Two sisters, one house, and a mystery
Sheryl Hope Waldman grew up in a big and bustling house here in the 1950s, an attractive, cheerful girl with many friends. After attending Brookline High School and the University of Wisconsin, she returned to her childhood home to live with her older sister Lynda.
Then, over the years, Sheryl Waldman faded from view until she vanished. And no one seemed to notice.
For four decades, she shared a highly reclusive life with Lynda, six years her elder, inside their 4,000-square-foot home, a place where a warm, extended Jewish family once thrived, then bitterly fell apart.
Over the years, some people witnessed flickers of Sheryl’s outgoing personality, but that soon subsided into the past — and so, too, her name. For reasons that are unclear, she began calling herself Hope Wheaton.
The sisters’ once-grand house slowly fell into disrepair; the shuttered windows, collapsed porches, and broken gutters gave it an abandoned look. By last year, out of general concern, people began to call local police, health inspectors, and the state’s elder protective services agency. Each time, Lynda, standing in the doorway, insisted: We’re fine, please go away.
And these authorities did, never once crossing the threshold into the house, exhibiting a respectful deference that made them miss something beyond their darkest imagining: that Sheryl Waldman was long ago dead.
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