Page 31 of August

Ginny lifted a tarp by one corner and bent over, peering underneath. The storage barn was near the apartment complex, blocked by fencing to prevent park patrons from getting near it. As far as she could tell, no one had been inside except to drop off more junk. Everything was covered with a layer of dust, and her skin already felt grimy just from being in there for the last hour.

“Oh,” she said, “is this a horse?”

She straightened and lifted the tarp higher. August put down whatever he’d been looking at and walked over. He took the tarp from her, tossing it back from the object.

“Yeah,” he said, “it’s one of the animals from the carousel.”

“There’s a carousel?” She’d been around the entire park and hadn’t seen any kind of carousel.

“Not anymore. It’s been gone for a long time. There used to be a kind of kiddie park, with a small carousel near the petting zoo and a playground. As the park got more popular and there were more people coming, it became too much to handle, so the play area and carousel were closed down.”

“I like carousel horses,” she said. She laid her hand on the neck of the black horse, head down and one leg up like he was prancing. “My mom had a small collection of them.”

One more thing she’d lost when she fled. She didn’t have anything belonging to anyone in her family, not even a photo.

“I always thought it was cool. Our group used to do the maintenance on it. It was really one of the only rides the park ever had.”

“Do you think they’d ever put it up again?”

“I’m not sure. We could ask Atticus to bring it up to the alphas. The space where it used to be by the petting zoo is filled with picnic tables now. Let’s see if we can find the rest of the animals.”

“Are there just horses for the carousel or other animals?”

“Just horses, and a few benches for people who want to ride but not move around as much. “ He looked around. “If I remember right, there were eight horses and four benches.”

She looked around the barn. It was really big and stuffed full, but she couldn’t imagine there being a whole carousel in it.

“Do you think it’s gone?” she asked.

“Nah. They wouldn’t have thrown it away entirely. There’s another storage building. I think the horses might be in here, and the rest of the carousel and benches in the other building. It would take a lot to put it back together and get it operational.”

“Maybe that could be my thing.”

He gave her a curious look. “The carousel?”

“I’m sure the other horses need to be refinished like this guy, plus the carousel itself probably does too. It would be pretty neat to have a project to work on, even if it’s one that takes a super long time. I don’t know how to put it together, but maybe a sexy gorilla does?”

He growled softly and gave her a sweet smile. “I could definitely do that.”

August gave her a quick kiss and then put his phone to his ear, stepping away to talk to Atticus, who was in charge of park maintenance.

She pulled the entire tarp off the black horse and folded it into as small a square as she could make it. Then she picked her way through the piles and boxes, peering under tarps, until she found three more horses: one champagne-colored, one chocolate, and one golden brown.

“I like the black one the best; he reminds me of the one from the book Black Beauty,” she said when August helped her fold another tarp.

“I never read it.”

“It was my grandma’s favorite. She was the big reader in the family, always reading books and then passing them on to me. Her favorites were old classics like Black Beauty and Pride and Prejudice. I liked science fiction, so she would read Ray Bradbury with me.”

“I wish I’d had a chance to meet her,” he said.

“Me too. My parents would have loved you, and my brother too. They would have liked knowing I had a big, strong gorilla for a mate.” She laid the tarp on top of the others. “What did Atticus say?”

“He’s going to come check out the horses. He knows more about refinishing that kind of thing than I do, and he wants to look at the other storage building and see what state the main parts are in and how much it would take to get them up and operational. Then he’ll talk to Joss, who runs the accounting department, and the other alphas about starting it up again.”

“I think it would be really cool.”

“Me too.”