#sam weseman

“Hey, Lee!”

“Hey! Mornin’ Kate.”

Then the teenaged boy turned to the sight he was waiting for since he woke up that morning. “There they are!”

Through panted breath Jo Payne was so excited to tell him, “We literally ran all the way here!”

Lee opened his arms and cheered, “It’s the home stretch! Don’t stop now!”

“Stop pullin’!” her bitter sister Hannah complained.

The second Jo let go of her sister’s hand, Lee swooped her up in his arms. “I missed you!”

The young couple yearned to be physically close to each other at all times, it didn’t matter that they kept in constant communication by spending most nights talking on the phone. As soon as they were apart, he missed her touch, her warmth, her breath, the sparkle in her eye when they looked at each other — all of it! Everything was only right in the world when they were together, and Jo matched Lee’s intense feelings with happy and hearty laughter she reserved just for him as he tightly squeezed her small frame.

But Hannah winced at the embarrassing sight: “Blech!”

Still in Lee’s unyielding embrace, Jo gracefully lifted a foot to spin around and face the street. “Hi Kate! You ready?”

She answered cheerfully “Yep!” on her short jog across the street to meet them.

Poor Hannah could barely keep her breakfast down at this point. Would this disturbing display of teenage PDA never end?

“Hangin’ in there?” Kate asked Hannah with a grin.

“Why do they have to touch like that? It’s gross.”

“Yeah,” Kate chuckled, “it is.”

Then Lee joked, “Come along, little children; Mom and Dad are taking you both to school now.” Jo laughed along with him.

Hannah Payne still didn’t get it. Why was her blonde hair, blue-eyed Daddy Sam no good, but her sister’s gross goth boyfriend a saint? It wasn’t as though she didn’t like Lee exactly; she didn’t forget how he rescued them in the park on her complete failure of a birthday, or how his jokes on that dark night dried her tears. But the young girl hung back on their walk to school that morning as she futilely tried to reach an answer to a question far beyond her: the difference between good and bad men.

She didn’t hear Jo whisper to Lee, “Is she alright back there?” Hannah also missed Lee’s quick peek over Jo’s shoulder and his whisper back, “A little sad maybe, but she’s here.”

Sam Weseman was the first and last person to mourn his grifting father Frank Wesemann when he failed to survive the flu epidemic like so many others.

Sammy and Frankie W. were close, they had a lot of fun narrowly escaping consequences together over the years. But as much as Sam looked up to his father, he also believed he could improve Frank’s old ideas. Sam learned early on that he had to earn his father’s attention and later his respect. Now, standing above Frank’s end, Sam was ready to receive his destined inheritance. City Council voted for the adoption of Sam Jr. Weseman as Whibley’s next interim Business Strategies and Investments Chairman, succeeding Frank Sr. Wesemann. Sam would be working alongside ex-friend Mayor Adam Green, but soon he’d have enough municipal resources to build a network so large and complex that Sam would become untouchable. We only get one life, one chance to win all that life promised us. Sam lit a cigarette.

Sam dragged his sad, sorry feet into his home where he was immediately met with his overly concerned wife. She sighed his name in a breath of relief, as if she didn’t already know who was sulking towards her.

“Sadie called,” she told him, “I heard all about it.” Gauging from her face and eagerness to be close to him now, Sam figured she didn’t know everything perfectly at least.

“Crazy, right?” he agreed vaguely.

“Oh, Sam, it’s just so terrible! A child, with a—! I mean, I knew they were having troubles, but this?”

Then she said, “I’m so proud of you.”

“R-really?” he asked, genuinely hoping she’d admit why for him.

“You stood up to that sleazebag! Sadie told me you really put Adam in his place tonight. I always knew you were a good man; a good husband, a good father — you got a good head on those shoulders, Sam Weseman.”

“Oh yeah?” he pouted.

“Sadie told me she might've never found out if not for you.”

“Huh. Picture that.”

Bonnie was beginning to choke up as she touched his exhausted face. “I’m so lucky to have you.”

“Hey, don’t cry. It’s not like we’re the ones breaking up, right? It’s late, let’s just try to forget all this and go to bed, okay Bun?”

Once she had eyes on him, Cynthia Payne decided she made the right decision to go out tonight after all.

Adam Green nearly choked when she approached him at the bar. “Cynthia?”

Sitting next to him, her low, sweet voice greeted, “Don’t you look merry.”

