Chapter 7 Time to decide

Megan's letter had turned Huw's world upside down. In the days after he received it, he went for long walks by himself. His head was full of things that had happened to him over the last fifty years. He remembered how alone he had felt when no letters had arrived from Megan all those years ago.

At the end of his second year in Toronto, he had had enough money to go back to Wales, but he hadn't gone. He believed that Megan no longer loved him and had forgotten him, so he tried to do the same - forget her.

Both Huw and his father had worked hard in their new country. They had found work in a factory that made cars and David Thomas had stopped drinking. He'd married again and been happy. The Canadian years had been good for his father until he'd died eighteen years ago.

Now Huw was a well-known artist and people paid thousands of dollars for his art. Two months ago, Time magazine had even written about him and his latest paintings. His love life, however, had not been so great.

Since his divorce from Josie, there had been other women in his life, but as he got older these friendships seemed less important. His life was full and interesting in other ways — painting, of course, fishing and walking in the forests and mountains. He was happy that Mike and his family were sharing his house. He had more than enough money to do what he wanted. But now Megan had come back into his life.

On one of his many walks, he read Megan's letter for the twentieth time. She said she was still Megan Jenkins. 'So, ' Huw thought, 'she never got married.' He remembered her as a warm, loving and intelligent person and thought it was sad that she had never shared all this with a man. Then he laughed at himself. 'Maybe she was happy to be single, ' he thought. 'Or maybe she was married and something happened and she changed her name back to Jenkins. What does it matter? It's all in the past now.'

When he arrived back home that evening he told his family that he had made a decision: he was not going to write back to Megan. His life was here now. Better to let the past stay in the past.

Later in the evening, Huw went back upstairs to his studio and, for some reason, started looking through some of his early work. There were paintings and drawings of his that he hadn't looked at for years. He found some drawings he'd done in the first few months after he'd arrived in Toronto. Most of them were of ships. He remembered he used to think about getting on one of the ships and sailing away. Sometimes he had wanted to sail back to Wales and Megan, and then later he'd just wanted to escape to anywhere.

He spent the next few hours lost in his thoughts. It was five o'clock in the morning when he looked at his watch and slowly went to bed, his head still full of the past.

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