My Amnesiac Ex Married My Sister

Everyone was waiting for me, the bastard daughter, to crash my half sister's wedding of the century. I hated Eva. I really had fallen for Hugo, her fiancé.

I had even fought for him, for a long time. But on the day of the wedding, I didn't go in.

I just stood outside and finished the meatball soup from the shop Hugo had loved best, back before he lost his memory. Turned around. And walked off down a different road.

Chapter 1 The soup was almost gone. I thought: if it were Eva, she wouldn't have dared eat it like this today. It was her wedding day, after all. Hers and Hugo's.

Eva would want to be seen at her most beautiful, the way she always was, as showy as this whole wedding.

Hugo had really put himself into it, turning an entire valley outside the city into a wedding venue.

I heard even the dress was custommade, and the diamond on the ring was bigger than a doorknob… Two hundred and something thousand? Or over a million? I couldn't keep it straight.

A lot of zeros. I'd never been near money like that. I only ever heard about it from other people. Nobody had invited me to this wedding. All I could do was stand outside.

And watch the fireworks go up in there. At least it was easy to find pictures of them. All I had to do was open Instagram. A perfect match. They were happy.

I was the only one who couldn't accept it.

People were placing bets in the comments. [Think Meredith is going to show?] [My money's on yes!] [Is that even a question?] [Everybody knows Meredith is out of her mind over Hugo.

She knew he was her own sister's fiancé and still wanted to be the other woman.

Spent a solid year trying to steal him.] [Where's the suspense in this bet?] [There isn't any!] [Fine, then bet on this. Does Hugo leave with Meredith?

You don't see women that bold every day.] [My money's on no. One of them is the real Kastner daughter.

The other is a bastard that family stopped caring about a long time ago.] [Obviously not!

Anybody with eyes can see how much Hugo can't stand Meredith.] [So if Meredith shows up, she's just asking to be humiliated?] [Hahahahahaha.] [She's the punchline, I guess…] The thread kept going, but I'd lost interest.

I dropped my phone back in my bag and finished the last spoonful of soup. I'd wasted too long on Hugo. It was time to go.

I was about to toss the takeout container in a trash can when a sixyearold boy popped up out of nowhere and asked me, "Miss, is that soup good?" It stopped me for a second.

I hadn't expected that saying goodbye to Hugo would look exactly like the day I met him. The goodbye and the first day, laid one on top of the other.

That day I was sitting on the front steps of the school, eating soup. Hugo, seventeen years old, walked past, then doubled back. He asked me, "That soup smells great.

How is it?" I didn't turn around. I just pointed across the street at the shop. "That place right there. Go buy some and find out." Hugo gave a shy little laugh.

He started to say something else. A student walking by cut him off with a sneer. "What can Hugo afford? He's the grandson of that trash lady out front who picks up cans.

Take my advice, don't talk to him. He reeks of garbage." What garbage? All I could smell was that soup. My mom always said you share good things with your classmates.

So I went big about it. "There are two beef meatballs left in here, the best ones. They're yours." I pushed the container into Hugo's hands.

Then I stood up and grabbed that student by the collar. Chapter 2 "No garbage here! What I smell is bullying! Name and homeroom, right now.

I'm on student council, and I am reporting this." Memory skips the parts that don't matter. I can't remember what the school did with that kid.

What I remember is turning back to look at Hugo. He was nothing but bones, wrapped in an old jacket that was obviously several sizes too big for him.

He had a fine, cleancut face, but there was no flesh on his cheeks, and it cost him some of his looks for nothing. Nothing like the Langford son he is now, moneyed and striking.

But I liked him better then. The boy wouldn't bend. He kept his back straight and said, "No thanks." I patted his shoulder. "I can't finish it anyway, and pouring it out is a waste.

Do me a favor." That was when Hugo went red and agreed to try it. He'd have been better off not trying it. One taste.

And that container of meatball soup became his favorite food for the rest of his life. No. I left something out. His favorite food before he lost his memory. He has money now.