“Oh yeah, that’s me. Does Sam know you’re here?”

“Relax,” she told him. “Sam’s at home with his family.”

“Oh. Guess it is still Christmas.”

“Only for another couple hours. Buy me a drink?”

“Uh, sure. But, keep it down would’ja? I don’t need anyone else recognizing me here.” He waved his hand to the bartender discretely.

She scoffed at that. “There’s literally no one here, who are you hiding from?”

“I really have to explain it to you? I don’t need voters seeing their mayor look alone and pathetic at a bowling alley bar on Christmas, alright?”

“But you are alone and pathetic at a bar on Christmas, Adam.”

“Shh! I said keep it down.”

“Hmm. You know what? I think this evening calls for champagne, don’t you?”

It was Adam’s turn to scoff now. “What’s there to celebrate?”

She lifted her glass in a toast, “To old acquaintances; may they not be forgot.”

Joanne Payne felt herself naturally attracted to darker, gothier themes in her teen years. It served as a nice contrast from the unbearable superficial happiness that cursed the Payne townhouse.

Her younger sister Hannah didn’t get it. “You don’t like Daddy Sam, but he got you all your new clothes?” It was true: his reckless spending habits sponsored Jo’s new aesthetic.

“Phft—yeah, with Mom’s money,” Jo muttered back. “Look, you don’t know what you’re talking about so just shut up, okay? And don’t call him that, it’s gross.”

“But I like Daddy Sam!” Hannah punctuated her protest with a foot stomp. “He said he’s gonna get me the biggest present for my birthday. He’s so nice! I hate you for being so mean to him!”

Jo knew better than to count on their mother’s greasy boyfriend for anything, but she held her tongue. It was useless talking — or, more accurately, fighting — with her sister on the topic of their pseudo step-father.

Her concerns were doomed to be misunderstood from the start. Jo, now a fumbling teenager with too much hot blood running through her veins, could not maturely articulate the right words so that every time Sam came up it ended in screaming matches and door slams. Pretty soon all of what Jo had to say would be swiftly dismissed by Sam’s two biggest fans: bratty little Hannah, and their hopeless mother Cynthia Payne.

Jo was forced to learn that the painful way was the only way for either of them to understand, because of course when Hannah’s birthday arrived Sam once again did not deliver. But the situation they were in was quickly becoming worse than just broken promises:

He was taking their mother away from them.

The couple returned home extremely too late and equally unsober on Hannah’s birthday. The hush money from Adam Green endorsed Cynthia’s laziness so it didn’t take long before Sam’s nagging about splurging got them both into dangerous indulgences. And now that Jo was old enough to babysit they went out like this a lot.

Jack Parker found Brandon kicking a rock along the pier alone. “B-man! Got a sec?”

“Oh, hey Uncle Jack.”

Jack asked, “What’re you doing out here?”

“I was just walking home, took a bit of a detour I guess. Why? Did Mom call you?”

“No, uh, I’m also on a bit of a detour. Hey, I know this is a weird question but your Mom isn’t pregnant by any chance, is she?”

“What? Gross, no. Pretty sure Mom and Dad are separating, or they should be.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, uhh—never mind.”

The nervous teen followed his uncle’s lead by slouching next to him on a nearby bench. Despite what Jack said, he couldn’t shake the feeling like he was in trouble for something even though Brandon was pretty sure screwing up your first kiss wasn’t illegal. Pretty sure.

Meanwhile, Jack sensed Brandon’s uneasiness and remembered all too well his own teenage drama he had with Gina Marion once. After he learned about the couple’s walk from Kate Rose earlier, Jack safely assumed young Brandon was going through a similar experience. However, Jack was older, wiser and a lot happier now; so, as much as he held sympathy for the sweaty bag of hormones next to him Jack swiftly decided whatever happened between Brandon and Kate was the least of their concerns tonight.

“Brandon, kid, I know this uniform probably ruins what I’m about to say here, but I hope you know you can talk to me. I guess you’re learning our family is a little more than a handful by now, eh?”

“Uhh, yeah, somethin’ like that.”

“What if I told you I heard something about you having a sister?”

“You know about Jo?”

“Joe, huh? Well, not everything — care to fill me in?”

“I-I don’t know. Dad could get in trouble and I don’t know what that means for Mom or Nick.”

“Sam Weseman,” Officer Parker shook his head, “why am I not surprised?”

