Avarice

5.

Ana returns to the orphanage a day after the competition, eyes red-rimmed, hair frayed, and barely in the loosened band of her ponytail, feeling upset and exhausted to her very bones.

So it is only natural for Ms. Jennie to take one look at her face, her smile turning into a concerned frown as she questions sharply, "What's wrong?"

Ana comes to stand before the older woman wordlessly, throat tightening with emotion at the matron's unveiled care, while the cruel woman's biting words continue to resound in her head.

"Ana? What's wrong?"

The words sit heavy on the tip of Ana's tongue, and she finds herself so very close to throwing herself in the older woman's arms and crying her heart out.

They thought me a whore, she wants to scream. What did I do wrong?

Her heart aches with hurt, but she simply bites her tongue and smiles.

"Gotcha!" she forces out a giggle and takes out the trophy and the envelope containing the cash prize from her bag. "I won!"

Ms. Jennie's eyes widen, her face transforming from worried to gleeful in an instant as she cheers loudly and pulls her into a warm embrace.

"Oh, dear! You scared me."

"I won, Ms. Jennie. I won," she says, clinging tightly to the only source of maternal warmth she'd ever known in her life, akin to a fledgling clinging to the sheltering branches of her nest after flying into the open sky only to learn of the horrors in the dark.

Ana clings to the older woman and pretends that the tears in her eyes are not of sorrow but happiness.

~~~~

Two days later, Ana is startled awake from a fretful sleep when her bedroom door is thrown open with a bang.

She immediately jerks awake, eyes widening in shock to see Ms. Martha—

(the older woman had unexpectedly returned the previous night from her visit to the nearby town, face marked with fatigue, looking more tired and weary than Ana had ever seen her as she had slammed the door to her office shut without exchanging even a single word with anyone )

—marching inside her room with a worried-looking Ms. Jennie hovering behind her.

Ana blinks, sleep leaving her eyes in an instant, and she gulps, hands curling against the bedsheet in nervousness, shrinks back a little at the anger visible in Head Matron's eyes, wonders what she'd done to incur the older woman's wrath.

"What is this?" Ms. Martha questions coldly.

Ana frowns, not understanding what the older woman means, not until her eyes fall on the piece of clothing clutched tightly in Ms. Martha's hands and her heart sinks in dread.

For, in her hands is the dress Ana had worn for the competition in New York.

The one with the large paint splotch on it.

Ana had spent all of the last evening (unsuccessfully) trying to get the stain out of her dress, had scrubbed and scrubbed the cloth with detergent until her fingers had turned pruney pink, but the stain remained stubborn, only turning a few shades light.