“Joe?” she said. At the mention of the name, the man perked up and looked at the woman with his mouth agape. “Is it really you?” Madison asked as she moved closer.

“Maddy?” he asked with a confused look on his face when he turned to Trudy and called her name as well.

Suddenly, the three people became indistinguishable from one another as they hugged tightly. This was her husband, whom she believed had died five years before. “Trudy, this is your father!”

“Finally, I found you!” he said.

“What happened? Where have you been?” his wife said in between hugs.

“Let’s head inside, I’m here to offer gifts to the daughter of a business associate,” he said. “We can catch up then.”

“We can’t go back in there Joe, not after what happened,” Madison said.

“Tell me,” he said.

After learning what had happened, Joe went with his family to the party hall, but this time, as the moms laughed at them again, Joe rose to their defense.

“Our daughter may not have such expensive outfits as your children, but she has been taught how to be a good person. It is people with poor souls like you who can hardly be helped.”

Nobody could think of an answer. And those who could were too afraid to confront a wealthy man like Joe. He returned home with Madison and his child, where they caught up.

It turned out that on the day of the mining accident, Joe had been wearing his friend’s jacket. He had not escaped unscathed, as a huge rock had knocked him unconscious during the accident.

When he woke up, he did not remember anything and had been identified by documents that belonged to his friend, who had no family or close friends, so no one came to visit him at the hospital.

His memory did not return immediately, and by the time it did, Madison and Trudy had already moved. “We had to,” she sobbed. “We lost the house to the bank.”

Joe began to look for them, and while he did, he opened his own mining business, worked hard, and became a millionaire.

And now, after reuniting with his family, Joe intended to make up for lost time. He moved Trudy and her mother to his luxury condo, where he hoped to live with them happily and get to know his daughter more.

What did we gain from this story?

• Never make fun of the less privileged. It was wrong for the rich people to mock Trudy and her mom for not having as much as they did, but luckily, Joe arrived just in time to put them in their place.
• Never give up. Madison lost her husband and had to cater to her child with the little means she had. It was difficult, but the woman stayed strong, doing all she could up until her husband returned, ending all her suffering. That would have been difficult for him to do had she given up before his arrival.

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If you enjoyed this story, you might like this one about Jennifer’s parents caught her off guard during a family dinner by unexpectedly asking her to cover the cost of her meal, while they paid for everyone else.