But Uncle Jack sighed looking out to the water. “Brandon, I gotta be honest with you, kid: I don’t like your father much. I don’t think he treats your Mom, my sister, with respect. I think whatever it is you’re hiding is just the tip of the iceberg with that guy, and these fast and furious types tend to burn out everyone around them before themselves. Do you understand, Brandon? It’s only a matter of time before Sam Weseman gets what’s comin’ to him and when that happens your mother will take his fall the hardest.”

Brandon didn’t dare say anything.

“Look, I get it, but if you did want to fill me in I might be able to help save your Mom a lot of hurt. You don’t want that kind of regret hanging over you, trust me.”

But Brandon knew that the damage was already done and on track to start university in the fall. “I better not. But, uh, thanks anyway, Uncle Jack. Um, I should probably go home now before Mom really does call you. That’d be pretty embarrassing, right?”

The sun had just set and the first dim stars of twilight were beginning to reveal themselves when the teens were loitering at the playground on the verge of a massive discovery.

Jo suddenly stood from the swing, horrified by her own conclusion: “Brandon—your dad is Sam Weseman?”

Ben let go of a fistful of grass and instinctively stood up with Jo without fully knowing why yet, like a dog sensing danger. Lee, who did know better, grimaced involuntarily as he also pieced it together.

But Brandon shrugged off the unfortunate fact slouching against one of the thin metal poles of the swing set. “We share DNA I guess.”

“All this time I only knew you as Brandon W., I didn’t know your last name was Weseman!”

“Yeah, I don’t know, don’t like my last name much so I shorten it when I can. My Grandpa did it a lot too apparently, back in the day: good ol’, crappy ol’, Frankie W.” He chuckled a little to himself.

“But that means—Brandon, I’m pretty sure we have the same dad.”

“What? But what would mean…” He trailed off trying to find the connection everyone else already beat him to, so Kate mumbled the answer out loud for him:

“So you guys are brother and sister then.”

Brandon flinched, “Me and Jo aren’t brother and sister, that’s impossible.”

“Well, half-siblings,” Kate clarified, “but if you share a father, yeah, you and Jo are brother and sister. We learned this stuff in elementary school, remember that old ‘My Family Tree’ project?”

“Huh. Does this mean Jo’s my cousin too?” Ben wondered aloud, who apparently also didn’t do his homework.

Brandon continued to futilely protest, “N-no, we can’t be, because we’re the same age. My Dad would’ve had to—”

“—cheat on your Mom with my Mom.” Jo finished his thought much to everyone’s discomfort, but none more so than her own sinking deeply into her mother’s secondhand shame.

“Or vice versa,” Lee mused. “I mean, no one knows except him, right? Then again, he still would’ve been married to Brandon’s Mom first, so technically speaking—yeah.”

The estranged siblings took a couple timid steps towards each other. It was like they were seeing each other for the first time, neither of them felt fully sure who exactly the other one was anymore.

“Oh my god, we have the same eyes! His eyes!”

“Whooaaaa, you totally dooooo,” Ben gawked.

“I-I can’t believe it. I knew he was a lying piece of shit, and a selfish asshole jerk, but this? Holy fuck you guys.”

Kate tried gently, “You okay, B?”

Her tone, however innocently intended, made Brandon squirm. He wanted to say “Shut up!” for how she carelessly exposed his vulnerable state to their friends like that. To him, just like how the guys beat him to the punch about his father, Kate beat him to his own feelings before he could swallow and hide them.

“Hey, wait. Isn’t this a good thing actually?” Ben asked.

“What?” he panicked at Brandon’s frown. “Our family just got bigger, didn’t it? You gained a sister, man! That’s a good thing!”

In a sudden change of heart, Brandon smiled at Jo and agreed, “Ben’s right.”

He is? Kate’s face said it for her.

“Hell yeah I am! Family sticks together, man!”

“What’d’yah say, Jo? You, uh, wanna be my sister?”

She answered with a shy smile and nodded her head ‘yes.’ Lee spoke for the two of them when he said, “Hope you’re cool with adding one more, me and Jo are a package deal.”

The friends hugged each other for the first time as brother and sister.

In the embrace Brandon smiled at Lee and told them both, “Wouldn’t want it any other way, bro! We couldn’t’ve asked for a cooler couple to join the clan. ‘Sides, I sorta figured you guys for family by now anyway.”

“Right on! That’s the spirit, brother!” Ben cheered. “The more the merrier!”