Within two months of shacking up, Gary Adams summoned the nerve to tell Sharon that he could not stand living with her. He told her that though he loved her, he loved his wife Nancy, too. He had called Nancy and she’d agreed to bring their son back to the Dude Ranch. She would give him a second chance.
Sharon didn’t put up a fight. She didn’t think it was working out with Gary, either. Besides, she had rekindled an old affair.
“I love you, too, but I'm moving in with Buzz,” she said.
Buzz Reynolds—the man who had thrown Sharon out when she became pregnant—had always been the doctor's widow's backup lover during her affair with Gary. He was wealthy, kind and very much in love with her. And though Sharon had conceded a time or two that sex with Mr. Reynolds was not what it had been with Gary, he had plenty to offer.
Namely, he had money.
Perry's parents had done all they could to help Sharon and their grandchildren get through the difficult times after their beloved son's disappearance. When asked by their daughter-in-law, they sent money. When asked to take Danny and Misty for vacations they readily agreed. While they still had strong and loving relationships with Perry's three daughters from his marriage to Julie, the littlest grandson and granddaughter were their last link to their son.
When Mrs. Nelson wrote Sharon with the happy news that they were coming to Colorado for a visit, Sharon's response seemed peculiar. She phoned back, and acted as if she was glad they were coming, but told them she had other plans and could not break them. She reluctantly told her in-laws they could come, but only stay for a single night.
“Then you’ll have to leave the next day,” she said.
The Nelsons canceled the trip. What choice did they have? They weren’t going to make the long drive from Michigan for a one-day visit. Their hearts ached for young Danny and Misty; they couldn’t see the sense in it. Yet it nagged at them: Why didn’t Sharon want them around?
A grief-stricken mind is a great and terrible trickster. The days, weeks, months after her father's disappearance was the most difficult time of Lorri Nelson Hustwaite's life. Crying jags lasted for days. Meals were skipped. Rumors coming from Colorado to Montana only added to her misery, it also added to her hope.
Whenever the phone would ring, Lorri would reach for it with the hope that it was her dad calling. She’d even imagine the words he would use:
“Sorry, Lorelco, for causing you so much worry, but I'm all right.”
When she’d pick up the receiver, Lorri could feel her heart stop for a second, only to start up again when it was instantly evident the caller was not her father. Sometimes her voice would catch just a little, perhaps signaling to the caller the young woman on the other end of the line was in some kind of trouble.
“I'm fine,” she’d say.
At the grocery store, Lorri would see a man who resembled her father. Driving by a service station she’d crane her neck to watch a man as he pumped gas. It was him! She’d be certain, just for an instant, that her father was there. Then the disappointment would take over. And even though it was never Perry Nelson, even though no body had been found, she held out hope that he’d be alive.
“I wish my dad would send a postcard or call,” she said to her husband for the umpteenth time. Darrell Hustwaite had grown weary of that particular broken record. It wasn’t that the kind-hearted mechanic didn’t respect his wife's terrible grief; it was that he saw the futility in it.
“Gee, Lorri! This is killing you. You’ve got to get over it.”
But she couldn’t. She seemed unable to set it aside. When word came from friends in Colorado that talk about her father had shifted to the idea that he had fled the country to Australia and was never coming back, Lorri was relieved.
At least he isn’t dead, she thought.
Lorri confided to friends how she felt when she heard her dad might have left the country to escape Sharon and the IRS.
“If he's alive and safe, it's okay. Things must have been horrible at home. Maybe the only way he could get away from Sharon was to disappear?”
One afternoon a few weeks after Perry disappeared, neighbors and real estate agents Ann and Bernard Parsons drove up to go over some business matters Sharon had asked about. They noticed Danny Nelson playing in a sandbox in front of Round House.
As Ann walked to the front door, Bernard called out to the little boy.
“Is your mother home?”
“Mom's in the house. Dad's in the river!” the boy called out.
Bernard chuckled at the peculiar response.
“What did he say?” Ann asked as she walked up the steps to the front door.
“Tell you later.”
When they got back in the car after talking with Sharon, Bernard repeated Danny's words.