She wasn’t too off-color. She wasn’t too descriptive. But there was no doubt she was interested.
She said of one neighbor that “he could eat crackers and put his boots under my bed anytime.”
Another time, word got around the canyon that Perry and Sharon had another couple over and played strip poker. By the end of the night, no one had on a stitch.
And if something happened, Sharon never said one way or another. She’d simply laugh it off… and make folks think that something did.
Even though she had begun to see her husband’s point of view when it came to Sharon Nelson, Candis Thornton continued to enjoy a casual friendship with the neighbor from the mountaintop. Yet the more she got to know her, the more she found disconcerting. Sharon seemed to have no shame, no understanding of propriety.
While the two women visited over iced tea at Candis’ place Sharon told her the story of how she snagged Perry.
“You know, I was married to a minister before Perry,” she said.
Candis admitted she had heard something about that.
“Well, we had been transferred out to Rocky Ford from North Carolina. Candis, it was a bad marriage. Very bad. I was very unhappy with Mike. He didn’t treat me right at all.”
The schoolteacher nodded, sipping her drink, wide-eye while her neighbor described her soap-opera life.
“You know, my husband had records on all the members of the church, how much money they had, what they owned and what not. I just helped myself to the records. Looking through the tithes I found Perry’s name. He had daughters in private school he had an airplane, a nice house. Best of all, he was a doctor.”
Candis hung on each word, but instead of being entertained by the story of the beginning of Sharon’s pursuit of Dr. Nelson, she became uneasy.
It seems kind of calculated, she thought.
“I went after him. Based on the records, I decided I would have Perry Nelson. I set my sights on him. And I got him.”
When Candis told her husband about the conversation, he wasn’t surprised by Sharon’s confession. Perry Nelson wasn’t the first man to be snagged by a determined woman. He could easily imagine Sharon scouring the church books in pursuit of the man with the most money. She had lust for money and material things—anyone who spent five minutes with her could see that. The Thorntons knew Sharon was the type of woman who could use her charms to get what she wanted. All of her charms, they figured, involved sex.
Sharon had a lovely singing voice. People who heard her often remarked that she could perform professionally. Others thought her voice was a gift from God, and as such, belonged in the venue of a church. It was only after time passed and folks got to know Sharon that such comments were made with less frequency.
Though to the outside world it appeared they had everything stashed up at Round House, one thing was absent. Sharon had longed for a piano so that she could practice songs for the occasional wedding and for the community church she and Perry sometimes attended after the Seventh-Day Adventist leaders in Trinidad told them they were no longer welcome. One day, a Weston neighbor invited Sharon to practice on her old upright piano.
Another local woman remembered the story of an incident resulting from one of Sharon’s practice sessions. It involved Sharon’s interest in the neighbor’s husband.
“The first Saturday Sharon showed up she was wearing slacks and a sensible top. The next Saturday she had on short-shorts. The next time, the lady told Sharon that she had to go out of town, but Sharon could practice anyway. When she got there the woman’s husband was sitting on the front porch reading the paper. Sharon was wearing short-shorts and a revealing blouse. When the lady left the house, she had a funny feeling and she decided to come back. There was no husband on the porch. No Sharon at the piano. She found the two of them on the couch all over each other. The lady picked up a broom and beat Sharon top to bottom all the way out of the house. Later, I heard Perry asked her how she got those braises. Sharon said she fell down.”
During a trip to look over some Colorado real estate, and to visit with old optometry school buddy Perry Nelson, Bob and Donna Goodhead from Oklahoma City tried to adjust to the new wife. Donna was very uncomfortable around Sharon. Everything Perry’s second wife did and said seemed to relate to sex.
“I could really be happy with you, Bob,” Sharon said in her innuendo-dipped way of speaking.
Bob took it as an innocent comment, a compliment that Perry’s wife thought he was a good-hearted man.
Donna Goodhead didn’t take it that way.
“She really wants you in bed,” she told her husband later when they were alone.
She didn’t mean that at all. You have to be kidding. That’s Perry’s wife you’re talking about.”