He felt a mild tug of shame at the way he’d gone to her with this, and the way she’d listened. After all his recent coldness, he’d turned to her quickly in a moment of need, and she had allowed him to.
It was, he realized, the longest conversation they’d had since he left. The first long one, in fact, that hadn’t involved heavy arguing or his shouting or her tears. They’d talked like companions once again. Almost like husband and wife.
That didn’t change anything, of course. But she’d been there when he needed her, and that was no small thing. Not at all.
There when she was needed, that was Claire. Always and forever, that had been Claire. Until the return to Chicago, until he had no work and no clear prospects. Then where had she been?
There. In your home. And you walked out and never went back, and she’s still there, she’s still there and you’re the one who left…
Hell with it. One phone call did not a marriage fix, but it had been good to talk with her and he felt far better now than he had before, shaken but relieved. It was the way you felt after getting sick to your stomach—unsteady, but glad that was over.
The water made sense. The water applied some element of logic to what had, an hour ago, seemed utterly illogical. And terrifying.
All right, then, time to move on into the day. There was research to be done, and he figured it would be a damn good idea to start with the mineral water. At any rate, he didn’t need to stay in this room, cowering and questioning his own sanity. The headaches would be gone for a while now. Might as well get to work. Too bad he no longer had a camera with which to do his job.
Breaking it had felt good, though. Watching it shatter, throwing his full strength into those smashes against the edge of the desk, seeing something else pay a price for his own pain, his own fear. Yes sir, that had felt nice.
He wondered how Claire would respond to that notion. Something told him it wouldn’t be with surprise.
* * *
The Pluto company was housed in a long stone building of a buttery color. There were two large holding tanks outside and banks of old-fashioned windows, some forty panes of glass in each one, a few of them opened outward to let the air circulate. The entrance led Eric to a flight of stairs, and at the top he found the office, went in, and explained what he wanted to a pretty, brown-haired woman behind one of the desks.
“You want to talk about the history of the company, your best bet is up at the hotel,” she said.
“I’m interested in the history, yes, but I’m also interested in the actual water. What’s in the water, and what it does.”
“What it does?”
“I’ve seen some of the old promotional materials, things that claimed it would fix just about anything.”
“There was only one thing that water ever fixed.” She waited for a response and didn’t get it, then leaned forward and said, “It made you shit, mister. That’s all it did. Pluto Water was nothing but a laxative.”
He smiled. “I understand that, but I’m trying to find out something about the legends that surrounded it, the folklore.”
“Again, we’re not going to be able to answer that. The only thing we’ve got in common with the original company is the name. We don’t produce that water anymore.”
“What do you produce, then?”
“Cleaning products,” she said. “Things for Clorox.” Then she smiled and added, “Well, I suppose that’s got something in common, after all. Cleansers, right? Because the old stuff would clean out your—”
“I got it,” he said. “Okay. Thanks for your time.”
There was an older woman at a desk in the back of the room, and she’d been listening and peering at Eric over her reading glasses. As he turned to go, she spoke up.
“You want to know about folklore, you should look up Anne McKinney.”
He paused at the door. “Is she a historian?”
“No, she’s not. Just a local woman, late eighties but with a mind better than most, and a memory that beats anybody’s. Her father worked for Pluto. She’ll answer every question you could think to ask and plenty more that you couldn’t have.”
“That sounds perfect. Where can I find her?”
“Well, you follow Larry Bird Boulevard—that’s the street we’re on—right on up the hill and keep going out of town, and you’ll find her house. Nice-looking blue house, two stories with a big front porch, bunch of little windmills in the yard, wind chimes all over the porch. Thermometers and barometers, too. Can’t miss that place.”
Eric raised his eyebrows.
“Old Anne’s waiting on a storm,” the gray-haired woman said.