Sex. Murder. Mystery. (11 page)

Sharon told her of seeing Mike drive the girls past the Watkins Medical building to the baby-sitter’s house three doors down. Sometimes she would see them walking by, skipping along. Even laughing and having a good time. Two little girls without their mother. Two little girls without Sharon. She was unable to talk to them or hold them.

“I just can’t handle it,” she said. “It’s tearing me up.”

The strain on Sharon was evident. The source of it, however, was not fully clear to Barb or anyone. By then, most had heard Sharon had had extramarital affairs in the past, and that had been the reason for her husband’s transfer. Others had heard Mike Fuller had suspected the affair between his wife and Dr. Nelson for months, and had, in fact, caught them in bed together long before the Wheelers voiced their concerns.

It was not her husband who wore her down, though Mike did try to get his wife to come home, despite all that had transpired. It was not her own sense of what was right and moral. It was Rochelle and Denise.

Sharon said she couldn’t give them up.

Not long after the affair became public, Sharon began to waffle on her decision to ditch her husband and children. Guilt had taken hold. Sharon called a family friend, a counselor, in Fort Worth. She thought she was slipping off the edge of sanity. It hadn’t turned out as she thought. Everyone else was fine, while she was a victim of viciousness. It was unfair. It was unjust. Julie was still billing out insurance and helping out at the office. Mike was seen as a saint. Sharon, however, was talked about all over town as the tramp who wrecked two marriages.

The counselor told her to get in her car and drive down to Texas. Sharon agreed. She needed help.

The Seventh-Day Adventist Church in La Junta, Colorado, was not going to be the same. While it was true that everyone among the parishioners knew what had transpired between the elder and the wife of their minister, few spoke about it. It was there, however, underneath the surface, behind the message of every sermon. While other folks outside of the congregation gossiped about it more overtly, the Adventists kept a lid on it the best they could.

They were strange and sad days.

“It’s like everybody knows what’s going on, but nobody talks about it. We were so disappointed. I think disappointed that Sharon didn’t have more respect for herself and for her husband. To do something like this. Disappointed in Perry for the same reason,” Blanche Wheeler said.

Long after it was all over, Mrs. Wheeler reiterated what had been the consensus of many who knew the sordid details of the affair.

“When Sharon left for Texas we all hoped she would get help and do the right thing by Mike and her little girls. We hoped and we prayed.”

Chapter 7

JESUS, IT HURT. PERRY
NELSON FELT HE HAD BEEN dumped. Sharon had gone to Texas to get her head together with some Christian counselor. It was obvious a therapist of that particular ilk was not going to condone a woman’s illicit relationship with another woman’s husband. It was, of course, adultery, for crying out loud. Adultery times two. To make matters worse, word around Rocky Ford had it that Mike Fuller had either gone after her or was planning to do so. He wasn’t going to go away easily. The preacher was mad at his wife, disgusted by her, but he still wanted her. A Christian counselor, Perry figured, would push for a mending of the broken family.

About that time, Perry’s and Julie’s twenty-fifth high school reunion loomed. Perry told his wife he would still accompany her back to the event in Cedar Lake, Michigan. He was neither happy nor particularly interested in the reunion with his wife or their classmates. It was almost as if he had nothing better to do. The estranged couple had little to talk about on the flight to Michigan. More than once, Julie dabbed at her tears with a wadded tissue as she fought for composure.

Her handsome, charismatic husband was stone cold whenever he bothered to speak with Julie. When he looked in Julie’s direction it was as if she was made of glass. His eyes skipped over her; looked through her. All he cared about was Sharon. Sharon this. Sharon that.

But I’m right here
, Julie thought.

When they arrived, Julie tried to act happy around relatives and old classmates, but inside, her heart continued to crumble. Perry had nothing to do with her. He barely even pretended they were together. He didn’t talk to her. He didn’t even walk with her. He walked ahead, or several paces behind.

On the return flight to Colorado, Julie sat alone and cried most of the way. It was only at one point that she saw a glimpse of compassion for her suffering.

Perry turned around in the seat in front of her and put his hand out.

“Don’t cry,” he said, “everything’s going to be all right.”

