Christmas was wonderful. Mr. Barnes gave them a week off, as he did for all of his employees for holidays - especially since most of them would be seated around the same table for dinner! The week was spent doing last minute shopping and trying to fend off the frigid temperatures, which seemed to drop ever lower. Rapunzel's father stayed overnight with Rapunzel and Eugene, going to the Christmas Eve candlelight service with them at their church and then sleeping on the couch for Christmas morning. Christmas Day was spent alternating between relaxation and cooking. Eugene banned Rapunzel from the kitchen after her feet began to ache, so the men took over the cooking. The mashed potatoes were pretty dry and the pie crust...well...nobody broke any teeth. Rapunzel did not get her cooking talent from her father, but nobody said a word about it.

One Saturday afternoon in January, Rapunzel went through some photographs she'd recently ordered and noticed how thin her father had gotten in the few months they'd known each other. She called him immediately.
"Hey. Little-busy...right now, wait a sec, please?" his voice came up on the phone, punctuated by grunts and metallic clanking. A machine groaned with its burden; the engine coughed and died.
"Okay," Rapunzel nodded even though he couldn't see. She tried to envision what was happening in the auto repair shop right now. Likely, he was in his dirty gray jumpsuit and up to his armpits in black grease. His glasses would either be off or smudged with black fingerprints.
Six minutes later, he picked the phone back up a little breathlessly. "Sorry, dear. Stupid car I'm working on for a client won't cooperate. Well, what's up?"

She laughed quietly. "Sorry. Is it a bad time?"
"Never a bad time for you," Charles pulled the phone away from his face and coughed, wiping some of the grease off of his face and only succeeding in getting it in his eyes. Blinking rapidly, he stumbled to the bathroom and flushed it out, phone still pressed to his ear as he listened.
"I was going through some pictures, and...this might sound a little silly, but I'm worried. You look like you've lost a lot of weight since we met in October. Are you okay?" She paused and listened to the sound of water rushing in the background. "I hope I'm not being too nosy."
"Not too nosy," he said, patting his face dry with a rough paper towel. "I've just been, well, working all my weight off, I suppose. We have a shortage of workers right now. Overtime's nice though," he chuckled.
"Well, why don't you try to come up for dinner each night? I mean, I guess we're an hour away from you, but you were skin and bones to begin with! Maybe I could make up a bunch of meals and freeze them so you can just come home and heat a meal right up."
"Oh, deary, that's fine. You've got a lot on your plate to begin with, since the baby's gonna be coming soon. I'm feeding myself."
"It'd be fine, though! Just one extra serving per day made up. Easy peasy," she said. Eugene clomped into the house, loudly proclaiming that he wasn't leaving the house until spring, and she waved her hand to let him know she was on the phone.
Charles sighed, chuckling under his breath. It seemed like the lone attribute she'd kept from her mother was a slight stubbornness, but she used it for good. "Alright. If it'd make you feel better-"
"Definitely. I'll see you tonight! If you can't come by six, just drop in whenever you can. Can you come?"
He laughed. "Okay. I'll see you then, dear. Thank you."
"You're welcome. Love you, Dad."
"I love you too," he said, hanging up his old flip phone and stuffing it in his pocket.

Eugene paused in front of Rapunzel, asking her a silent question. What's up?
She grunted in an unladylike manner and heaved herself onto her feet- which was becoming a chore, what with her ungainly belly - and then he gave her a quick kiss.
"Dad," she said. "I'm inviting him to eat dinners here. He's been getting skinnier and skinnier since we met him, so I wanted to make sure he was eating okay. He said he's been working himself into the ground, pretty much."
"I see," he nodded. "So he's coming this evening?"
"Supposed to," Rapunzel nodded. "How did your trip to the printer's work out?"
"Cold," Eugene slipped one of his still-numb hands underneath the hem Rapunzel's loose sweater, settling it on the part of her hip that wasn't covered by the hem of her sweatpants.
"Eugene!" she gasped, shoving him hard enough to make him backpedal a step. "I know it's cold out! You didn't have to prove your point!"
He tried to control his laughter for a moment. "Just wanted to prove a point. You're warm, by the way."
She glowered. "Was warm." She tried to walk past before he could see the grin she struggled to hide, but he snagged her and pulled her into an, ironically, warm hug.
"You know you love me," he teased, and she rolled her eyes.
"That's debatable," she threw back. "Are the books in the car?"
"All three hundred of them," he sighed. "Ship out Monday."
"Did you ever contact any of those publishing houses?" Rapunzel asked. She rolled her wide green eyes up to watch his brown ones, unwrapping an arm from his torso so she could neaten his hair, which had been mussed by the wind. His hair was wet with snowflakes that had nestled in between the short brown, tangled strands.

