The Long Way Home

“I will.”

“But what does it matter?” Myrna asked. They were walking toward the kitchen to join Reine-Marie. “He’s not there anymore.”

“But he was there for a few months,” said Gamache. “He might have told his brother or sister where he was going next, and why. He might have told them why he was in Dumfries.”

Gamache stopped and looked at Clara. “We have no leads in Quebec City but we have a few in Toronto. It might not help. But it might.”

“I’ll go,” said Clara. “Of course I’ll go. First thing in the morning.”

She looked relieved to finally have something to do besides worry.

“Then I’ll go with you,” said Myrna.

“What about the shop?” Clara asked.

“I think the hordes desperate for secondhand books can wait a couple of days,” said Myrna, putting out knives and forks. “I might ask Ruth to look after the store. She spends most of her time asleep in the chair by the window anyway.”

“That’s Ruth?” asked Reine-Marie. “I thought it was a mannequin.”

Clara sat down and pushed the salmon around on her plate. While the others talked she listened to the drum of rain against the window.

She was anxious to get going.

NINE

Clara and Myrna caught the morning train out of Montréal’s Central Station.

Clara listened to the sound of the wheels and felt the comforting, familiar movement. She leaned back, her head lolling on the rest, and stared out the window at the forests and fields and isolated farms.

This was a journey she’d made many times. First on her own, to art college in Toronto. A great adventure. Then with Peter to art shows in Toronto. Always his, never hers. Prestigious juried shows his work had been selected for. She’d sat beside him, holding his hand. Excited for him.

Today the train felt both familiar and foreign. Peter wasn’t there.

In the reflection of the window she noticed Myrna staring at her. Clara turned to face her friend.

“What is it?”

“Do you want Peter back?”

It was the question Myrna had been wanting to ask for a while, but the time had never seemed right. But now it did.

“I don’t know.”

It wasn’t that Clara couldn’t answer that question, but that she had too many answers.

Waking up alone in bed, she wanted him back.

In her studio, painting, she didn’t.

With her friends in the bistro, or over dinner with them, she didn’t miss him at all.

But eating alone, at the pine table? In bed at night? She still sometimes spoke to him. Told him about her day and pretended he was there. Pretended he cared.

And then she turned out the light, and rolled over. And missed him even more.

Did she want him back?

“I don’t know,” she repeated. “I asked him to leave because he stopped caring for me, stopped supporting me. Not because I’d stopped caring for him.”

Myrna nodded. She knew this. They’d talked about it through the past year. Their close friendship had grown closer and more intimate as Clara opened up.

All the stuff stuffed down, all the stuff that women were not supposed to feel, and never, ever show, Clara had showed Myrna.

The neediness, the fear, the rage. The terrible, aching loneliness.

“Suppose I’m never kissed on the lips again?” Clara had asked one afternoon in midwinter, as they ate lunch in front of the fire.

Myrna knew that fear too. She knew all of Clara’s fears because she shared them. And admitted them to Clara.

And over the course of the year, as the days grew longer, their friendship deepened. As the night receded, the fear had also receded. And the loneliness of both women had ebbed away.

Do you want Peter back?

Myrna had asked Clara the question she was afraid to ask herself.

In the window, imposed over the endless forest, Myrna could see her ghostly self.

“Suppose something’s happened to him?” Clara spoke to the back of the seat in front of her. “It would be my fault.”

“No,” said Myrna. “You asked him to leave. What he did after that was his choice.”

“But if he stayed in Three Pines he’d be fine.”

“Unless he had an appointment in Samarra.”

“Samarra?” Clara turned to look at her friend. “What’re you talking about?”

“Somerset Maugham,” said Myrna.

“Are you having a stroke?” Clara asked.

“Maugham used the old fable in a story,” Myrna explained. “I spend my days reading, remember. I know all these obscure things. I’m lucky I don’t work in Sarah’s bakery.”