Stay At Home Dead by Jeffrey Allen Read Free Book Online Page A

mother reached over and smacked my dad in the stomach, and he jerked awake in his chair.
    Carly unclicked her belt as soon as I turned off the van and leapt out the second I opened the door. She scrambled up the stairs.
    “Grammy!” she yelled. “We got a new van! It’s blue!”
    My mother gathered her up and hugged her. “That is a very pretty van.”
    “Vans aren’t pretty,” my father grumbled.
    “And there’s no man in the back,” Carly added.
    “Well, we are glad about that,” my mother said, grinning at me.
    “That another Japanese car?” my father asked, squinting, even though his eyesight was better than mine.
    Carly wiggled out of my mother’s arms and shot inside the house.
    “Doesn’t Ford make a minivan?” my father asked.
    “They do but it sucks,” I said.
    “Watch your mouth,” my mother warned.
    “Yeah,” my dad said. “Chevys suck. Not Fords.”
    She swatted him in the ear. “Knock it off, Eldrick.” She looked at me. “Had quite a day yesterday, we hear.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Does anyone not know?”
    “Hard to keep a dead body quiet in this town,” my father said, still staring at the Toyota. “Especially when it’s a toad like Benny Barnes.”
    “You know anything about him trying to open a new business?” I asked.
    For all the noise he made about leaving Rose Petal, my father was just as entrenched in the town as my mother. For twenty-five years, he had managed Rose Petal Regional Bank and had been one of the town’s movers and shakers. Though he’d retired from the bank two years ago, he still held his seat on the town council, and rarely did anything go on in Rose Petal without his having gotten a whiff of it.
    He shifted his weight in the chair. “The kids thing?”
    “Grammy!” Carly yelled from inside the house.
    “Don’t give him horrific advice,” my mother said to him as she crossed between us. She cut her eyes to me. “Like visiting an old girlfriend right after her husband died.”
    “ She called me, ” I said.
    “Honestly, Deuce,” she said, frowning. “Do more things like that and people will think you’re dumber than your father.” She disappeared into the house.
    My father made a face at her.
    “I saw that,” she called back.
    He shrugged and motioned for me to sit down in the rocker she’d vacated. “What’d you hear?”
    I explained what Shayna had told me.
    “Sounds about right,” he said, nodding his head. “It hadn’t gone very far. That guy Barnabas had made some inquiries about land and zoning but hadn’t gone much further than that. Don’t know what his finances looked like, but I would assume a retarded monkey at the zoo has better credit.”
    “What’s Barnabas like? Shayna said he was fired from the rug store, too.”
    “Sounds about right.” My dad took his index finger and spun it in a circle near his temple. “Nuttier than the retarded monkey. You ever seen him?”
    “Nope.”
    He chuckled. “Well, I won’t spoil that surprise for you. But trust me. If I was gonna go into business with anyone, Odell Barnabas would be in line right behind the last guy I’d want as a partner.”
    Carly’s giggle wafted out from inside the house.
    “What were you doing over at Shayna’s?” my father asked.
    “Being stupid, I guess.”
    “I’d say so. Thank God your taste in women improved once you got outta high school.” He chuckled to himself. “Julianne will like that one.”
    “She won’t care. You know that.”
    “Don’t be upsetting my Julianne. Might disown you.”
    I was lucky. Julianne and my parents got along better than I did with my parents. I think they were shocked that someone who had so much going for her would choose to marry me. Not that I hadn’t shared those same thoughts, but they liked to voice it every so often, more to goose me than anything else. But I think even they were still a little uneasy with Julianne being the breadwinner in the family while I took care of Carly. Not that they