The Long Way Home

The next day, Myrna and Clara board the train to Toronto. Myrna asks Clara if she wants to rekindle a relationship with Peter. Clara says that she does not know but feels responsible for finding out what happened to him. She worries that, if something terrible has happened, it is her fault for forcing him to leave Three Pines. Myrna counters with an allusion to W. Somerset Maugham’s fable “Appointment in Samarra,” suggesting that death is inescapable.

Once they arrive in Toronto, Myrna and Clara meet with Peter’s brother, Thomas Morrow, at his office. Thomas is wealthy and successful, appearing like “a monarch, surrounding himself with the symbols of power, hoping to disguise his own weakness” (73). He is uninterested in what might have happened to his brother and says that he never saw Peter in Toronto, suggesting that Peter probably spent his time visiting galleries instead. After they leave, Clara tells Myrna that she does not think Thomas was lying.

Clara and Myrna return to their hotel for drinks. Clara asks Myrna for reassurance that Peter is safe, and Myrna tells her friend that, while her husband is most likely fine, whatever happened to him is not her fault.