Leave The City (Book 8 of Adopted by the Josephs)

13. Brendon

Samantha was back to her old self by Friday. Her colour returned and her cheeks stopped being so red. We took it pretty easy over the weekend. A couple of Sam's friends came over. They hadn't realized who she was staying with and her friend Brandi was speechless at first. I overheard her talking to Sam while they sat out by the pool.

"Your uncle is Brendon Urie?!" Brandi exclaimed.

"Honorary. But yeah. He's friends with my dad and Josh."

"That is so cool. Do you get to go to concerts for free?"

"Well, my dad's, obviously," Sam said. "And I guess we've gone to a couple concerts on invites."

"So cool. Are you going to get into music?"

"I don't know," Sam said. "Part of me wants to go into psychology or social work. But I like some of the technical stuff like sound design."

"But you're such an amazing singer. And you play the piano so well," Carli, her other friend, said.

I saw Sam blush. She doesn't take compliments very well. Sam doesn't like a lot of attention drawn to her. Probably because she spent so much of her life trying to be small and invisible hoping her birth father would leave her alone.

Sarah and I listened to the kids for a little while. I saw her standing at the kitchen window listening and watching Sam and her friends. She was smiling. It was a wistful smile.

"You alright, wifey?" I asked, putting my arms around her.

"I am," she smiled. "I'm just remembering when Jessica's friends would come over and they'd hang out by the pool, even when she was too sick and stopped being able to speak. It's nice to have young voices around again."

I hugged her a little tighter.

"Are you sorry we allowed Sam to come for her senior year?" I asked.

Sarah turned around and looked me square in the eyes.

"No. Absolutely not. I love Samantha and I know she needed this break from Ohio and everything that happened. I will absolutely never regret Samantha being here. I miss Jess. Of course I do. She was our daughter. We got four years with her. We've had five with Samantha and we get her full time, pretty much, for a year.

You know, in a lot of ways she reminds me of Jess," she smiled. It was a wistful but happy smile.

"The first morning she was here, when she made us breakfast? When I came downstairs and saw her in the kitchen, her back was turned and for just a second, I thought she was Jess," I said.

Sarah hugged me and cuddled into me.

"You were a great dad to Jess. And you're a wonderful uncle to Samantha. We're very lucky to have her in our lives."

I couldn't help but agree.

I grabbed a bunch of sodas out of the fridge for the kids and put them on a tray with some Solo cups.

"You guys thirsty?" I asked, going outside.

"Thank you, uh, Mr. Urie," Brandi said.

"You can call me Brendon," I smiled at her. She blushed. I chuckled.  Samantha was giggling behind her hand. I winked at her.

"You guys want some music? I can bring a speaker out."

"Sure," Samantha said. "Thanks, Uncle B."

I smiled and went into my studio to grab one of my portable speakers with Bluetooth so they could play music off Spotify or whatever.