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"McGucket household, who 'm I speakin' with?" Fiddleford said brightly into the phone.
He did not feel like speaking brightly, seeing as it was entirely too early in the morning after Tate had gotten up in the middle of the night with some issue or another twice, but his mama raised a polite man. The desire to be polite diminished even further when a high, whining sort of voice pitched over the phone.
"Annabell-Jo!" he said. His voice was peppy. His mood was less so. "Hiya, yes, hello. It's been a while, uh-huhn. Oh, Emma-May? Well, I'm afraid…"
He looked over to his wife, who was pouring coffee to herself as he stood at the phone and curled the wire around his finger. Her head jerked up at the name, and she stared at him in dismay. Her hand came up and made a frantic chopping motion at her neck, the universal sign of no, no, no.
"IIII'm afraid y'can't talk with her! Mhm. She's with Tater, he's, uh, he's sick in a bad way right now, threw up and everything, went and took him to the doctor. Yeah, I know kids don't need doctors, uh-huhn, he's probably playin' it up, but you know how schools in the East coast are, all fussy, so she's bringin' him anyway. Yeah, real doggone shame she ain't here to chat, I'm real sorry."
He could feel his accent thickening like cooling molasses the more he heard the voice of his mother-in-law, returning in full force in sympathy until it was like he was ten years old and still saying "Daddy" with four whole syllables when talking about his Pa. Emma-May was beating a hasty exit with her coffee in hand. Probably actually checking on Tate and if he was getting ready for school.
Leaving him to her mother. Not that he could blame her.
The Dixons of Hogswallow, Tennessee, well… everyone in town knew 'em, that was for sure. That was the one thing a person could say about them without being impolite.
They seemed nice, half of the time, but then they would go around doing the craziest things. Some people said the eyes carved all around town were all from them, even the real old ones. Fiddleford had found and hated those eyes long before he'd ever spoken to a Dixon—not that that was hard, with how most of the other families maneuvered their kids away when the Dixons wandered into town. They were… odd.
Annabell-Jo was one of the better Dixons, seeing as she'd just married into them rather than being a born-and-bred Dixon, but she was still an unfortunate woman to be around. No one had been surprised how Emma-May ran for the hills when her Pa died and she got some money out of it—the man had bought a lot of gold and she'd ended up with half of it—so much as they were surprised she'd run off to college in particular.
Still, Annabell-Jo was determined to talk to her daughter despite the college trouble, and Emma-May was determined to avoid that happening as much as possible without actually having to say that to her mother.
Fiddleford couldn't blame her for that, either. This was a woman who thought marrying a Dixon was a good idea. Who knew what she'd do if Emma-May told her to stop calling. Come over here and carve an eye into a daughter so she could literally 'keep an eye on her', probably.
So Fiddleford "mhm"d and "uh-huh"d through tirades about the town and their boring ways and how they all avoided her (very sensible of them) and told her vague things about what Emma-May was doing in terms he thought she'd like best. Not that he knew his mother-in-law well. By intention.
Finally, finally, the woman began to wind down and Fiddleford bid a hasty goodbye, slamming the phone on the hook. He slumped against the wall with a sigh.
Emma-May peeked in. "Oh, thank God. She's gone?"
"For now," Fiddleford said. Annabell-Jo calling once meant she'd make a habit of calling for a week or so until she got distracted and went back to menacing the town with her relatives-by-marriage. "Just so you know, Tate's sick real bad and throwin' up and the whole works."
Tate scampered past his mother and out the hallway towards the door, very much not sick. Fiddleford and Emma-May had no delusions that he hadn't noticed the whole rigamarole with Emma's mother, but when they told him that it was just a tricky little thing that sometimes happened in families he'd accepted it well enough. Children could accept anything, really.
He looked very chipper for the one who'd been whining half the night. Children were also very good at bouncing back. Little devils.
Emma-May sighed, hand on her temple. "Right. Driving to school, driving to work, arguing about chemicals…"
Fiddleford straighten up, offering her a smile. "Then comin' home."
"Then coming home," she agreed with a faint attempt at a smile.
Hmm. He was gonna be busy fixing some appliances all of today, both their own stand-mixer and several other things from locals he was taking on for some extra cash, but maybe he could find the time to do something nice. She had been the one to handle Tate's longer tantrum. He just wasn't sure what, yet. Eh, he'd think of what it would be while he worked.
"It'll all speed by," he promised her.
Fiddleford felt a grin stretch over his face as Tater piped up from the back seat, "Dad, how do they tell how much weight can be in a elevator?"
"An elevator," Emma-May corrected idly, looking down at her book.