"Yes, I emailed both. I explained that I have to stay here, and I'm waiting for answers from them."
"You could go," Rapunzel said. "You could just take business trips."
"No," he shook his head. "Call me ornery or hardheaded, but I don't want to. I'm staying here with you and the baby. I'm not going to be one of those dads that get too caught up in their work to notice their kids growing up or their wife feeling unwanted because they're married to their work instead of them."
Rapunzel nodded. "But I don't want us holding you back, either."
"You're not. It's a personal choice, not you forcing me," he told her. Then he leaned down to whisper in her ear, "Besides, you're much more attractive than some of the people that work in the publishing house my first book went through..." accompanied by a mock shudder, and she laughed, swatting his arm playfully before kissing his jaw.
"Alright." She tsked her tongue and slipped away, headed for the kitchen. Turning around, she decided to tease him a little. "But only some? Was that a compliment or a hidden insult?"
He chuckled. "I think you know."

Eugene accompanied her in the kitchen, helping her get dinner prepared. He watched her work as quickly as she could, and shook his head. She was due in mid-to-late February - just about a month out. But she hadn't slowed down on any of her workload, except for the things he forced her to give up more often. He had a sneaking suspicion she just waited until he was out on a long day with Levi to do stuff, anyway. "So when are you going on maternity leave? Mr. Barnes has been on both of our cases about it. I think you probably should pretty soon,"
She blinked her eyes rapidly as she chopped a particularly strong onion. "I'm feeling fine - I mean, as good as I can feel right now - and the doctor hasn't said anything. The baby's healthy. I want to go as long as I can."
"Most people would be happy to have time off," he pointed out. "Are you planning on going back to work right after you have the baby?"
She grinned. "How soon do you think I can?"
"I think you need to stay home and get to know our baby," he said, although he was pretty sure she was teasing.
"I will," she set her knife down and placed her hand over her stomach as she felt the baby somersault. The baby was moving around constantly now, and it was fascinating...until it was time to sleep. "We'll figure it out when she gets here." Thinking about family in general, she cocked her head and eyed Eugene as he took her cutting board, neatly dumping the onion chunks into a frying pan with a reasonable amount of butter. "And how has your family search been going? You haven't said much about it the past few days."
He'd started his search promptly after Christmas, and had gotten a free trial to one of those ancestry websites. He'd found his parents' names and their graves, which were three hours away in a small cemetery. He had one living aunt left. He'd found out quite a bit of interesting information about his ancestors, such as twins running in the family; one ancestor betraying the Loyalists in the Revolutionary War and joining the Patriots, which apparently caused some comedic confusion; and his great-great-great-grandparents having seventeen children, all of which had survived and lived the average lifespan of that time. Rapunzel silently prayed that Eugene didn't want a family that large.

"I found a document with information from the police report from the crash," he said. "I was planning on reading that sometime tonight or tomorrow after church. And when the weather gets nicer, I want to visit their graves."
Rapunzel nodded. "That's good. So have you found any more interesting stories?"
He grinned, lighting into a tale about how his great-great-grandmother had worked as a nurse during the second World War so she could be near her husband, and how she'd ended up having their first child while she was in the middle of helping a soldier whose leg had been mangled. "Don't do that, Rapunzel," he finished jokingly.
"Yeah, I don't think so," Rapunzel laughed. "Was the baby okay? What happened after?"
"Obviously, someone took over for her so she could have the baby, and yes, it ended up becoming my great-grandmother. She was sent home as soon as possible."

Tough Little Bird
You're a tough little thing, I'll give you that
Someone piles extra work on you and an eye you don't bat
How you do it, I'll never get even if you put it into words,
But you're a tough little bird.

You cook, you clean, you work, you're very diligent
And maybe a little too willing.
I'd like to know how you keep on going,
You're a tough little bird.

If anyone gave you a cup of coffee, I hope they're ready
Because you'd probably bounce around like a...I don't know, I give up already!
They'd grow tired by just watching you,
Because you're a tough little bird.

If you ever have any secrets to your endless energy,
Please tell me so I can remedy
My normal energy.
You're a tough little thing, you're a tough little bird.