There has been a disturbing development.
I was doing some internet searches to see what I could find out about Paul and Cindy in the present day. They are the two characters that I lost track of over the years.
I discovered that Cindy passed away in 1992 at the age of 44. That is six years after the last time I saw her. It was a painful revelation for me. I was unable to find anything about the circumstances surrounding her death. Given her mental state, was it suicide? If so, did it have anything to do with my abandoning her?
Since her privacy is no longer an issue, I can tell you that her real name was Sharon Kay Naibauer.
She is buried in Linn Grove Cemetery in Greely, Colorado, the city where she was born.
There is one thing I did not include in the story that I will try to work into chapter 2. During the years that we were living in the home we purchased, there were a couple of occasions when Sharon got a hold of me by phone. On each occasion, she was having a paranoid delusion. She needed my reassurance, which I was able to provide.
It was awkward because, on both occasions, Linda answered the phone and handed it to me. I could tell that Linda believed I was still seeing Sharon. I suspect that Sharon sensed my awkwardness and stopped calling. She may have had no one to turn to. Did her demons finally get the better of her?
I will probably never get the answers to those questions.
