The moment Martha noticed Raymond on the train, everything her mother warned against erupted - romantic notions, palpitating heart, the desire to write it all in a novel and tell the world.
Martha lived and wrote that love story until the day Raymond handed her a sketch. “Want to see a picture of the girl I plan to marry?” The penciled profile resembled Martha… But when Raymond went away, she knew. She wasn’t the girl he planned to marry.
David was her father’s apprentice, everything Martha’s mother said made a good husband - hardworking, no romantic tendencies, no tolerance for writing about it.
Martha added a fictional happy ending to her and Raymond’s story and published it. Cleansed herself of romantic love, ready to marry David. Until a copy of her book appeared - full of sketches - Raymond’s version of their love story - drawings that enticed her heart to beat once again.
