Harold and the missus drove the price well beyond what Riley had paid for the piece originally, and it had been expensive then, but Shay didn’t care. When the competition fell away and hers was the highest bid, she had to choke back a shout of triumph.

“What are you going to do with that, Shay?” Ivy whispered, sounding honestly puzzled.

It was a reasonable question. While Hank would consider the horse an interesting addition to their hodge-podge decorating scheme, he would not see it as a spinner of magic. “I’ll explain later,” Shay whispered back.

Ivy shrugged and jumped into the bidding for the silver butter dish. Later, after Shay had written a check and arranged for the horse to be delivered, she posed her original question.

Settled into the passenger seat of Ivy’s car, Shay shrugged self-consciously. “He was mine, once. One of my mother’s husbands gave him to me when I was a little girl. I’d just had my tonsils out, and Riley wanted to spoil me.”

“Oh,” said Ivy, in a fondly sentimental tone. “That’s sweet.”

They stopped for a late lunch and Shay was ravenous, but she was also anxious to get home. The horse would be delivered around six o’clock that evening, and she wanted to have sandpaper and fresh paints ready.

In fact, she did. She had newspapers spread out on her living room floor, too, and the deliverymen made jokes about that as they set the beloved old toy on the paper and unwrapped the blankets that had protected it.

Shay smiled wanly at their attempt at humor and had to restrain herself from shooing them out so that she could begin the restoration project. Once they’d been given their tip, they left.

Gently, Shay applied a special paint-stripping compound to the horse, removing as much of the scratched and faded finish as she could. Then she sanded. And sanded. And sanded.

It was therapy, she said to herself. She would restore Clydesdale to his former glory and when she opened her catering service, he would stand in the office, where customers could admire him. Maybe he would even become her personal insignia, his image emblazoned on her letterhead.…

Letterhead. Shay smiled and shook her head. Before there could be letterhead, there had to be a business, didn’t there?

As she knelt beside the carousel horse, sanding away what remained of the silver paint on one hoof, Shay felt real trepidation. It wouldn’t be easy to hand in her resignation; while she could go no further in her job at Reese Motors, it was a secure position and it paid decently. The work might be trying sometimes, but it was never dull, and Marvin and Jeannie had been so kind to her.

On the other hand, Shay had money now, and a chance to follow her dreams. How many people got an opportunity like this? she asked herself. How many?

Shay sanded more vigorously, so intent on her task and her quandary that, when the doorbell rang, she was startled. Rubbing her hands down the front of an old cotton work shirt that Eliott had left behind, she got to her feet and hurried to answer the persistent ringing.