The Zella Chronicles

It was so frustrating watching every other girl in the church get married. I was so determined to marry the first young man who asked me. What a mistake that was. She shook her head at the memory. After just two days he was gone, never to return. Facing her family after that disaster was one of the hardest things she had ever done. The look of pain in her mother’s face was more than she could take. Day after day it reminded her of the shame of her failed marriage.

After talking it over with her parents, a letter was sent to cousin Kathleen. Soon she was installed with the spinster aunt to finish high school. Getting married at sixteen had messed up her last year of high school. Moving in with Kathleen gave a chance to start over. She proudly finished at the top of her class.

She couldn’t continue to impose upon cousin Kathleen, so the live in nanny /house keeper job sounded perfect. It might have been if the father of the children had not taken a fancy to her.

To escape his advances, she married her second husband. This charming boyfriend had turned into a bossy old goat in no time at all. He wanted a girl just like his mother, one who meekly catered to her husband’s every whim. I hope I am never like his mother! She thought defiantly. She was nothing more than a door mat!

Then war tore apart everyone’s life.