Stay At Home Dead Read Online Free

...”
    I stood. “Get up now.”
    Billy pushed himself off the sofa.
    I stepped in front of him, my back to my wife and daughter. “You ever talk to my daughter like that again, I will hit you in the mouth, Billy.” I made sure my voice was low enough that Carly couldn’t hear. “And even if you don’t, I may just hit you, anyway, because it would make me happy. Take those ridiculous boots and get out of my house.”
    Billy hesitated for a moment, and I stepped in a little closer. He never got over me shooting by him in high school on the growth chart. Over the years, I’d come to realize that that was one of the reasons he hated me. There were plenty of others, but that was one of them. Silly, but true.
    Billy cleared his throat, tried to smile, but it came off more like he’d swallowed a tack. “I’ll let myself out.”
    I followed him to the door and watched him go down the walk to his car. He stepped in and drove away.
    “What are you looking at?” Julianne asked after a moment.
    I turned around. “Thought I saw a lizard in the bushes wave good-bye to his boots.”

6
    Carly, like always, quickly forgot about Billy’s reprimand and after a bath and bedtime story was snoring before I left her room. I, of course, wouldn’t ever forget it and knew I’d still be pissed off for days.
    Julianne was downstairs in our room, wearing a Longhorns T-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts, working a piece of dental floss through her teeth.
    She stopped for a second and pointed a finger at me. “Thought you were going to hit him.”
    I stripped off my T-shirt. “I should’ve hit him.”
    “Maybe. Blood would clash with the ... everything, though.”
    I grunted and went into the bathroom, washed my face, pulled off my jeans, and fell into bed in my boxers. I grabbed the latest issue of Sports Illustrated off the nightstand and paged through it.
    “Tough to read when you’re using the pages as a fan,” Julianne said, sliding into her side of the bed.
    I grunted again.
    “Speak, caveman.”
    I set the magazine down. “There are days that I despise living here.”
    Julianne smiled a perfectly flossed smile. “Wednesdays and Thursdays for me. Rest of the week I don’t mind it.”
    “Come on, Jules.”
    “Sorry. Continue.”
    She was slipping into her attorney speak, but I let it slide. “It just gets old. The past never goes away, and that’s all anybody ever cares about.”
    “Yeah, but that’s part of the charm, too, isn’t it?”
    “I don’t know that it is anymore, Jules.”
    She propped herself up with her elbow on her pillow. “You had a bad day, Deuce. But all of this is just silly. Billy can bluster all he wants about suing, but he’s got a handful of nothing, okay?”
    “I’m not worried about Billy,” I said, fibbing just a bit. “I’m worried about Carly.”
    “Carly?”
    I looked at my wife. “I’m not sure I want her growing up in a place like this. A place that won’t ever let her move forward. Is that fair to her?”
    Julianne placed a hand on my arm. “This is where we grew up. It’s where we live. It’s home. One bad day doesn’t change that.”
    I shook my head. Truth was, I’d been thinking a lot lately about raising Carly in a small town where everyone would know her every move. There was no anonymity available to her. And like it or not, having Julianne and me as her parents wouldn’t make it any easier. Her stay-at-home dad was still talked about as one of the best athletes Rose Petal had ever seen. And while her mother was one of the most successful people in town, she was also remembered as Rose Petal Queen of 1989.
    Was it fair to impose our past on our daughter? Create absurd standards that had nothing to do with anything?
    I wasn’t sure.
    Julianne leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Carly is going to be a wonderful person wherever she’s raised. Her mother is beautiful and her father is ... What are you again?”
    I tried to look irritated, but it faded