Then it hit them. The Wheelers felt Mike Fuller hadn’t been surprised by the revelations about his wife. It was almost as though his denials were an attempt to cover up for Sharon. Maybe, they wondered, he had been in that spot before?
The preacher was red-faced and angry when he got home. No one could blame him, of course. If he had hoped Colorado would be different, there was no doubt he had been mistaken. He’d left the Wheelers with the realization that not only was Sharon sleeping around again, she was carrying on without one bit of discretion. All of his congregation probably knew by the time the Wheelers confronted him.
“We can’t be anywhere, without you sleeping with somebody!” he declared when he saw Sharon and told her what Blanche and Karl had said.
She was backed into a corner, but Sharon was not one to give up a fight—even when there seemed no hope she could win.
“You don’t know I’ve done a damn thing! Nobody saw me do a damn thing! You’re taking that bitch’s word that something is going on… and if you sat in the lobby and listened, you’d hear Perry call ninety-year-old women doll or sweetie!”
Mike threw up his hands. He had been that route before. In Ohio, in North Carolina, and now Colorado. If Sharon was making excuses that night in an effort to placate him, Mike wasn’t buying anything she had to offer.
Still, Sharon held her ground, insisting her husband was wrong and the women in the office were conniving liars, jealous of her friendship with Perry Nelson.
Rocky Ford was the land of in-home sales parties. It was a world beyond Tupperware. Everything from candles to beauty aids to children’s toys were pushed over the kitchen table or in the paneled confines of a rec room. Some ladies hosted several such “parties” each year. The gatherings were a chance to make a little cash, share some gossip and get to know each other better. On the night of September 27, 1976, Julie Nelson went to a friend’s home to learn the wonders of a new face cream. Sharon Fuller, who had also been expected, was a no-show.
When Julie returned home about 10:30 that evening, she was confronted by a shaken figure on the front steps. It was Mike Fuller. The frazzled minister told Julie his wife had left him for her husband. He had been driving around all evening, trying to find where they had gone. He wondered if Julie knew. She had no idea.
Mike proceeded to admit he had been through this before with Sharon. She’d had several affairs in Ohio and North Carolina. He also admitted Rochelle wasn’t his daughter, but the offspring of one of Sharon’s many lovers. But Denise, born in North Carolina in 1974 during a period of marital stability, was his biological daughter. He told Julie they had come to Rocky Ford for a new start, and sadly for him and his daughters, it clearly wasn’t working.
Julie suggested calling her husband’s secretary.
“Maybe she knows something,” she said, reaching for the kitchen phone.
Barbara Ruscetti rubbed the sleep from her eyes and reached for the ringing telephone in her neat-as-can-be Trinidad home.
“Barbara, can you tell me where Perry is?” Julie asked.
“Perry?”
“Yes,” the doctor’s wife said. “He’s not home yet.”
Barb would have been deaf not to hear the worry that had seized Julie.
“He left the office at five o’clock with Sharon,” she said, trying to calm her.
“Sharon?”
“Sharon Fuller.”
“Do you know where they went?”
“No, I don’t. How would I know where they are?”
“Well, all right, he’s not home and it’s eleven o’clock and I’m quite concerned.”
A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was Perry. He told Julie that all the minister had told her was true. He was, in fact, leaving her for good to make a life with Sharon. He wasn’t sorry, not when such a wonderful love was at stake.
“I’ve never loved anybody like the way I love her,” he said.
Julie cried into the phone. “What makes you think you can trust each other with your histories?” she asked.
Mike Fuller looked on and nodded, as if to urge Julie on.
“I’d hate to be her and trust you. How are you going to trust her?” Julie asked once more.
“We love each other,” Perry said.
Julie Nelson cradled the receiver against her breast, before sliding it back into the phone. She stopped her tears and let out a sigh. She would never deny that her husband’s words and actions had hurt her deeply. Even as the truth of Perry’s affair with the minister’s wife came to undeniable reality, a strange feeling swept over her. It was relief. The other shoe had finally dropped. Maybe it was for the best?