by Gregg Olsen
It wasn’t that everyone was jealous of Sharon and her all-consuming relationship with the mild-mannered firefighter. It wasn’t that no one wanted Glen to be happy. Far from it. It was simply as clear as a Colorado summer sky to those closest to Glen that Sher was not the right woman for him.
Maybe for anyone.
And yet Glen still told friends that he wouldn’t give up. He was going to marry her.
Some never thought the marriage would take place—the relationship between Glen and Sharon had been so erratic. In fact, most of them also had opinions about whether it should take place. The couple couldn’t even manage to live together for any extended amount of time at the house in Thornton before Sharon hightailed it back to Trinidad. If she loved him so much, why did she leave him? She said she needed her space. She needed to clear her head. Why in the world, friends said, would Glen think a gold band on her finger would make a difference? Get real, man. It was a wedding band, not a leash.
Not long after Glen admitted Sharon had a backup lover in her life, the lovelorn firefighter visited at Rick Philippi's. The news was not good. He and Sharon were talking of getting back together. When the two men went outside to talk, Rick couldn’t bite his tongue, couldn’t hold back any longer.
“Glen, don’t you think it's a good idea to push her out of your life?”
‘I can’t. I really love her,” he said. “And she loves me.”
“Well, she doesn’t love you as much as you think she does,” Rick continued, walking that high-wire act that friends often do when it comes to another's failed relationship. Most people know when a relationship is on the rocks, there is always a chance the estranged couple will reunite. Most know disparaging the other person can often bite back later.
Rick couldn’t stop himself.
“From the day I met her, I didn’t like her. There's something about her.”
“Rick, I understand, but when you’re in love you just don’t throw it away.”
The two men were at an impasse and both knew it.
Rick grabbed the last word.
“I'm sorry, Glen, I think you better find someone else.” For Glen Harrelson, it seemed there would be no other. Sher Nelson with her flashy, fun-loving ways, was the ideal woman for a lonely man looking for love. With Sharon by his side, he felt alive.
Glen Harrelson's smile went from ear to ear. He was as happy as pal Mikki had ever seen him when he ambled into the Thornton offices of the American Family Insurance Co. at the same time she was getting quotes on renter's insurance.
He was beaming. “Sher and I are getting married,” he said.
Mikki wasn’t surprised. She had seen it coming. She was happy for Glen. At least, she wanted to allow herself to be. She only wished him the best and if Sharon made him happy, then that was all she cared about. The eternal optimist, Mikki hoped it would work out.
After announcing his engagement, Glen told Mikki why he was at the insurance office. He came in to put Sharon down as his beneficiary.
Chapter 24
SHARON LYNN WAS IN GLEN’S BLOOD LIKE A virus. The woman was in every thought passing through his mind, day or night. She was everything he had ever wanted. He didn’t want to lose her. Glen recorded an audio tape and mailed it to the P.O. box Sharon kept in Weston. He knew from a previous conversation that her children Danny and Misty would be flying out to see their grandparents in Clear Lake, Michigan. Sharon had to come to Denver to put them on an airplane.
“Stay with me that night,” he pleaded on the tape.
Glen had ulterior motives that went beyond making love for old times’ sake. He wanted marriage. And while Sharon had balked at the proposal in the past, she never said it was an utter impossibility. She said she didn’t know if she could love him enough. She said she felt she was oil and marriage was water. She had two disappointments and didn’t want to end up married as often as a Gabor sister.
Rick Philippi, naturally, was one whose stomach turned somersaults at the prospect of a wedding in the event that Sharon would agree to marry Glen. Glen was such a fool. He was making a big mistake. When Glen asked Rick to attend the wedding, Rick lied, and said, of course, he would stand up for him. Deep down, he knew he could not be there. He could never stand by while that woman married his friend.
Not if she was the last woman on earth.
In answer to Glen's audio missive, Sharon agreed to stop by the house on Columbine Court. She brought along Denise, her second-oldest daughter. She said she couldn’t stay, but as the hours flew by, she made no effort to leave. The three shared some laughs and a meal and made plans to go out for breakfast the next morning.
