The Passions of Darla Lee
By: Loretta Joyce

Darla grew up in a home that provided everything that a child could ask for with the exception of a mother. Her father was her idol, her mentor, her everything. His wife was a social butterfly who could never get enough of the good life. She loved her husband but she resented Darla to the point of excluding her from everything that she and Adam planned for the rest of their lives. Adam had no control over his beautiful rich wife, but against her wishes, he made time to attend the child’s school functions alongside her faithful nanny, Clare, who loved and protected the little girl from the resentful stepmother.

Adam and his wife died together in an explosion that destroyed the family home. His untimely death opened new doors for Darla and her birth mother. Darla was twenty-six years of age when she learned that her biological mother had been in a nursing home since she was two. Complications from a poorly administered epidural caused paralysis and Marion spent many years alone. With the help of a friend, Darla managed to reunite with her mother. She was in her mid twenties when she learned her nanny was really her maternal grandmother!

Darla became a wealthy woman at the age of twenty-four. She also held a law degree and strong and uncontrollable passions to help other less fortunate. Most of her inheritance came from the stepmother, who didn’t love her, yet Darla remembered there must have been good in her or her father couldn’t have loved her so deeply. She opened a shelter for abused women and children and named the facility for her stepmother. “The LuAnn Holmes Riley House of Serenity” became a temporary home to needy women and children. The house was a large mansion that LuAnn grew up in. Darla honored her posthumously.