Cheap hot food out of a corner shop is beneath him. I still love it, though. And a kid drawn over by the smell might love it too. I crouched down to tell the boy where the shop was.

But a soft little hand brushed my cheek. He asked me, "Miss, why are you crying? Did I say something wrong?" He hadn't. I was just living in the past. Which is bound to hurt.

The tears finally got wiped away. The boy said his grandma was out collecting cans, so he could play out here as long as he wanted.

He dug out everything he had, twentyfour dollars and fifty cents, and looked up at me with bright eyes. "Miss, what you're eating smells so good.

I want to buy some for my grandma to try…" Plenty of places sell meatball soup. But Hugo and I never found one better than the shop across from the school.

Even the smell was stronger there. We used to drive half the city for it. Then Hugo got in a car accident and forgot me.

I couldn't face the place by myself, so all I did was order delivery. Every time it got bad. I'd order a container filled to the top. Full enough, and it stopped hurting.

I did that for a year. I was going to order one for the boy too, but he pulled a crumpled ten out of his pile and held it out to me. "Miss, can you take me there?

I want to remember where the shop is." I still made him call his grandma first and tell her exactly where he was going.

Then I drove him to that row of little shops across from the school. A year, it turned out. Even here, a year could change that much.

The pizza place next door had switched to fried chicken. The little diner we used to hit now and then had moved out. Only that one shop was still there.

And so was the old woman in it. Her hair had gone grayer. She saw me, pushed her reading glasses up, and started to ask what I wanted.

Then it clicked, and she lit up. "Honey, you're back!

Where's that boy who always came in with you?" She laughed before I could answer, and packed a container to the top, the way Hugo and I had always ordered it. "You two haven't been in for ages.

I thought you'd grown up and gone off my old pot of soup," she said while she worked. "She likes it," the boy jumped in for me. "She just had a big one." The old woman nodded, still ladling. "Too far to come, so you've been ordering delivery, haven't you? "Makes sense.

You young people work so much. Getting out here isn't easy. "Let me put a few extra in for you. A few extra for him too…" She always did like to give you more than you paid for.

Chapter 3 She packed the container solid. Back then I always bought more than I could finish, so I'd hand it off to Hugo. "I can't do any more.

It's yours." Hugo would finish it, then go behind my back and prepay the old woman for my next soup.

He barely had a dollar to his name and he was still afraid of taking advantage of me. I never did understand how his head worked.

In the end I ran out of options and just put three hundred dollars on account with her.

I pushed sandwiches, deli food, snacks, and soup at Hugo, and somehow took him from six feet and barely a hundred and ten pounds all the way up to a hundred and fiftyfive.

I fed him until those good looks finally filled out, and somebody else got the benefit. If I'd known, I wouldn't have bothered.

But if I hadn't fed him back then, I was honestly afraid he would starve to death at school. Still.

From the day we got together after graduation to the accident at twentyfive, I had Hugo to myself for seven years. I didn't come out behind.

The old woman was still dropping extras into the container, talking to herself about the old days. "I remember your graduation day.

That boy asked you out right here in my shop…" She was right. Hugo was the one who asked first.

On graduation day, Hugo texted me. [Meredith, I'm waiting for you at the shop across from school.] I rushed over and found a bouquet of roses.

A big container of meatball soup, filled almost to overflowing. And Hugo, nervous all over his face.

Even his voice shook. "Merry, would you… would you be my girlfriend?" But Hugo forgot… Forgot how seriously he meant what he promised me then. "I'll work hard.

Merry is never going to have it rough again." Love too full. Full enough to spill over.

You always forget the old line about how the brightest flames burn out the fastest… The old woman was still going. "Eat up, both of you are still growing." We were twentysix.

Old enough to get married and have children of our own. Not growing anymore. And Hugo was marrying somebody else. Something came up in my throat and stuck there.