By then it didn’t matter. Sharon Fuller could have him. Julie had made up her mind that she would be moving on.

I’m out of here
, she thought.

Julie kept her distance in Rocky Ford. If Perry was merely going through the motions, then Julie would not over-compensate for his lack of love for her. She wouldn’t prepare him special meals. She certainly wouldn’t sleep with him at night. Why should she? He didn’t love her. He was with her by default. Julie spent most of her weekends in Denver with the former wife of another local doctor. As the empty days passed, she told herself she would build up her mental and emotional strength and move on.

Sharon Fuller was falling apart. And while she confided in many, few had any sympathy for her. If ever there was a case of making your own bed and being forced to lie in it, Sharon was the perfect example. She drove to Fort Worth in a car Perry had bought for her. The fog was thick and her eyes were bloodshot from ragged emotions and sleepless nights. Sharon had left two men in Rocky Ford: a husband and a lover. She told people she didn’t know which one she should choose.

Mike Fuller, however, couldn’t let go of his wife. Though there were times when she had tested him to the nth degree, he still wanted to keep his family together. He still told friends he loved Sharon. If only she would come home… if only they could start over.

Maybe in another place, another town.

Sharon saw the Texas psychologist almost daily for two weeks. She was, as she explained, “trying to sort out who I was… what my feelings were. Where my life was going. Do I need to slit my throat and end this or what?’’

The Seventh-Day Adventist counselor encouraged her to call Mike. Despite the wanton infidelity, despite her fragmented loyalties, the counselor insisted that her marriage still had a chance. It was, he said, worth saving.

Sharon recalled the man’s words: “You really want Mike to love you more than anything. You’re testing him… to see if he’ll still take you back after you’ve been such a naughty girl.”

Sharon bought into it. She told herself that her affair with Perry Nelson was an offshoot of unresolved issues in her marriage. It was not because she was so in love with Perry. No, not at all. She told the counselor she would give Mike another chance. She would give up Dr. Nelson.

“Perry’s got to go,” she said, firmness in her voice growing with each word. “Perry has disrupted my life. I’ve destroyed his life. Maybe if Mike and I can rebuild, Perry and Julie can rebuild?”

It was after 11 P.M. when Preacher Fuller’s jet from Denver finally touched down at the Dallas airport. Sharon’s stomach was crocheted into knots. It was an emotionally raw reunion. Tears fell on both sides as they held each other. Both agreed they wanted to save their marriage. Even so, the bitterness was not completely forsaken. Sharon vented her anger over why her husband’s shortcomings had forced her into another man’s arms once more. It was his fault, too.

From his suitcase in their motel room, the minister withdrew a see-through nightie.

Sharon’s eyes popped and she hit the ceiling.

“You flew down here for a piece of tail! That’s all you did!”

Mike tried to persuade Sharon that she was wrong. She had jumped to the wrong conclusion. He had come to Texas because he wanted to save their marriage. And, as even Sharon would later concede, he must have been telling the truth. Mike Fuller sat up all night, stiffly, uncomfortably, while she berated him about everything from their sex life to the manner of his day-to-day attire. He took it all, one shot after another and for good reason: He had two little girls at home who needed a mother.

After four days of “couples counseling,” endless talking, and a wading pool of tears, the Fullers drove back to Colorado. Beyond pulling over for gasoline and food, they made only one stop on their way up north toward Denver and suburban Arvada, the city where Mike had been relocated to a new church. Mike parked in the Nelsons’ driveway in Rocky Ford and went inside the house while Sharon stayed slumped in the car, embarrassed and anxious. She had promised never to speak to Perry again. A few minutes later, Mike returned.

The preacher scooted back behind the wheel and announced he had had it out with Dr. Nelson. He warned the doctor to back off, that Sharon had made up her mind to put her family back together. Sharon was going to be a mother to her two little girls. Sharon was going to be a good wife once more.

When they arrived at Mike’s rented house in Arvada, two elderly women from church were up waiting in the front room. The women had been employed to baby-sit Rochelle and Denise while their father went after their mother.

Sharon tried to make pleasant conversation, but she knew what they were thinking.

