Anya thought about what Alannah had said for a long while, when she did finally speak, her words were firm, "You need to tell Dominic everything you have told me. If you are to marry him you cannot keep a secret like this. It will haunt you for all of your days. When he comes to pick you up you will tell him tonight."
"I don't want him to know! Please don't make me do this." Alannah protested, on the verge of crying again. "I don't want him to look upon me with disgust…"
"That would never happen, he loves you Alannah, he will understand but if you won't tell him then you leave me no choice to to tell him myself. This is the sort of thing that he will need to know if you are to heal."
Alannah gasped, "Heal? What do you mean heal? Nothing bad has ever happened to me, that man did not assalt me."
"That is not entirely true," Anya said, holding her hand firmly, "you told me about your father abusing you, now you have told me about this. Thet are related because they both come back to your father. So something did happen, whether you were concious of it or not you were made to feel responsible for that man's fate. Now you carry the burden of guilt. What your father did is certainly nothing more than taking the gun to that man's face himself. He may not have called those men to war, but his company gave them the means to fight it. Because of how he trated you, and the sweet soul you are you have felt that the only way out is to run, that in itself is yet another way he has abused you Alannah. There is nothing worse than being made to feel guilty merely for being alive."
Alannah's body gave a little shudder, as she looked past Anya out the window, she was contimplated her next move. Should she run again? She was trying to comprehend what Anya just told her, but it just seemed so surreal. "Have you ever considered that the Industrial Revolution made the Great War possible? For whom did these things change? Certainly not for the children working in factories or working as chimney sweeps, was it for the miners who were dying of black lung disease from daily exposure to coal dust?"
"Alannah," Anya told her gently, still holding to Alannah hands. Anya looked up and saw her husband Santiago standing in the doorway, looking on with pity. "Don't do this to yourself -"
"I'll tell you who it was for," Alannah said, as though unaware of her surroundings. "It was for a the skilful liars like my father who forced people off their land by giving them a promise of something better. Yet when they were made to leave the farms that they worked their whole lives for, they could no longer provide for themselves or their families. Those people were forced to live in run down shacks in the cities and factory towns. The husbands were forced to get menial jobs that barely put food on the table for their families. There they were told that this was how they were to live from now on, like it or not."