When Love Runs Dry novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: One Suitcase

Meredith leaves Greenwich with one suitcase, finds brown water in her grandmother's tap and a bill more than doubled, and at the plant gate a stranger in waders blocks her car just as Delaney pulls in behind her.

I called Opal back from the guest bed.

"Merry. Who is Delaney Truesdell?"

"Tobias's girlfriend."

The line went quiet. Opal is never quiet.

"His what?"

"Three years, Gran. I'm divorced since ten-fifteen this morning. I'll explain in the car."

"What car?"

"Mine. I'm coming home."

"Good," she said. "Bring milk. The water's brown."

I hung up and pulled the suitcase all the way out.

It was the navy one with the broken wheel.

I'd packed it on June 3, after breakfast, while he was still on the terrace calling her babe.

Three pairs of jeans. Work boots I hadn't worn in five years. My mother's sweater. My engineering license in a plastic sleeve.

Then I went to the hall closet and reached behind the winter coats.

My old drafting tube was still there.

Black, scuffed, with BRAINARD in white paint pen down the side.

Tobias had wanted to throw it out when we moved in.

"You don't need that anymore," he'd said. "You don't need to work."

I'd hidden it behind his coats, where he'd never look.

He never once got his own coat.

I slung the tube over my shoulder and walked into his study.

The desk was huge and clean, the way he liked it.

I took a yellow sticky note from his drawer.

He'd asked for a list. I wrote one.

"Rules: 1. Read what you sign."

I stuck it in the middle of his leather blotter.

Then I put my wedding ring on top of it.

The ring had been his grandmother's. It wasn't mine to take.

I didn't take anything that was his. Not the pearls. Not the car he bought me.

My 2014 Subaru was in the far bay of the garage, behind his Porsche, under a dust cover.

It started on the second try.

I drove out the gate at seven at night and didn't look in the mirror once.

Two hours north, the highway turned into a two-lane road along the river.

I rolled the window down at the town line just to smell it.

Wet leaves. Woodsmoke. The mill pond.

ALDER FALLS, the sign said. POP. 6,200. EST. 1771.

Somebody had stuck a sticker over the bottom.

SPAULDING = THIEVES.

So the town already knew.

Opal was on her porch in a cardigan and slippers, holding a flashlight like a weapon.

She aimed it right in my eyes.

"You're thin."

"Hi, Gran."

"You're too thin, and you didn't bring milk."

"I forgot the milk."

"Five years," she said.

"Five years I see you at Christmas for one hour while he waits in the car with the engine running."

"And you forget the milk."

Then she came down the steps and hugged me so hard my drafting tube hit her in the head.

She didn't let go.

Neither did I.

"Inside," she said finally, into my shoulder. "Before the whole street sees me cry."

"You're not crying."

"I'm eighty-one. It's allergies. Get inside."

The kitchen was the same yellow it had always been.

Opal put the kettle under the tap and turned it on.

The water came out the color of weak coffee.

"That's new," I said.

"Started Friday. They said run it ten minutes. I ran it twenty." She slapped an envelope on the table. "Read that."

ALDER FALLS WATER COMPANY, A SPAULDING CAPITAL COMPANY.

Quarterly service charge, previous: $61.00.

Quarterly service charge, new: $148.00.

Effective November 1.

"A hundred and forty percent," I said.

"I know what it is. I can do math." She pointed at me with a spoon.

"I was the town clerk for forty years. I stamped every water rate this town ever had."

"I know, Gran."

"Not one of them ever went up more than nine percent."

She filled the kettle from a jug of store water instead and banged it onto the stove.

"I'm not paying it," she said.

"They'll shut you off."

"Let them try. I'll sit on the curb."

I believed her.

I unrolled the drafting tube on her table, and she leaned in with her glasses on her nose.

ALDER FALLS REBUILD PLAN. M. BRAINARD, P.E.

New intake. Gate rebuild. Pipe replacement. Eleven million dollars over eight years.

In the corner was a red stamp in smudged ink.

RECEIVED. TOWN CLERK. MARCH 11.

Opal's initials beside it.

She touched the stamp with one finger.

"I remember this," she said. "You were so proud you cried in my office."

"I didn't cry."

"You blew your nose for twenty minutes. Then you married that man and nobody ever built it."

The brown water dripped in the sink behind us.

"Who runs the plant now?" I asked.

"Same as always. The big one. Wadsworth." Opal smirked into her tea. "You remember him."

I did.

Nolan Wadsworth had argued with me over every page of that plan.

Every single page.

"He's still there?"

"Until the new people get around to him."

I didn't sleep much in my old bed under the slanted ceiling.

At seven I put on my work boots and drove down to the water plant.

The chain-link gate was half open.

A man stepped out in front of my car.

He was six-three at least, in hip waders slick with river mud, a travel mug in his fist.

He didn't move when I braked.

He looked through my windshield right at my face.

"If you're Spaulding," Nolan Wadsworth said, "turn around."

Behind me, tires crunched on the gravel.

A white Range Rover pulled in so close it nearly kissed my bumper.

The driver's door opened.

Out stepped a cream cashmere coat, and Delaney Truesdell's sweet, smiling face.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend