Chapter 72

As the weeks rolled into months, Emma’s father was charged to court. Her mother had sunk more and more into depression but had to take a job as a cleaner to retain her father’s lawyer. Emma was also working, too, as a store attendant.

She was slowly slipping out of her teenage hood and blossoming into full womanhood. At the end of the trial, her father was found guilty and sentenced to prison. Though it broke her mother's heart and her heart, too, both of them came to accept the new fate of their family.

And whenever she visited her father in prison, they would catch up on so many things. He turned sad whenever she talked about her job as a store attendant.

"This is why I wanted you to go to college, Emma,” he would say, his eyes turning moist.

He would go on to express how he didn't want Emma to struggle like he and her mother had.

"I could save up my salary for college,” she would reply and then sink into sadness.

It would ta