How she read in the car without feeling woozy and wanting to upchuck her lunch, Fiddleford didn't know. It was mighty unfair, was what it was. But he had other things to think about right now.
"An elevator," Tater repeated.
"Well," Fiddleford said grandly. "It's real simple, tatertot. Y'see, when they're puttin' in the elevator, they come in and they bring two identical sets of cables with 'em. So they put the elevator in once, with one set of cables, and they bring in five pound bags of flour and they pile them all in there, bags and bags of flour, until the cable snaps. But see, they do it on the second floor, so the box ain't messed up. Then they write down how many pounds it took until it did that, take off five, and put in the second cable and rig the whole thing up again. And that's how they do it."
"Oh," Tate said thoughtfully. "I shoulda guessed."
Fiddleford nodded, though he doubted Tater could see with the carseat headrest in the way. "Sometimes the simple things slip past us."
He took a glance at Emma-May in the passenger's seat, and his grin widened as he saw a hand pressed to her mouth as she tried hard not to laugh. Once she'd gotten control of herself and Tate was busy looking out the car window and entertaining himself with his thoughts as children did, she leaned over and lightly whacked her husband's leg with her book.
"I know you know how they really measure that," she hissed with a suppressed smile.
"Yeah, I do," he muttered back. "I just told Tate what they do."
She whacked him with her book again. If they crashed, it'd be her fault no matter where in the car she was, he swore, but he broke out into a snicker himself, enjoying the feeling of her curly hair brushing at his shoulder.
Behind them, Tate made a face at what he percieved only as gross grown-up stuff.
Fiddleford hurriedly shut the door to the living room, jumping when he saw Emma-May already at the small entry way at the front door, shaking off her umbrella. She stared at him through her thick curtain of bangs as a nervous smile broke out on his face.
"Hiiiiiya, honey," he said, clutching at the doorknob. "How… was work? I thought you were gonna go get groceries on the way home?"
"I forgot my wallet," she said.
"Oh, that's a shame, how 'bout I go get it for you while you wait right here." He cracked the door open, using his height to his advantage to make sure she couldn't see beyond it.
There was a resounding giggle from the other side of the door.
"Fiddleford," Emma-May said sweetly. Fiddleford froze. "May I see my little hashbrown? The one right behind the door, it sounds like?"
The giggling hushed, far too late.
"No?" Fiddleford said, far too much like a question. "Tater ain't there. He's… in the backyard."
"So if I go outside right now, I'll find him there?"
"…yes."
Emma-May was slowly smiling. "I won't find an empty lawn."
"…no."
"I'll find my son."
"Mhm."
"Who is not behind the door in the living room, up to something."
Fiddleford sweated. "He sure ain't."
Emma-May nodded as slowly as she had smiled. "Well. I'll step outside then. And go and find Tater right where he's supposed to be, acting very normal. I'm sure he's been there all afternoon. In the rain."
"Plenty of kids play in the rain. He likes water," Fiddleford said, striking upon a triumphant truth.
"He does like water," she agreed, though it was really more that he liked the things one could find in water, like fish and sunken boats and maybe buried treasure. Their son was having a big fuss about buried treasure lately.
Looking straight at Fiddleford, she opened the door and stepped out, shutting it loudly. The rain pattered on just beyond it.
Fiddleford yanked open the door to the living room, hissing, "You heard the woman, backyard, now!"
Tater whirled around from where he'd been throwing around the last of the confetti—at least he hadn't just been giggling and giving them away, even if that'd be hell to clean up later. Alongside the confetti was a banner reading HAPPY BIRTHDAY and balloons and a cake and a few presents.
Their kid had been aghast at the thought that his mama had never experienced a surprise birthday party, and insisted it must be so that she got one this year. Fiddleford could not say no to Tater for the life of him, so they'd compromised for the fact that Emma-May did not appreciate big surprises or too many people acting too oddly on account of experiencing the Dixons for most of her life up to age eighteen. So, surprise birthday party of just them today, normal boring adult birthday party with her friends on the weekend. No horde of friends jumping out to surprise her in a dark room.
They didn't have a gun or anything, but Emma-May was a Dixon deep down. They could always find violence in their hearts and in the objects in the room. So. Extremely telegraphed surprise party.
Tater had long scampered off to the backyard to play at having played all afternoon in suspiciously dry overalls. Fiddleford sighed and double-checked that the cake had no kid-sized fistfuls taken out of if. Tate was a good kid, but still a kid.
Even if there was a missing bit of cake, Emma-May would still like it. Hopefully. If Tate had a hand in it she always loved it. That was the power of being the little kid.
Hopefully she liked the new coffee machine too. He'd built it just for her. It would automatically make the coffee exactly how she liked it.