You've thought about all of this very carefully. I've had time. You didn't have to. He looked back at her. I know I didn't.
Elsie, who had been watching this exchange with the focused attention of a child reading the room and knowing something important is happening, but not quite knowing what, said, "Is everything all right? " Viven looked down at her and squeezed her hand. "Yes," she said, and then in a voice that had something certain in it that hadn't been there 2 months ago. "Yes, it is. She meant it. Gideon could tell she meant it, not as reassurance for the child, but as a real thing she had decided was true.
He could see the exact moment she made that decision, let herself believe it, stopped holding the exit open in the back of her mind. He turned to hang up his coat, and he was not a man who let himself smile at things easily. But for a moment, in the shadow of the coat pegs with his back to the room, he nearly did. The wire from Philadelphia came on a Thursday, 8 days after he'd sent the first one. Sims brought it out himself, which told Gideon it was significant.
He arrived at the ranch in late morning, and Viven came to the table when Gideon called her, and Sims spread his notes out and went through it. The attorney in Philadelphia, a man named Hargreavve, had moved fast once he'd gotten word that Croft was in Montana. He had filed in a Philadelphia court the week before, presenting the original will in the correspondence as evidence against the forged document. Two of Harlon Aldicott's witnesses had already been interviewed, and one of them had provided information suggesting the document had been signed under circumstances that were, in Hargreav's words, legally indefensible. Harland had retained his own counsel, but the case, as of the wire sending date, was not going the direction Fletcher had expected.
More importantly, for immediate purposes, Hargreavve had also filed a preemptive notice with the Montana Territorial Court System through Billings that established Viven's legal standing and contested any claim an out of territory party might attempt to file against her or her property. Judge Hartley had received it. Sims had spoken with Hartley's clerk that morning. Hartley will not accept any claim against Miss Aldicott or her assets in this jurisdiction without a full hearing, Sims said. Given the existing filing from Philadelphia, any attempt by the Aldicott family to seize documents or compel her return would require going through his court, and he's not inclined to expedite that process for outofstate interests.
He looked at Viven over his notes. In plain language, they can't grab the trunk. They can't force you home. Whatever they try legally has to go through a judge who already knows the situation from your side. Vivien had been still through all of this in the way she went still for important things.
Now she asked, "How long before the Philadelphia case resolves? " Hargreav thinks 6 months, possibly less if the second witness cooperates the way the first one did. Sims paused. Fletcher may try to delay. He has reasons to delay, but the longer it goes, the more clearly the forge document is going to be examined, and I don't think that examination favors him. She nodded.