But there was more. Sometime between the lovemaking they shared and the early morning, Sharon gave in to Glen's determined persistence. She would pick up the relationship where they left off. He told her that he had taken vacation time from work and would drive her back to the Midwest to pick up the kids.
“I love you,” he said. “And I want to get married. I don’t want to stay in motels with you without being your husband. My mother raised me to be a gentleman.”
Sharon would later say she was unprepared to get married in the chambers of an Adams County judge. It was a spur of the moment affair.
On June 2, 1988, Mrs. Glen Harrelson—wearing shorts, sandals and a tank top—walked down the steps of the courthouse.
No one ever seemed happier than the man at her side.
Glen Harrelson's present and former wives finally met face-to-face at Todd Harrelson's high school graduation a few days after the wedding. For Andy, Sharon was no longer the voice on the phone, the phantom who disappeared down the hallway.
Glen had never seemed happier, nor more proud.
“Better not smoke in front of Andy,” he said as Sharon lit up another of her mile-long cigarettes.
A fleeting look of resentment washed over Sharon's face, but she caught herself and laughed it off.
Upbeat and buoyant, Sharon chatted away. She said she was so glad to finally meet Andy; so glad to be there to celebrate Todd's big day. She even said she would never presume to take Andy's place as the children's mother. Instead, she would be their best friend.
After the ceremony, Sharon and Glen packed up and headed east to visit Glen's family in Iowa. His mother, Ruby, wanted her son to get married in a church and he agreed to her request. Sharon didn’t put up a fight. She loved to be the center of attention.
Sharon made a lovely bride once more. No one could deny it. No one could take their eyes off her. Sharon stood before the minister at her mother-in-law's Des Moines church, wearing a carnation pink dress with a fitted waist. If the dress was a bit tight, it didn’t matter. Sharon Harrelson had the figure for it.
As Rick Philippi faded into the background, Glen continued to invite Mikki and Steve Baker over to Columbine Court. Sharon wanted to play hostess, and Glen was happy to have his friends over to share in his new life with his new wife.
“Don’t talk about her late husband, Perry. She's very touchy about it. Don’t bring it up. Drop it,” Glen warned before the Bakers’ first visit.
Mikki considered the request a bit on the strange side. After all, there were several pictures of Perry Nelson hanging in the house. If she was so touchy about it, why did she invite remarks by having the photos displayed? It bothered Mikki that no pictures of Glen hung on the walls.
And it was his house!
From the beginning, if there were any problems between Glen and Sher, it was only that she continually took credit for everyone's accomplishments. It was she who worked for hours in the yard, weeding, edging, pruning. It was she who had toiled in a hot kitchen cooking and cleaning all day.
“I stained the porch,” she said when Mikki and her husband were over for one afternoon. “It took all day long, but it looks great. I'm very happy with it. Tired, but happy.”
Later, Glen complained to Mikki about the comment. It was he, he said, who had been the one to do the work on the porch.
&nb
sp; “I wouldn’t mind if she said we did it, but, damn, I get real tired of her taking all the credit for the work I do.”
Within a very short time, it became clear that the relationship was going to be a commuter one—forever. Sharon stood her ground when it came to her ties to the mountains. She flatly refused to give up her beloved Round House for Glen or anyone.
“I will not raise my kids in a city,” she announced. “They will be raised in a small town.”
Glen tried to persuade Sharon, but she refused to listen to reason. When he suggested finding a house in Castle Rock, so that he’d be closer to work and she’d still have a rural atmosphere for Danny and Misty, Sharon alternated between considering the idea and outright pooh-poohing it.
“I don’t want to leave,” she said. “If you have a problem with that, mister, then look for someone new. I'm staying put.”
