The little box of gritty remains that Sharon had displayed on the kitchen table was laid to rest in the Cedar Lake Cemetery.
He sleeps awaiting the call of the Life-Giver.
Gary Adams was glad he found the note in the mailbox, and not Nancy. He was once more at the Dude Ranch with Nancy giving him another chance, and he didn’t want to blow it. Some wondered if he was with Nancy for the sake of their son. Others figured he was whipped by both women and couldn’t make up his mind. Yet, when Sharon's note came, her siren song drew him away from Nancy.
“Come up and see me,” it read.
He made an excuse and left his family. He wondered how they could believe him about anything, he had lied so often. One lie, he knew, was always used to cover another. The lies would stack up until they tumbled and fell, taking him with them.
He went to the outside door off Round House's master bedroom and let himself inside.
“Here's ten thousand,” Sharon said with a smile as she handed over a fat-with-money envelope. The two made love, the money an unnecessary aphrodisiac.
Over the weeks and months that followed, more insurance money rolled in. Sharon didn’t have to prove Perry was dead. She didn’t have to put up with the cruel remarks that her husband had fled the country for Mexico. She didn’t have to sue to get what was hers. When the checks arrived, she planned on paying off Round House, splurging on some goodies and putting the rest into investments that would keep her secure for the rest of her life. She also had to pay off Gary.
Checks in her purse, Sharon and Gary drove up to Colorado Springs to take care of a little banking. Gary wanted his name put on the six-month, $55,000 certificate of deposit that Sharon had purchased with proceeds from the insurance windfall. While the interest from the CD was coming directly to Gary, he wanted to make sure when it matured, he’d get the full amount.
The bank refused to eliminate her name. Instead, they wrote in a co-owner of the amount: Gary Starr Adams.
Sharon told the teller that when the CD matured, she wanted the funds released to Gary.
So happy, so agreeable. Things were so good.
While it was true that she liked to spend the dough on herself, Sharon was anything but tightfisted with her money when it came to others. She bought new clothes and toys for her children. When Gary wanted a new motorcycle, Sharon plunked down the cash. For herself, she bought a blue fox and a mink coat on a trip to Pueblo. She could afford it. When all the death benefits rolled in, Sharon had added more than $250,000 to her bank account.
Gary appreciated what Sharon gave him, but he told her to slow down. It was the old grasshopper and the ant scenario. She was playing and spending all day and night, while she should be saving, planning and preparing for the future. Gary grappled with her extravagance and mixed-up priorities.
“I tried to tell Sharon she needed to spend the money wisely, but she’d go and have her fingernails done, have little gold things put on them… it cost fifty dollars. I’d try to explain to her that fifty dollars maybe doesn’t seem like much when you’ve got all this money. But years down the road, it could buy a lot of food.”
His suggestions for cooling it down only brought spasms of anger from Sharon. Mike had tried to control her, Perry had, but not Gary. She wasn’t going to cave in to anyone.
Others noticed Sharon's penchant for waving her money all around town and beyond.
Barb Ruscetti, still bitter over Sharon's failure to pay for her unemployment insurance, was one. It stung whenever she heard of Sharon's latest purchase with the blood money from Dr. Nelson's death.
The former optical assistant never let a chance to berate Sharon slip by.
“Let me tell you all the stuff she bought,” she told a friend. “She bought a new Bronco, she bought her a fur, she bought a mink coat. But you add up all the other things she bought for other people.”
Barb let out a heavy sigh.
“She spent it all! She spent it.”
And though she had all the money she had ever dreamed about, Sharon still wanted one more thing. She wanted Gary to divorce Nancy and marry her. She wanted it so bad. She couldn’t understand why Gary kept putting her off. Why didn’t he just dump that mousy little woman and get on with living the high life? Sharon wanted to marry Gary and she said so many times. She assumed that with his divorce from Nancy final, they’d set a date. Even with the on-and-off foundation of their relationship, she still wanted the ring that told the world he was all hers.
For some reason, perhaps unclear even to the man himself, Gary stalled her.
“If we get married, Sher,” he told her a time or two, “you’ll lose your Social Security. That's four hundred dollars a month you’ll lose! It's not worth it. We can live together. Why don’t we just keep pretending we’re married?”