Alex Haley

-3-

Somewhere in Connecticut

“I’m going to fucking puke—”

Our driver stiffens. I turn to the backseat where Nova is folded in half with his head in his lap.

“No you aren’t.”  I don’t mean to snap but my goodwill with him was spent. He just couldn’t listen when I said not to eat gas station sushi for lunch yesterday.

Two miles.

I needed him to make it two miles and not throw up all over the fancy hired car Eloise Washington had been so kind to hire to drive us from Staten Island to our short term rental in Connecticut.  Juliana Clark, our Airbnb host, had been kind enough to extend  check in time but I’m sure she was a busy woman and we'd already kept her waiting around an hour.

The driver nearly breaks the speed limit to get us in front of the bland brick apartments in a residential neighborhood.  It  looked straight out of the 80s but, it would do the job.

Juliana was waiting for us on the sidewalk in leggings and an oversized hoodie. She looks exactly like her photo on Airbnb.

I hadn’t put together she was the woman from the cult / Hurricane Katrina episode of American Public Radio until Nova Googled her. I loved found family stories and I always got excited when they played her episode in reruns so I could hear updates on her life.

The minute the driver cuts the engine I run around to the trunk and take out Luce’s chair and then rush  to meet Juliana on the sidewalk.  She was smiling so patiently.

“Hi, I’m so sorry we’re late. My son is not feeling—”

“Nova, get out of the car,” Luce barks from where he was still inside the car.  I give Juliana an apologetic look and quickly help Luce out of the car. Nova was still curled up  in his seat and the driver looked ready to bolt. He'd taken out all our luggage in record time.

“Nova, sweetheart, get out of the car,” I say it a little too treacly but I didn’t want to start a shouting match in front of these nice people.  “You can lie down inside, baby.”

“No. I’m just going to die in here,” he whines.

“Nov--”

“Leave me alone--”

“Nova.” I keep my voice low. He was still  pissed at me for accusing him of being hungover instead of having food poisoning when his symptoms started the other day.

It wasn’t my greatest moment.

I crawl into the backseat and grab his arm to drag him across the seat. He groans and protests and  I fold his body into a recovery position, pick him up and, to Luce’s utter annoyance,  deposit him safely in Luce’s lap.

He thought I babied Nova too much but this was not me babying Nova, this was me trying to get us all in checked into the Airbnb and not bother Juliana anymore.

“Lex, he can fucking stand—”

“I’m going to puke—”

“Don’t you dare—”

“Shut up. Stop it,” I hiss. Juliana had wandered away and was now standing by the entrance with the door open.  I turn and walk  towards her with an extended hand. “Sorry, again. I’m Haley, I don’t think I introduced myself.”

“Juliana,” she says warmly.

I turn to see Luce awkwardly switching between his dominant  and non-dominant hand to roll forward while holding Nova in his lap.

Juliana searches through her monogrammed purse in that way I’d always been kind of jealous of women for getting to do. She pulls out a travel size Pepto-Bismol. I shouldn’t have expected less from a mom with 5 kids. I almost say this but I’m not sure she knows I know  she is from the APR episode.

Luce catches up to us and the moment we are all securely inside Nova runs to the bathroom and starts throwing up.

I start towards the bathroom to check on him and he slams the door in my face.

“I really thought the worst of it was yesterd—” Before I can finish he opens the door. He’s holding his stomach and looks so pathetic that I feel awful. “Come on,  let’s find some place for you to lie down—”

“I got it,” Luce takes over. He guides Nova to the bedroom with the full-sized bed, leaving me alone to go over everything with Juliana.

“I can do this really quickly,” Juliana says. She gives me a tour of the apartment and instructions on  how to use the security system and air conditioning. The apartment was technically handicap accessible, as advertised, because of the parking and ramp they’d installed for her elderly father who had been handling the Airbnb before she moved here.

 But nothing else was actually wheelchair accessible. Luce wouldn't be able to reach anything in the kitchen and I could tell his chair wouldn’t fit in the bathroom. We could buy guard rails for the toilet but the shower was in the steep bathtub that was one big falling risk.

The bedrooms have locks which is intensely interesting to me. She explains they installed them because groups of college kids rented the Airbnb to attend football games and wanted to keep their stuff secure.

We walk around back where she shows me how  to use the laundry rooms and when we get back in the apartment Luce is sitting  in the living room surrounded by all our crap the driver brought in.

“Kid’s knocked out,” Luce says. The door of the room Nova had gone into was shut.  “Where’s the nearest corner store ? I’ll get him a ginger ale.”

Juliana shakes her head softly. “All the stores are in the shopping center up the parkway. There’s a gas station nearby I can drive you to if you need--”

“I thought this was near the city ?,” Luce is talking to me to but Juliana answers cautiously.

“It is. The bus stop around the corner goes into downtown but it’s mostly businesses and dining… I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear. If you need anything for the apartment my son or I can  get it.”

“No. This is great. We can make it work,” I tell her. I knew this wasn’t the city like we were used to it. Luce could call a car if he needed to go somewhere.

“Okay, well you have my cell,” she smiles. “Enjoy your stay.”

She heads for the door and I consider not saying anything at all but I can’t help it.

“I just want to say, I love your story on APR ,” I blurt out at the same time she turns back and says. “Um, we  do background checks and I happened to see—"

We stop short at the same time.

“Sorry ?,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

I try to sound casual and not at all like a total stalker. “I was just saying  your APR is one of my favorites. It was…so well told.”

“Oh, are they still playing it ?” she says, a little bit shyly. I knew they recorded it in 2006 and didn’t play it until Rocket’s book came out in 2009. “The producers haven’t called me for a family update in a few years.”

“I—I saw a lot of myself in it.”

She nodded. I’m sure she heard that a lot.

