“She’d be thrilled to death,” Sharon said, smoothing out the fabric of the garment as Barb presented it to her. “All my mother wears is cotton dresses.”
Barb asked her why that was so.
Sharon turned away. She was embarrassed about something.
“Because I come from a very poor family,” she said finally, as though being poor meant she should have been ashamed.
Barb was left to wonder if Sharon’s money grabbing ways had more to do with her childhood than being married to a stingy-fisted preacher.
Julie Nelson was not completely blind. She knew her husband was slipping away once more. The good Lord knew she had been through it so many times that it had almost become a way of life. She had left her husband only once when she could not take it anymore. But after three months of Perry’s pleading and the reality of a broken home for her daughters, Julie returned to Rocky Ford. Julie was tired of putting on the happy public face when everyone in town knew her husband was a womanizer. Whenever he found a new woman to romance, Perry would fling compliments around the room. It was as if by building some other woman up, he’d be able to hurt Julie even more.
Perry went on and on about the minister’s wife. What a great worker she was.
Right, great worker when she’s on her back.
How sweet she was.
Sweet as honey pie dipped in sugar and rolled in razor blades.
How everyone adored her at the office. In fact, Perry said, Sharon and Barb were like mother and daughter.
The woman’s a bitch on wheels.
Both parties in the Nelson marriage knew it was hard to change. Tearful promises were made over the phone, in the darkness of a bedroom. Forgiveness was sought. When a man promises his wife he will never stray again, the woman wants more than anything to believe it so. Julie Nelson had bought into her husband’s promises more than once. She had tried to keep their marriage intact for the sake of their daughters. And later, she would wonder why she stayed so long, when there had been no chance Perry could really get it right.
But stay she did. For a time, it seemed a miracle had occurred. It seemed like God’s hand had touched her wayward husband and brought him to his senses.
Before Sharon arrived in town, other friends saw it, too.
“Perry had really changed. He had come around to what’s important. He changed. He was a person who did a lot of exercising. He would get up very early in the morning, exercise, read his Bible. He was a Sabbath school teacher and a very earnest Christian,” a friend recalled.
Many had hoped Dr. Nelson was one of the rare individuals who knew second chances were gold, both precious and rare.
Sharon Fuller arranged for a baby-sitter after Perry called to see if she wanted to ride down to Trinidad in the motor home. He planned on filling up the rig’s holding tanks—the water supply in Rocky Ford wasn’t fit to nourish houseplants, let alone drink. After the water was loaded, they’d stop off at the office for “some training” before returning to Rocky Ford.
Much to Barb Ruscetti’s chagrin, the doctor and new helper spent the afternoon charting patients and brushing against each other like high schoolers in lust.
Sharon later said what happened next was inevitable.
“I just knew it was going to happen. There wasn’t any other way,” she told a friend. “By the time we left the office in Trinidad that afternoon,” Sharon continued, “there was no mistaking in either his mind or my mind what was going to happen in the motor home.”
The signals that had started from the moment they met and lingered over the weeks of the summer had been loud and clear.
The two left Barb to close down the office while they set course for Rocky Ford. Halfway home, Perry guided the motor home off the highway. He parked in a secluded area at the edge of a travelers rest stop. Three trees framed the patch of grass around a picnic table. The sun was low in the sky. In a few minutes, they undressed and made love.
“It was everything I thought it would be. It wasn’t hurried. It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t forced. It was the most natural thing,” Sharon said afterward.
Chapter 4
TODAY THEY CALL IT THE “GREAT Disappointment.” Seventh-Day Adventists trace their church history to William Miller, a New Hampton, New Yorker, who predicted the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ would take place October 22, 1844. His prophecy, first voiced thirteen years before the end was to come, begat the attention of a growing group of followers. Nineteen years later, the sect splintered into what became the foundation for the modern-day Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
Since then, followers have held to the unshakable belief the Bible is the literal translation of the word of God. The human body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Believers do not smoke, drink alcohol, eat meat or wear jewelry. Church followers share a lifestyle beyond mere beliefs. And they pay for it. Ten percent of a family’s income is gifted to the church in the form of a tithe.