Detours

• Acknowledgements
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• About the Author
  
• Coming soon from Blue Feather Books:
  
• Praise for Jane’s Previous Novels
  

This book is dedicated to Joseph Anthony Grillo. Thank you, Joey, for teaching me to see the beauty in life’s detours.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, locales and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Detours

Copyright © 2009 by Jane Vollbrecht

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, save for brief quotations used in critical articles or reviews.

Cover design by Ann Phillips

A Blue Feather Book

Published by Blue Feather Books, Ltd.

www.bluefeatherbooks.com

ISBN: 978-0-9822858-1-7

First edition: July, 2009

Printed in the United States of America and in the United Kingdom.

To my wonderful friends, Jane and Jerry, thank you for sharing your son with me and letting me be part of his life. Your candor in answering all my questions about caring for a child with special needs showed me time and again that, like our boy Joey, the two of you are truly special people.

To Lori L. Lake, a great big uff da, yah that was a heckuva deal, you betcha (that’s Minnesota speak) for coming out of editorial retirement to work on this manuscript with me. I’m fortunate to have in you a supportive friend, creative colleague, and literary giant all rolled up in one. Thank you for all you did to improve the book, despite my carping and occasionally obstreperous obsequiousness.

Nann Dunne—you continue to amaze me. You not only found every typographical error and grammatical misstep, you saw deep into the forest of the storyline and identified each tree that needed pruning as well as those that needed to be chopped out altogether. Your line-by-line edit of this book leaves me eternally in your debt.

Ann Phillips, you created the perfect cover. Thank you for your patience and for giving my book the benefit of your creative talents.

To Kathleen, the woman who shares my home and my life, thank you for all the help with the animals that own us so that I could have the precious extra minutes I needed to chase these words across the page. The fur kids might not understand and acknowledge your commitment to the cause, but I do.

My sister Kathy and my brothers Paul and Tony—you’ve had to contend with some serious detours of your own of late. Nonetheless, you make time to cheer your kid sister on. I’m grateful to you for all your support through the years.

And lastly, to the human dynamo and kayaker extraordinaire, Emily Reed, I offer my most sincere, heartfelt gratitude. You are my mentor, my business partner, my publisher, and my dear friend. A few words here cannot begin to capture all of the ways I am enriched by your presence in my life. Thank you for making me part of the Blue Feather family. It’s an honor to be in your company.

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”

—John Lennon

Ellis slapped the steering wheel. “I forgot how crowded the roads are the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I should have allowed myself more time to get there.”

Traffic had been stopped for several minutes. She left her Toyota Tundra and made her way up the roadway on foot. Twenty vehicles ahead, she looked knowingly at a rainbow-colored cat decal affixed to the rear window of a forest green Xterra and she stopped beside the driver’s door. A lanky woman with a cell phone against her ear leaned against the front bumper and hood. Looking past her, Ellis could see the long line of stopped vehicles snaked around the next curve in LaVista Road.

The woman snapped the phone shut and sashayed the few paces back to where Ellis stood. Ellis yanked off her Atlanta Braves baseball cap and pulled her hair back from her forehead. “What happened up there? Did Santa flip his sleigh?”

The woman shook her head. “Nothing quite that dramatic. I called a friend who lives about a half mile up the road. She said the driver of a beer truck misjudged the corner at Oak Grove. He rolled his gooseneck trailer and dumped half his load of Budweiser all over the roadway. The police called in a couple of tow trucks and a crane to get the rig back on its wheels. She said they’ve got everything blocked off in both directions down there.”

“Lovely.” Ellis twisted her wristwatch and checked the time. “I’m already an hour behind schedule.” She kicked the pavement beside the left front tire of the Xterra in frustration. “I’m supposed to be trimming holly bushes at a house on Ponderosa Lane.”

“If you’ve got Ben Cartwright’s number, you can use my phone to call and explain.” With a grin, she extended the phone toward Ellis.

“It’s not quite that simple to reach my modern-day
Bonanza
guy. If I could solve this with a phone call, I’d use my own cell and take care of it.” Ellis tugged her phone off the clip on her belt, then tucked it back in its holder. “The owner is at the spa this morning having an exfoliation and heaven only knows what else. He told me he would be—and this is his word—incommunicado—until at least two this afternoon.”