“Well…I was just going to tell you, my dad’s wife likes to do a simple background search on our guests--”

I blanche a little because the only thing on my criminal record  was a single prostitution charge from 25 years ago. Nothing else showed up when you searched for me except—

“I saw the social media stories—”             

“I was in adult entertainment but…some of the other stuff that came out  isn’t true.”

“I figured,” she says and bites her lip. “I-I- just…I’m sorry that happened to you. Believe me…I…um…well, I did some regrettable things on the internet at 18 that got outed against my wishes.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I tell her. “That sucks.”

“That Pumpkin Patch shit ?,” Luce says and Juliana’ goes stiff.

“Luce,” I chastise him, even though I don’t know what he’s talking about.  It’s clearly upset her.

“I remember it. Is that what you’re talking about ?,” Luce continues.

Her gaze falls to the floor and she shakes her head. “I...I’d just left the commune and met this man who exploited me…anyway someone connected it to me years ago when Rocket first started reporting her story. They put it on a Topix website and now the website comes up every now and then when you search me or Rhett…I get sick at the thought my kids are going to find it by mistake.”

Only my husband would forget our anniversary but still remember a porn website he’d probably seen 20 years ago

“That Brad guy always seemed like an idiot. Sue the motherfucker,” Luce tells her. “All it takes is a threat to make idiots like him back down. He can’t be making money off it still.”

“He tried to take it down for me but he can’t,” she explains. “He sold the site to some big conglomerate years ago and can’t get anyone to answer his e-mails about taking it down.”

I catch Luce’s eye and raise my eyebrows. “Cybersmash Studios ?”

She looks up. “How did you know ?”

“They brought every porn site in the 90s and 2000s ,” I turn to Luce. “Didn’t you help them set up their servers when they bought Virtue ?”

“Yeah, but I doubt I can do anything now.”

“Try.” I take his laptop out of  the bag and put it in his lap.

He opens his laptop and starts typing. Juliana looks visibly shaken at having to talk about this. It’s how I got when people brought up Maxwell and I together.

“You have five kids right ?,” I ask to distract her. Mothers loved talking about their kids.

“Six,” she smiles. “My husband and I took in our goddaughter as a foster daughter.”

“Six, holy shit. I can’t imagine.”

“We make it work. The older two are pretty independent and the 16-month-old has been the easiest baby ever.”

“Aww, I love that age when their walking around on those little legs.”

“She’s the only one of mine who doesn’t run away in the supermarket,” Juliana laughs softly and she seems to loosen up. “That reminds me, you said in your messages you were looking for specialist referrals. Rhett’s physical therapist is military only but she gave him some referrals.”

“Thank you, that’s right your husband is disabled too.” I remembered one of the latest APR updates that said Rhett Clark was recovering from an accident where he’d been slammed against a helicopter and shattered his hip. “We have a freakish amount in common. How is he ?”

She smiles nervously. “Good, the accident was almost 5 years ago now.  It was hard seeing him needing so much help but his nurses and physical therapists were a godsend—”

“Luce’s too.” This woman totally got me. “When Luce got hurt I  tried to be his caregiver and you know how it goes—”

She nods. “I do. I left the older kids with family and my youngest Peyton, and I moved to Alaska  and everything to help take care of Rhett—”

“Wow—"

“ But he never let me do anything. He wanted to do it himself.  He  did therapy 6 hours a day and weaned himself off the pain pills. The staff said it would take him a year to walk again and he was doing it in 9 months. They were so impressed…We spent so much time together celebrating all his milestones. It was an awful accident but…something like that builds your marriage, I think.”

Luce is too busy typing to pay attention to our conversation.

 I smile and nod even though I feel a small bite of envy. I knew Luce’s problems had been more severe but his depression and refusal to participate in recovery had broken us up and there were days I wished he'd never had the strok—

“Got it,” Luce says. He’s smiling a little. “Fucking sloppy. They haven’t changed the fucking passwords in 20 years.”

He turns the computer to show a website showing a 404 error. “I deleted  all the references to it so any embedded videos should be corrupted. I don’t think it was downloaded, the coding was too crude, it would have…”

He says  more computer stuff I’m too pretty to understand.

Juliana's hands go to her face and her body starts quivering. On instinct I put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her while she holds back tears. “I was so humiliated…I… I wanted that website down for 20 years and I can’t believe you just—you don't understand. This feels like a blessing that you took this apartment.”

She hides her smile behind her hand and seems a little embarrassed by how emotional she just got. “I can’t thank you enough. I’m changing the rate. You can have the Airbnb for free. For as long as you need.”

“No, we couldn’t,” I tell her. “It was literally his pleasure to hack into the internet—”

“I didn’t hack into the—"

“Can I take you all out to dinner ?”

I shake my head even though I wanted to have several martinis with her and hear all about the cult. But it wouldn’t be right. “Don’t feel like you have to give us—”

“Brunch then,” she offers. “Please. Let me take you out to brunch. There’s a well priced buffet downtown and my  husband gets a military discount. Our sons could meet.”

I look at Luce who lifts a shoulder in indifference. Granted, any goodwill she had toward us would immediately evaporate when she met a non-sick Nova and he taught her son how to free base cocaine or something.

But I really wanted to talk to her again. “Okay, it’s a date.”

---

A/N

When I wrote So We Meet I had kind of head-cannoned that the reason Juliana and Haley clicked is because Lucely were able to get the website down for Juliana but Mason doesn't know about the website so it's not in the serial.

My last part of this extended epilogue (still in WIP form) is vaguely vaguely  based on this line from Night Out:

"I’d let it slip to her that Luce and I had a kinky side when I accidentally got drunk  at their 4th of July cook out because Nova didn't feel the need to tell me White Claws and LaCroix were not the same thing."