The Last Witness Read Online Free Page A

thick brush, she could see someone standing at the edge of Lover’s Leap Lookout. She thought it was a woman. The girl saw her throw something into the gorge, but shedidn’t know what. Peering through the trees, through the slender rising columns of bark and panoply of leaves, the girl watched the solitary figure stand there for the longest time and then she saw her climb up onto the ledge. The girl put her sandwich down.
    Standing on the narrow ledge, Christine steadied herself with her arms at her sides as if she were a bird. That’s what she was. A bird. It wasn’t easy, but then she knew it wouldn’t be. She had always known that, ever since she was little. How odd that one’s sense of balance is suddenly so precarious when you look down and it’s such a long way to the bottom.
    The girl watched as the solitary figure kept standing on that uncertain ledge. It was hard to see. And the girl stared in disbelief at what happened next.
    For a few seconds, Christine’s life hung suspended between two worlds. It was an in-between place. She would never know if it was a sudden rush of wind that came from behind or what, but it was just enough to lift her into that space where her arms became her pages. Her wings. Just like the book, they, too, fluttered in the air, and for one precious moment engulfed in absolute peace she found herself in a state of complete euphoria. It was perfect. Nothing but sheer freedom with only her body and the air to guide her. How wonderful. How strange. And just like that it was gone.

5
    The knee was made of titanium. It wasn’t a new substance, but it was still the best. It had been a few weeks since the surgery and the thing felt stiff, but the doctors said it would be like that. The pain had been terrible the first few days, but has since subsided and now the biggest problem was getting used to the feel of a new joint. It didn’t feel like the old one. The old knee was in bad shape, tired and worn out from holding up that big load all those years, and why it was the right knee and not the left no one ever knew. There was constant pain in that knee from the arthritis – severe arthritis they called it – and one thing they all agreed on was that it wouldn’t get any better. A knee replacement was the only tangible option – the surgeon had stressed the word
tangible
– and besides, Jack Hodgson still had a lot of years left.
    “How are we doing, Lieutenant?” the doctor said.
    “Not bad. Considering I have a new leg.”
    “Not a new leg. Just a new knee. I don’t do legs.”
    Hodgson squeezed his massive frame into the chair. It was a chair built for a normal human being, not a man who stood six-foot-five and weighed three hundred and thirty pounds. At least, that was what he weighed before the surgery. Walking into the room, he dwarfed the doctor – he did that to people – and it wasn’t so much his height but the bulk that he carried around with him. It was his ball on a chain. The load had become his prison.
    “Eating well?” the doctor asked.
    Hodgson nodded. “Back to normal.”
    “Then that’s not good. The whole point was to eat better, exercise and get control of your weight. I believe our goal was two-seventy-five.”
    “Our goal?”
    “You know what I mean. It was two-seventy-five, wasn’t it?”
    “Doc, I haven’t weighed that since I was eighteen.”
    “Look Lieutenant, I gave you that chart. Have you been following it? With all the fruits and vegetables?”
    “I eat fruits and vegetables.”
    “Yes but what else are you eating?”
    Hodgson didn’t say anything. The doctor smirked.
    “Let’s check your weight,” he said.
    “Not on that scanner. I don’t like that thing. It takes half a second and tells you how much you weigh. It doesn’t give you any time to prepare yourself.”
    “I have a scale if you like. It still works. Want to use that?”
    Hodgson said he did. The doctor led him into the next room and said to take a seat. The old scale