“The newspaper ad says they have a lot of great stuff, Shay. Antiques.”

“Milk stools.”

“You’re impossible. I bought my brass bed at a sale like this, and for a song, too.”

“They probably just wanted you to stop singing.”

“Very funny. Come on, Shay, come with me. For the drive. For the fresh air. Good Lord, you look terrible.”

Shay knew she couldn’t face another day of studying. Maybe it would be fun to poke through a lot of junk in some old barn and then treat Ivy to lunch. “You haven’t asked me why I look terrible, Ivy. For you, that’s a drastic oversight.”

Ivy sat up very straight and smiled. “I haven’t asked because I already know. You and Mitch are on the outs.”

“You’re pleased about that?”

“I know it’s temporary. Now, are you going to the sale with me or not?”

“I’m going. Just let me finish my coffee.”

“No.” Ivy shook her head. “They sell coffee at the sale. They sell it in little stands along the road. They sell it everywhere. Take your shower and let’s go!”

Muttering, Shay abandoned her coffee and made her way to the bathroom.

The carousel horse stood, its once-bright paint chipped and faded, in the middle of the barn where the auction would be held, as though waiting for Shay.

She drew in her breath and moved toward it, her eyes wide. It couldn’t be Clydesdale!

Shay crouched to look at the horse’s right rear hoof. Sure enough, splotches of Rosamond’s favorite fire engine–red fingernail polish still clung to the wood. The marks had been made one glum and rainy afternoon in the long-ago, by Shay herself.

Another woman came to look at the horse. “Wouldn’t that make a marvelous planter, Harold?” she was saying. “We could strip off the paint and then varnish it.…”

Shay put down an urge to slap the woman away and glanced back over one shoulder at Ivy, who was inspecting a sterling-silver butter dish, one of hundreds of items set out on portable display tables.

The carousel horse, like the playhouse, had been a gift from Riley, before his divorce from Rosamond, and Shay had cherished it. The piece was valuable, and, after shipping Shay off to a summer camp, Rosamond had sold it on a whim.

The anger came back to Shay—or maybe it had never left. In any case, it was all she could do not to fling one arm over the neck of that battered, beloved old horse and cling to it, fending off all prospective buyers with her purse.

“That’s nice,” Ivy said suddenly from beside Shay, her eyes moving over the hand-carved and painted relic. “Are you going to bid on it?”

The woman and Harold were still standing nearby, pondering their plans to make a planter of Shay’s horse. “I might,” she said through tight lips, shrugging to give her words an air of indifference and nonchalance.

By the time the bidding finally began, Shay was in a state of anxiety, though she managed to appear calm. When Clydesdale—Garrett and Shay had considered a multitude of names for the horse before coming up with that one—came on the docket, she waited until the auctioneer had gotten a number of bids before entering one of her own.