So I just nodded and said, "Okay." Never mind. There was no reason for her to know. I drove the boy back to the blocks where his grandma collected cans.

He held a beef meatball up to my mouth. "You have some too." I shook my head and turned it down. "I'm sick of it. I'm done eating it." Both of us forgetting.

Better than only one of us remembering. I went back to ordinary workdays.

In Portland, there was no avoiding the talk about the Langford and Kastner wedding. "A whole valley of flowers.

The florist who landed that job can retire tonight." "They're not that hard up." "The groom really went all out, though.

You can tell it's real love." "This world is one giant romance novel. That girl is the heroine.

Born lucky, born into a family like that, and then she gets a husband who actually means it.

The rest of us, clocking in for under a hundred grand a year, we just get to be the crowd blowing up in the comments." I pretended to be buried in work.

I didn't want any part of it. It found me anyway. "Did you guys see the pictures? The Kastner daughter looks so much like Meredith in our department." "Really?

Let me see." "Whoa." "Holy shit. She really does." "Same face, different luck." Of course she looks like me. Half our chromosomes came from the same man.

The news had been smothered inside a small circle, and my coworkers had no idea. They marveled.

They pushed the phone in front of my face, waiting for me to gasp too, or to pass judgment on how unfair fate is. I just smiled. Chapter 4 "Plenty of people look alike.

The guy who runs the taco place downstairs looks a lot like Chris Evans." The subject moved on and my coworkers lit up. "Seriously?

I'm going down there after work." Footsteps and a small cough came in under the laughing. The boss. Everyone went straight back to their desks. Work.

We had the work in front of us, plus whatever blew up out of nowhere. There was a meeting at six, which meant I had to be finished by five. I worked a long stretch, then looked up.

The sun had dropped west and pulled every shadow outside the window long. Traffic ran thick through the city, and the crowd on the sidewalk below looked different every day.

I sat there for a while without doing anything, with a hollow, unsettled feeling. Giving up the chase after Hugo hadn't hurt the way I thought it would.

Maybe I was just too stubborn when I was young. You decide on one person and you assume it's for life. In the end you find out nothing lasts forever. Vows included.

Back when we were in love hard enough for everyone to see, Hugo swore to me: "Merry, if I ever fail you, let me end up alone for the rest of my life, with nobody to lean on." It didn't take.

Now he has a fortune and a beautiful woman on his arm. Power and money, both. The gap between us sat on my chest until I couldn't breathe. Even wanting revenge.

Said out loud, it sounded like a joke. All I could do was pretend we'd never met, never loved each other. And certainly nothing that could be called betrayal.

Force myself to forget.

Forget the way Hugo looked at me after the accident, after the Langfords took him back, when I came rushing to his hospital room in a panic and he watched me from the bed with cold eyes.

He cut off whatever worried thing I was saying. His voice was as cold as his face. "I'm sorry.

I don't have any memory of what you're describing." I wanted to prove it, and then his last line shut me down. "And I don't think I'd have gone for a bastard." Memory is the punishment for people who can't let go.

Remembering hurts too much. Lying to yourself that it never happened. That hurts less. But you can't forget what happened.

Countless nights I came up out of a dream thinking about Hugo and Eva, wrapped around each other with nothing in between, and my heart would wring itself out.

I couldn't tell you whether it was more grief or more anger. It jammed in my chest. I couldn't swallow it down. It hurt enough to keep me turning over. And turning over, all night.

But I didn't go to the Kastners, and I didn't go to Hugo.

I just got through six months of it, until the pain thinned out enough that I could live an ordinary day like nothing had happened.

That day my coworkers were headed downstairs for tacos at that little place, still hoping for a look at the owner who resembled Chris Evans. We'd just reached the street.

And I caught the smell of meatball soup. I expected it to hurt. Instead my first thought was: good, the old woman must still be in decent shape, still behind her counter.

We kept walking. Then a man's voice came from behind us. Something familiar in it. "That smell. I feel like I've smelled it somewhere before." I froze