Chapter Fifty-Five

“Mama!”

Before she could think, Yna had rushed to her mother and bent down on her knee in front of her. She tried to hold her close.

“Mama, please… whatever are you talking about? Don’t say it! Never say something like that, please?!”

That was when her mother finally looked at her, her very eyes full of suffering and pain. “I have known… for a while. You two children always whisper to hide problems from me, but that last weeks, you two have been acting so strangely that I knew something happened. At first, I didn’t understand what the words meant, but eventually… as I eavesdropped more, it seemed like…” She frowned as she stopped abruptly, as if she was trying not to sob. She raised her face to Eric. “I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t comprehend how something like what I heard them say could happen to my daughter. But that day I caught you two in the kitchen kissing… I could believe it somehow.” She looked back at me. “That you have actually sold yourself to a man to pay for my b