Wet Canyon was every bit as rugged and beautiful as Glen had told friend Mikki Baker. She could see instantly why he was willing to make the long commute from Weston to Denver for the sake of a woman; it was an outdoorsman's paradise. Glen invited Mikki and Steve Baker to come for the Fourth of July. Though “Sharon had taken over every aspect of Glen's life, it was enlightening to see her in her own environs. Sharon was a bit of a know-it-all. There was only one way to do things: her way.
When Mikki let the kitchen tap run too long, Sharon chided her for being wasteful. When Glen failed to get the barbecue hot enough, quickly enough to suit Sharon's schedule, she was the first one to show him just how to do it. Sharon was the expert. She knew better than anyone.
Saturday afternoon as Sharon and Mikki baked in the sun while their husbands were off target shooting, Sharon said she knew ways around the unemployment benefits program. Mikki had just lost her job. Though Mikki had been fired over a misunderstanding, Sharon insisted the young woman could still collect on unemployment benefits.
“Just lie,” she said. “It's easy.”
Mikki didn’t think she could do that, but she appreciated Sharon's brashness. Sharon didn’t seem to be afraid of anything.
Sher also boasted how her house was paid off.
“Look what I have,” she said, as she rubbed coconut oil all over her beautifully bronzing skin. She motioned to her surroundings. “My house, my acres, everything paid off. I don’t have to work a day in my life, because of my Social Security benefits.”
Take advantage. Take what's yours. It was a motto telegraphed all weekend long.
The night of the Fourth, the adults and children gathered to watch a fireworks display Glen set up on the driveway. With each fountain of sparks and spray of fire, everyone oooohed and ahhhhed. Mikki snapped a roll of film with the point-and-shoot camera Steve's mother had given the young couple as a Christmas gift. Later, she would be heartbroken that none of the images had turned out. There were no photos of Glen.
Glen Harrelson was known by only a few of the locals in Wet Canyon. Sharon talked about her fireman husband; sometimes glowingly, sometimes skeptically that they’d be able to make a go of their long-distance marriage. One who met Glen in person and had a firsthand assessment was schoolteacher Candis Thornton.
She was out walking when Glen stopped her one day. They chatted a few minutes, small talk about nothing much, when the subject of his concern for Sharon's isolation came up.
“You know, Candis,” the soft-spoken man said, “I’ve been wanting to talk with you about your telephone. I know you don’t have regular phone service here.”
Candis shook her head. “No, Glen,” she said, “we have telephone service from C and C Communications out of Clayton, New Mexico.”
But it wasn’t readily available to Sharon's location.
“I know some folks up in Denver who have cellular phones,” he said, “and I'm really worried about Sharon, up there by herself all the time—with no way to communicate.”
Candis listened and encouraged him to talk with C and C to see if Sharon could get the same service she and husband Ray used.
He promised he was going to do it right away.
“He was the nicest man… almost as nice as Perry Nelson,” she said later of Glen Harrelson. She couldn’t help but wonder what it was that Sharon possessed that could attract such a nice fellow as Glen. He was loving, caring and concerned. And, it seemed to many in the Canyon, here was Sharon with Gary Adams whenever her husband left for Denver.
As sure as the sky was blue, Sharon would always have a man on her arm. That was so true, it could easily have been written in stone. When she showed up at the Parsons home in Wet Canyon one afternoon with her new husband, Glen Harrelson, Ann was at once resigned and delighted to make his acquaintance.
Sharon held Glen's hand. She said how they had met through a “love column” in a newspaper. They were so happy. They couldn’t stand being apart. She said she was thinking of selling Round House and moving up to Thornton full time.
“What's the place worth?” she asked.
Ann told her she’d get back to her on the house. Real estate was soft, and some market research would have to be done. After Sharon and Glen left, the neighbor wondered what it was men saw in the woman.
She had Gary Adams on the string and this guy in Thornton. What the hell, talk about a two-timer!
Sawmill owner Al Robinson also met Glen Harrelson during one of his visits to the Canyon. Al immediately liked the Denver fireman. He wondered why a nice man like Harrelson would get involved with a woman like Sherry.
