The Victoria Napolitano Bookstore The Hat Box Affair | Page 11

Chapter 1

The Train Ride
Paige sat looking out her bedroom window
and the heavy London rain. Her straight,
blonde, nicely coiffed hair and beautifully
applied make-up was flawless. She had
spent hours looking through magazines
to get the perfect look for her adventurous
train ride. She could not wait to play the
part of a lone woman on a train she had so
often read in her poems.
The window pane was cold to her fingertips as she traced the rain drops. Lost in
thought, Paige was in her first year at the
University, studying literature and loving
every day of school. Her professor, Mr.
Lovell, was leaving for a holiday and decided to give his students an assignment
that did not require them to attend school
for one week.
The assignment was to go out and experience something they had always wanted
to but hadn’t had a chance to do so. Paige
loved reading poetry, so she decided to
take a three-day train ride to Paris and
Switzerland while reading her romantic
poetry books.
“Paige, are you daydreaming again?”
Paige’s mother, Eleanor, asked while walking in, carrying fresh linens for Paige’s trip.
Eleanor was a gorgeous Scandinavian
woman; strong features and bright clear
intelligent eyes. She had to be strong jn
order to raise two children while Paige’s
dad was active in the military; it had made
her a tough-as-nails kind of mother. Her
brother Mark was a quiet child and preferred working on science projects alone,
except for the times he created a self made
explosive and shared it with the neighborhood boys.