“But he’s in a hurry for you to get to his house?”

“He’s hosting a huge party tonight to—his words, again—inaugurate the most festive season of the year, and he wanted me to do a buff and polish on all the shrubs out front.” Ellis flung an imaginary boa around her shoulder. “Why is it that every gay man figures every other gay man takes notes about how the front yard looks on their way in from the curb?”

“Umm… because they do?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re probably right.” Ellis tugged at her cap again. “I’ve pretty much closed up shop for the season, but Fredrick is such a loyal customer, I agreed to do this as a favor for him.”

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

Ellis glanced at her watch once more. “How long have you been sitting here?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes, maybe. Good thing Atlanta has mild weather in November. This would be a real pain in the butt if we were stuck someplace cold.” She looked up and down the road at the assortment of drivers who had exited their vehicles and were making conversation with one another. “At least drivers here know how to make a gabfest out of a traffic tie-up.”

She made a sweeping motion toward the edge of the road. “Pull up a curb and sit awhile. It doesn’t look like we’ll be going anywhere anytime soon.”

Ellis was about to decline the invitation. If she went back to her truck, maybe she could convince the cars that had her boxed in to jockey enough that she could maneuver out of the traffic jam and find some other way to get to the landscaping job on Ponderosa Lane. Before she could speak, the woman continued.

“By the way, my name’s Mary… well, people call me Mary, but my full name is MaryChris.” She pocketed her phone and offered her hand. “MaryChris. My last name’s Moss.”

Ellis accepted the handshake. “Nice to meet you, MaryChris Moss.”

“It’s a little early, but Merry Christmas to you, too.”

Ellis groaned. “I can’t believe I fell for that.”

“I wish I were joking. Swear to the goddesses, that’s my real name.”

“Right, and I’m Rhonda Korner.”

“No, really. My dad was king of the punsters. I was born on December twenty-fifth, and he couldn’t resist.” Mary reached into her hip pocket and unfolded a small stack of bills. She extracted her driver’s license and handed it to Ellis. “See?”

Ellis gave the license a cursory examination. “I’ll be darned.” She passed it back to Mary.

“So now you know my name, my address, and my birthday. All I know about you is you trim bushes and like the Braves.” Mary pointed at the baseball cap on Ellis’s head and flashed a captivating smile.

“Even though you didn’t bite when I told you I’m Rhonda Korner, I’m tempted to tell you my name is Terry Dactul or maybe Sarah Bellum, but if you ask for proof, you’d know I was lying,” Ellis said.

“I’d have thought Lon Moore or Wendy Boughbreaks would be better choices, given your line of work.” Mary eased herself into a casual pose, leaning on the fender.

“Sorry to say that my parents weren’t very creative with my name, not that it would have been an easy thing for them to do.”

“So what’s your name?”

“Most of my friends call me Ellis.”

“Alice?”

“No, Ellis.”

“Okay. Got it. Ellis. Is that your first name or your last name?”

Ellis laughed lightly. “Neither, but you’d think it might be, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“So what’s your name?”

“You don’t really want to know.”

“Of course I do. I asked, didn’t I? It can’t be that bad.”

“Okay, but remember, you asked for it.” Ellis made a show of taking in a really deep breath. “Gretchen Alina VanStantvoordt.”

“What?” Mary cocked her head.

Ellis repeated her name and then spelled it. “It’s Dutch. Or Flemish. At a minimum, it’s a mouthful. That’s why everyone calls me Ellis.”

“I’m sure there must be a story behind that.”

“Yep. The professor in one of my environmental science classes at UGA said my ancestors should have had the immigration people at Ellis Island give them an easier name when they got off the boat.”

“Kind of a cruel thing for him to say.”

“I thought so, too, but then I found out his given name was Wolfgang Schlenvogt, even though he changed it to Rolf Glenn. He was trying to be cute and establish some common ground with me.”

“So he started calling you Ellis?”

“No, my friend Judith was in that class with me, and she thought it was ever so funny to call me Ellis. She and I hung out, and the next thing I knew, everywhere I went, I was Ellis. It stuck with me all through college, and I kinda got used to it, so I kept using it. A lot of my clients only know me by the one name—sort of like Cher or Kobe or Houdini.”