Sex. Murder. Mystery(41)
Perry was nearly moved to tears when he finally agreed to go. His life had been full of regrets. He had given up so much… but despite the brainwashing by his knocked-up-by-his-former-best-friend estranged wife, he still loved his “favorite youngest” daughter. He took almost four-year-old Danny, leaving Misty with Sharon and he drove north to Montana. It was a Rocky Mountain soap opera in southeastern Colorado and he was glad to get away. His relief was short-lived. When he arrived in Billings, he was stomping-feet mad at himself— he had lost his wallet and $500 at a rest stop on the way.
The reunion between father and daughter exceeded both their expectations. As the two got reacquainted, it was evident to Lorri that her father was still deeply troubled by his shattered second marriage. He still loved Sher, he said, but he could no longer look the other way and forgive her. As Lorri probed, her father told her about Sharon’s pregnancy by old pal Buzz Reynolds.
“It’s over,” Perry said bitterly. “This time, I swear to God it’s over for good. I kicked her out and I want nothing, to do with her ever again.”
As he walked Lorri down the aisle on February 21, 1982, in one of those god-awful rented taupe tuxes, Perry Nelson smiled warmly and proudly. And while the moment could not have been happier for the pretty young bride, she saw something in her dad that she had never seen before: sadness in his eyes.
Judy Douglas had always been pro-choice when it came to abortion and a woman’s right to take responsibility for her body. Yet in Judy’s estimation, her younger sister’s repeated abortions made Sharon the poster girl for forces seeking to restrict the procedure. Sharon had terminated at least five pregnancies that her sister knew about, maybe more during the years when the sisters were estranged.
“She used to stop by on her way to Denver, on her way to get an abortion. It was very casual for Sharon,” Judy recalled several years later.
At the time of Sharon’s pregnancies from her myriad Colorado lovers, Judy knew better than trying to convince her birth control might be a good idea, given her history of promiscuity and obvious fertility. Sharon wanted to get pregnant.
“She had some strange romantic idea about pregnancy and her affairs. I never understood it. I never will.”
Sharon’s attitude about her abortion repulsed Barb Ruscetti when Sharon told her about it back in Trinidad. She was so perfunctory about it. It was nothing at all. An inconvenience. Sharon told Barb that she was almost five months pregnant when she aborted Buzz’s baby up in a Denver clinic. She confided to Barb that she told the doctors the baby’s father had serious heart trouble.
As Sharon rambled on, Barb could feel her pulse quicken.
Oh, my God. People would die to have a baby and look what she did.
Springtime in the Rockies is the kind of magnificent season that inspires weekend painters to bring their easels alongside creek beds flanked by mountains still dipped in white. Green shoots bust through the crust of crunchy snow, reminding observers winter finally has been shoved aside by the forces of a sweeter-tempered Mother Nature. Colorado springtimes are times for renewal.
Sharon Nelson bought into that; at least, to many who knew her, it seemed that she did. After unleashing every ugly word she could conjure, about everything from their sex life to his table manners to his undershorts, she finally took a breather and stopped bad-mouthing Perry. After seven months of sleeping with her estranged husband’s supposed best pal, Sharon set her sights on returning to her beloved Round House. She told friends she had tired of Buzz Reynolds, of living off and on in the fleabag apartment in Rocky Ford. No one knew how she did it, but somehow Sharon charmed her way back into Perry Nelson’s good graces. Whatever it was that she did to win men over, it had to be pretty good. Dr. Nelson acted as though he had never stopped loving her. It was as if she had been on a vacation or out of town nursing a sick relative back to health. The pregnancy, the betrayal, the bile-coated words had never taken place.
Outwardly the doctor was all smiles.
Sharon’s return to Perry, however, only brought additional heartache to the doctor’s daughters and friends. All they had seen when Sharon first entered Perry’s life was the ruin of everything he had built, everything the man had stood for. No one, not even his daughters, considered the man a saint, but they knew him to be caring, honest and trustworthy. All of that had changed when Sharon Fuller came into his life. God, they hoped, they prayed, the woman would be gone for good. In time, the man would come around. In time, Sharon’s spell would fade. In time, Perry would stop drinking, stop smoking, stop carrying on like some lust-crazed teenager whose zipper was forever stuck open.