“As I walk in… these two little old spinster ladies are judging me. It was all over the church. Everybody knew that I’d left Mike… that we’d reconciled… that God had brought us back together,” she said later.

The Arvada church had an enormous congregation, the largest of Mike Fuller’s hop-scotching ministerial career. Two thousand members, give or take a hundred or so, knew Sharon Fuller by her reputation. Most knew that Rev. Fuller’s wife had an affair with a church elder down in La Junta. A few heard it was not the first such affair for the striking, albeit mixed-up, woman. When Sharon took the second pew with her children for church services, she did so amid dagger stares and catty gossip. Sharon made her own vow from that pew: She wasn’t going to put up with it… not for long.

To escape the tedium of her world, Sharon took a job at a Denver area hospital as staffing coordinator. The hours were long and the work stressful as she made sure personnel were in place whenever sickness or snow left the hospital without some staff. The job kept her busy, but it didn’t stop her thinking about Perry Nelson. Occasionally she called Barb Ruscetti in Trinidad for an update, but she didn’t break Mike’s “no talk with the doc” rule. She passed phone messages through Barb and even sent a few notes in the mail. At night, she drank a six-pack of beer. By day, she drank vodka mixed with fruit juice.

When Perry Nelson sent her a little silver music box that played “Somewhere My Love,” Sharon made up her mind. She quit her job and told Mike she was moving out. This time for good. He could have everything but her final paycheck, the sofa and her sewing machine. She said she was getting an apartment in Denver, maybe later returning to Rocky Ford. Who knew? No one was going to dictate the rules of her life. Not anymore. First off, she went to visit her sister Judy in Colorado Springs.

She did not say she was going back to Perry, but, of course, that was her plan.

She called Perry and he drove the Buick LaSabre convertible to the Springs. He knocked on Judy Douglas’s front door one evening with an excited knock, an impatient rap. But the man was all smiles when the door swung open. Sharon, who had been sipping brandy with her sister, was elated. Judy thought she had never seen a happier couple.

That night Perry took Sharon to a motel in Manitou Springs and they made love all night. Just as she promised they would every night. Every day. All the time.

Sharon tried to sort out her life and she needed time and support to do so. Instead of returning to Rocky Ford right away, she alternated her time in the Denver area and at one point she asked Judy if she and her daughters could stay at her place for a while. Mike had not wanted Sharon to take the girls, but at least in the eyes of the law, Sharon was their mother. Judy, who was struggling through her own marital problems, was glad for the diversion that houseguests could bring. Judy bought a second hand bunk bed and turned her downstairs into a bedroom for Rochelle and Denise. Sharon planned on working for a Colorado Springs Pearle Vision, and though Judy had her own four kids to raise, she said she would help her younger sister with the little girls.

Sharon, for the first time in a long time, seemed happy. Maybe she would make something of her life, after all. Maybe she had pulled herself together and was finally going to do the right thing.

The hope was short-lived.

Mike Fuller had made no bones about it to anyone who would listen: Sharon was an terrible mother and he’d raise the girls without her rotten-to-the-core influence. There was no way he’d have Rochelle and Denise live in sin with their mother. The woman was unfit. When Karl Wheeler heard of Mike’s plan to take the kids from Sharon by court order, he offered to accompany him on the task. Mike knew Sharon was hiding out at Judy’s place in the Springs. Karl Wheeler considered himself the voice of reason. If the minister was going to spout off, then Karl would be there to listen and calm the jilted husband.

“Mike was a feisty sort of guy for a preacher. It didn’t take much for him to double up his fists and take a poke at someone,” Karl said later.

The two men drove from Rocky Ford to Colorado Springs in the Wheelers’ brand-new white Lincoln Continental with a maroon top. They stopped at the El Paso County Sheriff’s office and explained the situation. A deputy agreed to escort them to Judy’s residence to enforce a custody order.

Karl remained in the Lincoln while the deputy and the preacher went inside to settle the issue of custody. As Karl waited, he wondered how things could have turned so ugly.

Perry, how’d you get in such a mess?

Sharon, stunned at the intrusion, claimed it was she who should have the girls. She was their mother. Rochelle and Denise needed her.