did you think of them?" He asked openly. Though the question could have been for any one of them, she could tell it was directed to her. He watched her, waiting for an answer as he ate.
"I wouldn't say I met them." She said, and the priest spoke quickly after her.
"But you talked to them." Father Hughes insisted. Ana could feel the eyes of her sister and her aunt and uncle, staring into the side of her face.
She swallowed, raising her chin. "I saw and heard them. Nothing more."
Before the priest could get another word in, she was bold and said, "Why the infatuation with the Shelby's, Father Hughes?"
"Who said anything about infatuation?" He said, adding a chuckle on the end, as he looked around at the other people at the table.
"Me. You seem awfully interested in them." She smiled. He looked nervous, his face flushing slightly.
"Anastasiya-" her sister hissed, but Ana ignored it.
"Why did we give them money?" She asked, though it was not just directed to the priest.
Ana turned her pointed gaze toward her sister, staring at her with a mean gaze. But Tatiana didn't falter. She smirked, twitching her eyebrow and refusing to answer.
"Anastasiya." It was her aunts turn to send a warning this time, her gravelly voice grating in her ears.
"Why did we give them money?" She said, louder and with more power behind her voice. But it only caused her sister to grow angrier.
"That is not for you to know, Ana!" She screeched, her hands banging suddenly on the table.
"Girls, that is enough, we have a guest." Her uncle tried to assert his dominance, but his whine was left unanswered and disobeyed.
"Then why bring me along?"
"You know why." Tatiana growled and
"I know that none of you want me here but I am here because our mother cannot."
Ana felt like crying. She felt like none of them understood. Her mother stayed home, fighting the revolution while they fled like cowards.
"If It's wasn't for you running away Tatiana, she would be here. And we wouldn't be giving this dirty priest our time of day!"
"Anastasiya!" Her uncle screeched, banging his fists against them table in anger. Ana's blazing glare turned to him.
"And uncle. You would have hung your self."
Ana glared down at him as she rose from the table, pushing herself from the room swiftly.
As she settled herself into her bed in her room, Ana folded her arms across her chest, cuddling into herself. The fact that she was supposed to know something that she didn't boiled her blood.
She pulled the notebook from under the pillow, flicking through the pages, coming up empty handed once again. Her eyes landed once more on the address and name that was scrawled across the centre page.
Shelby. The Shelby family. How else could she find out the reason behind the money? All she had to do was get to 5 watery lane, without her sister finding out.
