Nancy packed up, drove away from Wet Canyon and moved in with her mother. She was justifiably heartbroken over her husband's relationship with Sharon, but she didn’t want to give up so easily. The small woman with the big eyes had a history with Gary that went back to her teenage years. He was her one and only. She lost her virginity to the man, and there had been no others. In love as she was, Nancy was not a complete dummy. A few weeks after she left for Denver, Nancy decided to return to the Dude Ranch. She found out her husband and Sharon Nelson were living together, carrying on like lovesick teenagers. Everyone in town knew it, too.
This time Nancy stood up for herself. Damn the ties. Damn the years they had spent, the family they had been once. She told her blue-eyed honey that she was leaving him. She was filing for divorce in Denver. She wasn’t going to play the fool to Sharon Lynn Nelson.
Not anymore.
If the men were receptive to her charms, women were decidedly anti-Sharon. It only took a couple of encounters with the brassy beauty to see what she was up to. Some Weston women saw a conniving woman who turned her back on the wives as she played up to their husbands. When Perry was gone and Gary Adams was not around, Sharon would ask for help for jobs which were too tough for her to do.
One neighbor told her husband not to go up to Round House.
“If you do, better not bother coming back,” she said.
When men went up to help Sharon, the standard line batted about was “better watch out, she’ll put some insurance on you and look out!”
When sawmill owner Al Robinson told his wife, Melanie, that he was thinking of going to Sharon's after she said she needed lumber, she had a knee-jerk retort.
“Better not catch you going up there,” Melanie said.
It was only a half-joke, but Al convinced her not to worry.
“This is all business. No hanky-panky,” he said. “I can’t stand the woman.”
Melanie could relax. Al Robinson said it like he meant it.
It figured. As ridiculous and horrendous as it was, it didn’t seem too far off base for Trinidad. Sharon Nelson had probably pulled off the perfect crime. As mechanic Jim Whitley figured it, she had probably eluded arrest by doing what she reportedly did best.
“You had two ways of paying for things in Trinidad: cash or sex. They’ve got their own justice system like nowhere else in the world. I wouldn’t put it past her to have slept with lawyers, judges, whoever down there. She’d use her body any way she needed to. She was just one of those people. She’d be the type to sleep with some guy, then blackmail him about it to get what she really wanted.”
Chapter 18
GOOD GOD. IT WAS NOT ASPEN. IT WAS Trinidad. The fetching woman standing in the checkout line at the Safeway was dressed more appropriately for the glitz of the ski Mecca than tourist destination wannabe Trinidad. Her makeup was flawless, her hair fluffed like a Persian cat combed out with baby powder. And despite her cloud of furs and heels that could trim fat off a roast, Barb Ruscetti knew the woman was Sharon Nelson.
Barb, working at a new job and firmly on her feet again, left her cart and made her way toward her nemesis. She wanted to take the opportunity to inform Sharon that another office assistant from Rocky Ford also had been denied unemployment benefits.
“You didn’t pay her unemployment insurance, either,” Barb said, after barely saying hello.
Sharon shook her head emphatically. With an annoyed look, she pulled her fur coat up on her shoulders.
“That's not true. I paid it. I know I did.”
“I don’t think so,” Barb snapped. The office worker was not a liar, but Sharon was an expert one. While Barb continued to clutch her coupons and grit her teeth, Sharon smiled sweetly and waved good-bye. She said she hoped they’d be able to get together soon.
“I’ve been so busy,” she called out.
Barb Ruscetti had been dismissed. The Queen of the Mountain would have nothing to do with her and, in every way, that was just fine with Barb. Barb couldn’t stand her. The Bitch on Wheels disappeared into the parking lot, leaving a lasting impression that time would never erase.
“She was dressed up to the whattie. I mean she was all spiffy in her fur coat and high heels and her hair was done and the whole bit,” Barb later told a friend.
What was it about women like Sharon? Barb Ruscetti could never quite figure it out. Women like Sharon had everything going for them, youth, beauty and smarts. Yet whatever it was they possessed, it was never enough. The more God and their husbands gave them, the more they wanted. If their perfect nose could be made shorter, it would be done. If they could find a lover with more money or a bigger penis—or whatever it was they wanted—they would search for him. Whatever they desired was whatever they could get their hands on. Barb had lost her husband when she was a young wife. Yet she’d raised her kids on her own, never looking for the man who would sweep her off her feet and end her financial worries. Barb Ruscetti was content with her lot in life, convinced by her own life experiences that the grass was not always greener. She was everything Sharon was not. Moreover, Sharon could never aspire to achieve what Barb had done so successfully on her own.