I. A significant secret in this story is the one the author, Alice Munro, is keeping from the reader until the very end. We assume that Gail wants to meet up with Will again, but then Gail runs away from him and back to Canada as soon as she can.
II. The secret that Munro is keeping from us can be compared to the secret that Gail keeps from Will. Gail hides under a pseudonym of a dead woman to correspond with him through letters, pretending to be interested in the history of their last name, and in them she hides the nature of why she's actually writing--to discover what he's been up to in the time they've been apart. Munro has been decieving the reader in a similar way--up until the end we are led to believe that Gail and Will will have a confrontation, and that Gail will want to talk to him. But in the end we discover that Gail was just testing him and is more interested in seeing if he will follow her than in talking to him.
III. This secret is extremely significant to understanding the narrative because it is what the story has been leading up to the entire time. If instead Gail had stayed and talked to Will, the ending would not be so dramatic and the story would not have had as much as an impact.
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I do not believe that Gail running away is truly a secret, it is just something that happened at the end. The main secret was that Gail is pretending to be someone else. The ending is questionable though. Why would Gail want to leave after seeing her "husband?" I believe it is because she just wanted her presents to be known in his life and that she sitll thinks and cares about him. She left to see if he would follow. If he would go back to Canada as well to look for her. If he did than this may mean that the feelings are mutual and that they truly were made to be together.
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