Zuzu’s petals (or the past returns)

While we were living in Brussels, Belgium, my younger sister came for a visit. She was in college and taking a break to visit us and our new baby. In church one Sunday she met a young returned missionary* who was stopping in Belgium to visit an aunt before returning home to Australia.  The young man’s name was Sebastian** and they hit it off right away.  They spent about a week together sight-seeing places in Belgium, and also accompanying us on a visit to Paris. It became apparent that Sebastian was getting quite attached to my sister (chalk it up to two years not being around anything resembling a female.) She liked him a lot but was in no way in love and didn’t want to be more than friends. When it came time for my sister to go home, Sebastian suggested that they continue to keep in touch and then suggested she fly to Australia to meet his parents. She said she didn’t think they really knew each other well enough, after only a week, to be making those kinds of plans, but she’d be happy to stay friends and write once in a while. That was that. She went back to BYU and was working and going to school and pretty much forgot all about it. Several months later a girl who worked with her in the lab she ran asked for some time off. She explained that she was going to her best friend’s wedding. Of course they casually chatted about her friend and how she had met her fiance etc. The girl said  it was a long, sad story. She said that her friend had met this guy who had been heart-broken when the girl he loved had just about dumped him at the altar. My sister commented on what a slimy woman she must have been, leading him on and dumping him etc. The girl agreed and went on to talk about how horrible this former girlfriend had been, how cruel and unfeeling and how much she had hurt her friend’s fiance. My sister was casually nodding and commenting on what witches some girls could be. As the girl  went on with the story it started to occur to her that some parts of this story sounded very familiar. The fiance had just gotten off his mission, was visiting an aunt in Belgium when he met this wretched girl, they had a whirlwind romance in Paris, they were pretty much engaged and she dumped him when he wanted her to meet his parents etc. My sister stopped the story at this point and asked the girl what the fiance’s name was. You guessed it, Sebastian. So she had spent the whole time disparaging herself until she recognized the story that had been built up by this fiance around her non-existent relationship with him!

What are the odds? Has your past ever come back to haunt you?

* Mormon jargon for a young man just finished his 2-year service as a missionary

**Name changed to protect privacy

Paris, the city of love!

Day 26 of the A-Z Challenge!

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