Betrayal by Michele Kallio Read Free Book Online

above my fears, but who knows how one will react.’  Dan thought as he fingered the magazine in his lap.
                  Dan arched his back and shifted his weight to find a more comfortable position. ‘What is happening in there?’ he asked himself. He watched as a blue Ford Ranger pulled out of its parking space in front of Hazen Hall. He turned the key and started the Camry. With his foot on the brake he hesitated, deciding not to move the car again.  His thoughts turned again to Lydia and then her father.  ‘Never liked that man,’ Dan remembered, ‘and he never liked me.’ Dan felt a sneer wrinkle his upper lip.  ‘He was much too secretive for my liking. I remember when I asked him where he came from. “Just England,” he had said and refused to say where exactly.  What kind of a man won’t tell you his hometown?’  Dan shook his head.
                  Picking up the magazine in his lap, he flipped unseeingly through the pages.  ‘When the old man died,’ Dan thought, ‘Lydia was devastated to find that her name wasn’t even her own.  I can’t imagine denying your child her true heritage. There have been Taylors in Berry Hill for four generations.’  Dan rubbed his large hand across his tanned face, shaking his head again.  Maybe he would feel better if he got out and went for a walk.  Dan’s uneasiness about Stokes returned and he wished he hadn’t forced Lydia into meeting Alan.
    Crossing the parking lot, he walked to the lower level where he could see the Saint John Regional Hospital.  As a family doctor in Saint John he had admitting privileges at both city hospitals, though he much preferred Saint Joseph’s Hospital, which he considered to be the heart of the city.
    Dan stood on the high hill overlooking the hospital’s new Emergency Department. He gazed at the glass and steel maze of buildings before him. He felt it was too large, too impersonal.  Divided as it was into four buildings bound together with tunnel-shaped umbilical cords, it assailed Dan’s sense of flow.  He much preferred the older hospital downtown.   Dan turned back towards Hazen Hall, his mind drifting to the old farm house in Berry Hill, Nova Scotia.  He remembered how he hated the constant weeding of the strawberry plants.  “Sixty-five acres,” he said aloud. “Sixty-five acres of back- breaking work.”
     
     
     
                                                                                        ***
    Lydia watched as Stokes disappeared through the swinging doors at the stairwell.  She yearned to explore his office, get a sense of him, find out what books he read, what kind of coffee he liked.  She stood in the quiet corridor, her hand still on the doorknob.  Should she go back inside?  Suppose he came back and found her there? What would she do? What could she say?  Lydia heard footsteps coming up behind her. Her heart raced, her palms were slick with sweat, yet she held tight to the doorknob.  If asked, how could she explain her presence here?
    Her need to reconnect with her father overruled her fear.  Once inside the small office she inhaled deeply, drawing the scent of cherry pipe tobacco deep into her lungs.  It was familiar and comforting.  Lydia closed her eyes, transported back to the basement office of Charles Hamilton in the Administration Building of Saint Mary’s University on Robie Street in Halifax.  She looked around the familiar book-lined walls of the office with its battered oak desk awash with paper.  ‘Were all university offices the same?’  Lydia wondered.  ‘Was it a rule somewhere that every office be supplied with a huge oak desk and that every flat surface must be lost in a sea of papers?’  Lydia smiled, comforted by the cluttered office. She sat down in the worn leather chair behind the desk.  With her eyes closed, Lydia settled back in the chair with