Sex. Murder. Mystery(25)
“Mike was a feisty sort of guy for a preacher. It didn’t take much for him to double up his fists and take a poke at someone,” Karl said later.
The two men drove from Rocky Ford to Colorado Springs in the Wheelers’ brand-new white Lincoln Continental with a maroon top. They stopped at the El Paso County Sheriff’s office and explained the situation. A deputy agreed to escort them to Judy’s residence to enforce a custody order.
Karl remained in the Lincoln while the deputy and the preacher went inside to settle the issue of custody. As Karl waited, he wondered how things could have turned so ugly.
Perry, how’d you get in such a mess?
Sharon, stunned at the intrusion, claimed it was she who should have the girls. She was their mother. Rochelle and Denise needed her.
No one bought it.
In the end, custody papers in her face, she gave in.
“Let him have them,” she said quietly.
Judy thought her sister didn’t fight that hard to keep the little girls. Not really.
Not as hard as she would have if she had been their mother.
When Sharon Fuller returned to Rocky Ford for good in December 1976, it brought an unexpected sense of relief to Julie Nelson. She had been unable to eat or sleep decently for weeks. Julie knew her marriage was over and her husband had wanted to be with the preacher’s wife. She even suspected they had met during one of his business trips to Denver, though she couldn’t prove it. She longed for the day when she wouldn’t have to prove anything. When she wouldn’t have to worry she would stumble on a motel-room receipt or a bill from a jeweler for something given to the Other Woman. When Christmas came and went, it was clear the family would never be as it was before Sharon Nelson had crept into their lives.
The preacher’s wife had a hold on the doctor that was tungsten.
When Perry told Julie that he and Sharon were once again going to make a life together, he said that she could stay on in Rocky Ford and even keep her old job in the medical office.
Julie didn’t think so.
“I’m going to California,” she said. “I’ve already made up my mind. No matter what happens here.”
Mother and youngest daughter packed what they could load into an old Pontiac on January 2, 1977. Julie knew she was not coming back. Lorri halfway hoped that her parents would work it out eventually. She didn’t want to leave her father. She didn’t see why she had to go.
When Perry came out to wish them a safe trip, he put his hand on his wife’s shoulder and whispered, “Julie, everything’s going to be all right.”
Julie said nothing. She had heard that before. Ten thousand times.
“I meant to get you a better car,” he said.
Julie didn’t care one whit about the car. “It’s fine,” she answered.
“Maybe, if things don’t work out,” Perry continued, “you’ll want to come back and we can start over.”
His remark stunned Julie. “I won’t,” she said. She couldn’t imagine why he would even suggest such a thing. “And if I ever did,” she said, “I would not want to start over here.”
Not with you.
She stopped herself from saying more. It was a reflex, not a true assessment about how she felt. She wondered how Perry and Sharon thought they could start over in Rocky Ford. They had stirred up a scandal the likes of which no one had ever seen. And they believed they could act as though they had done nothing wrong? Incredible.
Still crying as she put the car into gear and drove out of town, something came over Julie and stopped the tears. Almost in an instant, she started laughing with Lorri. All of the hurt of her marriage was gone. All of the pain she had endured left as suddenly as the sun dropping behind a cloud.
She knew everything would be all right.
“I had a promise from God,” Julie said later. ”I couldn’t have shed another tear from that moment on.”
When her mood was foul, Sharon had the demeanor of an executioner. When she started back to work in the Trinidad optometry office, she picked up where she had left off. She would make no doctor’s employee of the month, even if the office had a staff of one.
Some of Dr. Nelson’s patients tolerated Sharon, but many found her to be snotty, impatient and downright rude. A well-to-do family from up the river was one of the first to bail out on Dr. Nelson’s practice because of Sharon’s rotten attitude. The family’s youngest son planned on getting contact lenses as a wedding present for his 17-year-old bride. Since Barb was mired in a mountain of paperwork, Perry asked Sharon to dispense the lenses to the girl.
Out of the corner of her eye, Barb watched as Sharon showed the girl how to put the hard contacts in. The girl winced in pain, as many first-time wearers do. She started to shake and cry.