The next morning, Julie stayed in the RV while Perry, Sharon, Mike and the girls hiked up the mountain. Not long after they departed, Mike became queasy and returned to Julie in the motor home.
While the little girls scrambled ahead on the trail, the two adults talked about their lives, at first disclosing only the most minor of details. Sharon conceded she hated Colorado; hated the fact her husband had been transferred out west. Perry told Sharon of his love for Taos; his passion for flying his plane from place to place. The conversation was warm and lively. Only once did it take an uncomfortable turn. It was Sharon who brought up her past.
“What have you heard about me?” she abruptly inquired.
Perry shrugged. He insisted he had heard not a word. He looked at her quizzically.
Sharon stared into his eyes. “I just wondered if you heard I was the minister’s wife who’d hop in bed with anybody.”
If the eye doctor was shocked by the candor of the remark, he didn’t let on. Maybe he had, in fact, heard a thing or two.
“Why, no,” he said. “Haven’t heard anything like that at all.”
Later, while Sharon was hanging on Perry Nelson’s every word back at the campsite, Julie noticed that toddler Denise was missing. She and Mike searched the immediate area and alerted Sharon and Perry.
Sharon didn’t seem concerned.
“I think she was found almost right away,” Julie later remembered. “But it still struck me as strange that Sharon didn’t care one bit. She couldn’t be bothered with her children. Not when she had my husband to talk to, I guess.”
Julie made a call to one of her girlfriends from the Adventist congregation when she returned home from the Memorial Day weekend camping trip. She described how she and the new minister had been left to their own devices in the motor home while their spouses had gone off hiking. Julie seemed a little uneasy about the weekend, but she concluded the conversation by telling her friend it was probably just her reaction to having a miserable time. There was probably nothing more to it.
Perry Nelson was the antithesis of Mike Fuller. It would take Sharon an hour to come up with a list of positive attributes about her Bible-waving husband. Negatives, however, came easily. Mike was gruff. He was impatient. He didn’t give a hoot about anyone or anything but his precious position in the church. He didn’t care one iota about Sharon’s needs as a woman or a human being. He was as cold as a Colorado glacier. At least, he was all of that in Sharon’s eyes.
Perry Nelson, however, was none of those things. As Sharon saw him, the eye doctor had an intriguing gentleness that resonated through all his actions. He radiated a kind of personal warmth that proclaimed to the world he was a healer. But he was not a mealy-mouthed do-gooder. He was not a bore. Perry had a playful sense of humor. He could put anyone to quick and welcome ease with a quip or off-the-cuff joke. But, more than anything, Sharon would later insist, Dr. Nelson had caring eyes. His eyes told her that she was special. She was somebody.
“He was so easy to talk to. It was like I’d known him all my life. We just fell into a real easy friendship,” she later said.
Perry Edson Nelson, II, had done his Cedar Lake, Michigan, parents proud. They were simple, God-fearing folks who put all of their hope and effort into their children. The times did not make it easy. The oldest of two boys and two girls, Perry was born in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. The senior Perry Nelson found work in a foundry, as a cook in a sanitarium and later assembled redwood furniture at a local mill. Esther Nelson could stretch a nickel from the icebox to the refrigerator, because she was frugal and because she skimped on herself and her husband. Their children were not spoiled, but they did not go without the necessities. When her kids were older, and money was tight, Mrs. Nelson also worked as caregiver and, later, at the same furniture mill as her husband.
Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Nelson was educated beyond high school, but they saw education as the opportunity for their brood to enjoy a better life. None held as great promise as Perry. He earned good grades, went to church, and when he decided to make a career in optometry, his parents were overjoyed. A doctor! He would be the embodiment of the American Dream. Their sacrifice and scrimping had paid off. The day in 1962 when their oldest son—married to Julie and with a growing family—graduated from the Southern School of Optometry in Memphis, Tennessee, was the brightest moment the family had ever known.
Not long after graduation, the elder Nelsons said good-bye to their prodigal son as he and his young family went west. There was great excitement and hope for the future. At 29, Dr. Nelson was opening an optometry office in Rocky Ford, Colorado.