She folded it and looked at him. I'm going to tell you, she said. Tonight, after Elsie is in bed. All of it. You should know everything before.
She stopped. Before what? She looked at the window. The sky was barely lightning. Gray going to pale gray.
And outside the snow was beginning again. A light fall. Not the serious kind, the kind that was just the land maintaining its general position on the matter of winter. Before it gets worse, she said, "And it will get worse," he nodded. He poured his coffee and sat down across from her, and they were quiet together in the morning kitchen, which was not an uncomfortable silence anymore.
It was the silence of two people who have been in each other's company long enough to not need noise to fill the space between them. Elsie slept on in her room. The stove ticked and settled. Outside the snow came down without hurry. He thought about it all day without meaning to.
He split wood and thought about it. He repaired the section of fence along the south pasture where the post had heaved with the freeze cycle and thought about it. He checked the cattle and came back and thought about it while he was doing three other things. He was not a man who did well with not knowing. He didn't panic, but the not knowing lodged somewhere uncomfortable and stayed there.
At supper, Elsie talked about a bird she'd seen at the kitchen window, and whether birds got cold the way people got cold, and why birds didn't fall off branches when they slept, which led to a 10-minute discussion of bird feet that Vivien handled with complete seriousness and apparent genuine interest. And Gideon sat at that table watching the two of them and thought about how quickly a thing could matter that you hadn't expected to matter. He got Elsie to bed. It took longer than usual. She wanted three stories and claimed she wasn't tired through most of the third one and then was deeply asleep before he finished the last sentence.
He stood over her for a moment in the dark listening to her breathe and then he went back out to the main room. Vivienne was at the fireplace. She had put the two chairs facing it which was different from how they usually sat and she was in one of them with her hands in her lap and the letter on the small table beside her and she looked for the first time since he'd known her like she was genuinely dreading what came next. He sat down in the other chair. He waited.
My name is Vivien Aldicott, she said. Blackidge was my mother's family name. I took it because no one would look for it. He kept his face still. He let her continue.