After four days of “couples counseling,” endless talking, and a wading pool of tears, the Fullers drove back to Colorado. Beyond pulling over for gasoline and food, they made only one stop on their way up north toward Denver and suburban Arvada, the city where Mike had been relocated to a new church. Mike parked in the Nelsons’ driveway in Rocky Ford and went inside the house while Sharon stayed slumped in the car, embarrassed and anxious. She had promised never to speak to Perry again. A few minutes later, Mike returned.
The preacher scooted back behind the wheel and announced he had had it out with Dr. Nelson. He warned the doctor to back off, that Sharon had made up her mind to put her family back together. Sharon was going to be a mother to her two little girls. Sharon was going to be a good wife once more.
When they arrived at Mike’s rented house in Arvada, two elderly women from church were up waiting in the front room. The women had been employed to baby-sit Rochelle and Denise while their father went after their mother.
Sharon tried to make pleasant conversation, but she knew what they were thinking.
“As I walk in… these two little old spinster ladies are judging me. It was all over the church. Everybody knew that I’d left Mike… that we’d reconciled… that God had brought us back together,” she said later.
The Arvada church had an enormous congregation, the largest of Mike Fuller’s hop-scotching ministerial career. Two thousand members, give or take a hundred or so, knew Sharon Fuller by her reputation. Most knew that Rev. Fuller’s wife had an affair with a church elder down in La Junta. A few heard it was not the first such affair for the striking, albeit mixed-up, woman. When Sharon took the second pew with her children for church services, she did so amid dagger stares and catty gossip. Sharon made her own vow from that pew: She wasn’t going to put up with it… not for long.
To escape the tedium of her world, Sharon took a job at a Denver area hospital as staffing coordinator. The hours were long and the work stressful as she made sure personnel were in place whenever sickness or snow left the hospital without some staff. The job kept her busy, but it didn’t stop her thinking about Perry Nelson. Occasionally she called Barb Ruscetti in Trinidad for an update, but she didn’t break Mike’s “no talk with the doc” rule. She passed phone messages through Barb and even sent a few notes in the mail. At night, she drank a six-pack of beer. By day, she drank vodka mixed with fruit juice.
When Perry Nelson sent her a little silver music box that played “Somewhere My Love,” Sharon made up her mind. She quit her job and told Mike she was moving out. This time for good. He could have everything but her final paycheck, the sofa and her sewing machine. She said she was getting an apartment in Denver, maybe later returning to Rocky Ford. Who knew? No one was going to dictate the rules of her life. Not anymore. First off, she went to visit her sister Judy in Colorado Springs.
She did not say she was going back to Perry, but, of course, that was her plan.
She called Perry and he drove the Buick LaSabre convertible to the Springs. He knocked on Judy Douglas’s front door one evening with an excited knock, an impatient rap. But the man was all smiles when the door swung open. Sharon, who had been sipping brandy with her sister, was elated. Judy thought she had never seen a happier couple.
That night Perry took Sharon to a motel in Manitou Springs and they made love all night. Just as she promised they would every night. Every day. All the time.
Sharon tried to sort out her life and she needed time and support to do so. Instead of returning to Rocky Ford right away, she alternated her time in the Denver area and at one point she asked Judy if she and her daughters could stay at her place for a while. Mike had not wanted Sharon to take the girls, but at least in the eyes of the law, Sharon was their mother. Judy, who was struggling through her own marital problems, was glad for the diversion that houseguests could bring. Judy bought a second hand bunk bed and turned her downstairs into a bedroom for Rochelle and Denise. Sharon planned on working for a Colorado Springs Pearle Vision, and though Judy had her own four kids to raise, she said she would help her younger sister with the little girls.
Sharon, for the first time in a long time, seemed happy. Maybe she would make something of her life, after all. Maybe she had pulled herself together and was finally going to do the right thing.
The hope was short-lived.
Mike Fuller had made no bones about it to anyone who would listen: Sharon was an terrible mother and he’d raise the girls without her rotten-to-the-core influence. There was no way he’d have Rochelle and Denise live in sin with their mother. The woman was unfit. When Karl Wheeler heard of Mike’s plan to take the kids from Sharon by court order, he offered to accompany him on the task. Mike knew Sharon was hiding out at Judy’s place in the Springs. Karl Wheeler considered himself the voice of reason. If the minister was going to spout off, then Karl would be there to listen and calm the jilted husband.