My God, he thought, is there some way that I can warn this guy? Something's telling me that he’d better watch this woman.
Al wrestled with his worries, but kept out of it. He didn’t know what the man would think of such a warning. He decided to mind his own business.
Newlyweds not living together? It seemed very odd to Andy Harrelson when she heard that Sharon had packed up her children and moved back to Weston for good.
She called Glen and asked him about it.
“She thinks her kids should be in a smaller school system,” he said, his voice seemingly unconvinced, though he didn’t say so.
“I think it's strange,” Andy said, probing for more details.
Glen became closemouthed. He didn’t want to get into it.
He made only one remark that clued Andy in to what he was feeling.
“Maybe I made a mistake,” he said.
Glen did not say so, but it did cross Andy's mind that there was more than just schooling issues that had caused a rift in the house on Columbine Court. Maybe Sharon's old lover was back in the picture?
“He knew that there was a man back in her hometown who bothered her. She made it sound as though his attentions were unwelcome. Kind of interested in Sharon back home. Glen knew about it,” Andy said later.
Sharon was a climber. She used her claws to scale her way out of the mundane life that had been ordained by her parents and her religion. She had gone after what she thought would make her complete. She was no dummy. She had seen the TV shows, read the books. Sharon understood—though everyone denied it—that money can buy happiness.
With Mike Fuller, she was bored, bitter and broke. With Perry Nelson she was only broke.
Over Cokes and potato chips with a friend, Sharon once tried to put it all in perspective.
“With a minister for a husband, you don’t have to grab on to any kind of resources, all you have to be is this little china doll on display. For the doctor's wife you have to be a little classy if you’re in the right society. You have to be smart enough to pick up the lingo of his profession, to keep the books, to do the ordering, fashion-conscious enough to help people with frames that they are really happy with. That's not who I am inside. I think I always did what everybody else wanted me to do.”
Maybe, some would ask later, Glen Harrelson was merely a stop on her way to get what she wanted?
Chapter 25
IN SHARON’S WORLD SOME THINGS WOULD never change. She would never really be a blonde, no matter how often
she bleached her hair. She would never have a reputation as a woman of class and dignity. She would never look as lovely as she had envisioned herself to be. She would never be younger.
But she would always have Gary Adams.
Their love should have been a tattoo, so indelible had it become. Their love was the song on the radio that stayed in the listener's mind all day long. Their love was undying.
Their love was a prison.
Sharon had married Glen, but she had not forgotten Gary. She never got over the sex. Never got over the fact that Gary somehow preferred Nancy to her. How could that be? Why wouldn’t he leave that mousy little wife for her? Didn’t he love her? Didn’t she please him in bed? In the woods? On the shores of the lake?
He was the Mountain Man and she was his Lady.
Things were stable at the Dude Ranch below Cougar Ridge, so when Gary Adams had heard Sharon had moved back, he didn’t go see her right away. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to or that he wasn’t curious. He just knew that like an alcoholic on the wagon, one sip of Sharon and he’d be gone again. To taste her “secret sauce” was to consume a drug.
A chance encounter along the country road where Sharon and Danny and Misty waited for the school bus brought the lovers back together. In an instant, the two were kissing while Sharon's son and daughter looked on.
Sharon told Gary two things. She missed him and she was married.
Gary told himself to stay away. Special sauce or not, the relationship with Sharon was nothing but trouble.
But he couldn’t stay away. As the air threatened to drop to freezing and the wind howled from down the canyon, Gary Adams made his way up Cougar Ridge to Round House. He knew Sharon was grading the driveway, and he told himself he was going up there to see if he could lend a little help. There she was. Sharon was driving the four-wheel drive with a makeshift I-beam grader pulled behind to make the road less than the bumpy stretch it had been since she and Perry first had it cut.
Sharon was, as he always contended, the most desirable woman in the world. She was a wildcat in bed; a vision of beauty in the light of day. Gary couldn’t shake her from his memory. No matter what they had done.
