When Love Runs Dry novel · Chapter 5 of 32

Chapter 5: Dry Taps

I was pulling on my boots when headlights swung into Opal's driveway.

A pickup truck. The engine left running.

Nolan came up the porch steps two at a time with a small girl asleep over his shoulder.

She was wrapped in a purple blanket, two long braids hanging down his back.

"Plant's down," he said. "I need someone to take her."

"Give her here," Opal said, already holding out her arms.

"She's heavy."

"I'm eighty-one, not dead. Give her here."

He handed the girl over very carefully.

She opened one green eye, saw Opal, and closed it again.

"Hi, Miss Opal."

"Hi, Mae. Couch."

Nolan looked at me in the doorway with my boots half laced.

"You coming?"

"I'm coming."

We drove to the plant with the heat blasting.

People were standing on their porches in coats, holding empty kettles.

The plant gate was wide open.

A white contractor's van sat in the yard with its flashers going.

Three men in clean orange vests stood on the river path.

"Where's the intake valve?" one of them shouted at us. "The drawing says it's here. There's nothing here."

"The drawing's from 1911," Nolan said. "They moved it in 1958."

"Where to?"

"Down there." He pointed over the bank at the black river. "Under it."

The contractor looked at the water.

"I'm not going in that."

"No," Nolan said. "You're not."

"Did you call Ms. Truesdell?" I asked.

"Four times. Her phone's off."

Nolan was already walking down the bank.

"My waders are in my locker," he said over his shoulder. "She took my key."

"So you're going in in jeans."

"I'm going in in jeans."

"Then so am I."

He stopped and turned around.

"It's October. That water's forty-eight degrees."

"Then we'd better be fast."

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