It wasn't really incest. My father and her father were roomates in college, and my father introduced her father to my mother's roommate. Things clicked and they each married and remained very close friends, buying a duplex together and living next door.
Jessica was born a year and a half after I was. When she was two her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and died six months later. While my parents were driving her father to the funeral home for the wake they were hit head on by a drunk driver. My father, who was driving was pinned in the wreckage with severe injuries and died before he could be extricated. Luckily, my mother who was sitting on the right side had only minor injuries, and Jessica's father was only shaken up badly. My father knew he was not going to make it and told him to take my mother and me and care for us. After a year they married, and Jessica and I grew up as brother and sister.
I never thought of her as anything other than a little sister. We were always close and protective of each other, but that was the extent of it.I was always involved in sports and hunting and fishing and never really paid all that much attention to girls, not that there was really all that much of an opportunity as we grew up in a town of only six hundred people, and went to a consolidated school of only four hundred kids in High School. After graduating from High School I joined the Marines and left home for the first time in my life. Following Boot Camp and Recon training I was given a thirty day leave before shipping out to Viet Nam. That's when this story took place.
The insurance settlement from my father's death took care of all the finances we needed and Jessica's father, I called him Dad, had a thriving business of his own that paid off very well, so we were quite comfortable. Dad bought a hunting lodge on a large lake way up in the northern wood. Originally it had been a logging camp years ago. Now it was accessibly by Jeep or float plane during warm weather, but in the winter it was only accessible by snow mobile or by a ski plane landing on the lake. We always liked to spend Christmas and New Years up at the cabin. Dad would take Mom on one snowmobile and pull a toboggan of supplies behind while I would take Jessica and another toboggan with the other sled.
This year was to be a special time since I was home on leave and would be shipping out in only three weeks. The second day at the cabin Mom and Dad went for a ride on the sleds leaving me and Jessica at the cabin. I went out on the lake ice fishing and Jessica stayed in and read.
About an hour later Mom came back to the camp with Dad on the back of her sled. They had been riding the path along the shore line of the lake and Dad didn't see the washout in the bank due to snow drifting. He wrecked his sled, going off the bank onto the ice, breaking both skis and bending the sled. He also had a dislocated shoulder and a compound fracture of his right arm. I gave him what first aid I could, setting the bones and splinting his arm. I had to leave the shoulder out of joint as I could not put it back with the break as it was. Mom had to take him to the highway where the car and trailer were parked, an hour and a half away in good conditions, more like two or three with Dad in the shape he was in, and then it was another two hours to a town where they could find a Dr. That left Jessica and I alone at the cabin with no way out until Mom could get another sled and someone to come back up with her to get us. We had plenty of food and firewood was all around us, so we were in good shape to wait it out.
Later that night when we were settling down for the night Jessica took the Coleman lantern to her area to get ready for bed. We had divided the cabin using sheets hung from the rafters to give privacy. That night for some reason she set the lantern over against the wall behind her instead of on the dresser. She had a really cute face and light brown hair that she wore long and straight almost to her waist, but always wore loose fitting and baggy sweaters and sweatshirts that hid her body shape. She gave the appearance of being rather plump. Like I said earlier, I never thought of her in any kind of a sexual way at all, in fact, I had never even been in any kind of a sexual situation with any girl. In the small town I grew up in there was not anyone I was interested in, and opportunity would have been hard to come by if I had been interested. Playboy was still rather new and I hadn't even looked at one of them. When she set down the lantern the light silhouetted her against the sheet. It wasn't until she started to pull her sweatshirt over her head that I even noticed. I found myself transfixed by the sight. Sure I felt guilty, but I didn't know what to do. I just couldn't tear my eyes away.
