I'm sorry, Gideon. It was the first time she had used his first name. He noticed it and didn't say anything about it, and they walked back across the pasture to the house with a foot of distance between them that was somehow less than before. The gossip reached him through Dale Hollings, who was not a gossip by nature, but was married to one, and served occasionally as an unwilling conduit. Dale came by on a Thursday with a piece of equipment Gideon had loaned him, and he came inside for coffee in the way that meant he had something to say, and was working up to saying it.
Viven was not in the house. She'd taken Elsie to the near pasture with the specific intention of practicing the fence check Gideon had been teaching her. And Dale seemed relieved by this. People are talking, Dale said to his coffee cup. Gideon waited about her.
The woman, Dale shifted in his chair. Marta's been asking around. Nobody knows the Blackidge name from Philadelphia. She wrote her cousin there. Marta's cousin, I mean, and the cousin couldn't find any family by that name in the circles Marta thought a woman like that would be from.
Gideon was quiet for a moment. What circles would those be? Well, given the trunk, Dale looked at him. Given the way she carries herself, Martya thinks Dale, she thinks the woman might be running from something or someone. Gideon looked at his own coffee.
He'd thought the same thing since the first day. That wasn't the part that needed to be addressed. It's a free country, Gideon said. People come west for all kinds of reasons. Sure.
Dale paused. Marta's saying it in the wrong way is the thing. She's not saying it as a possibility. She's saying it as a fact and she's saying it to people who will pass it along. Seems unfair is all I wanted to tell you.
The woman works hard and she treats your little girl right. Marta's got no actual evidence of anything, just suspicions. Thank you, Dale. Gideon said he meant it. Dale finished his coffee and left.
And Gideon sat with what he'd said. He knew the pattern of this. A small community in the frozen middle of nowhere. A winter coming that would keep everyone inside and irritable for months. And a newcomer who kept her own counsel.