Introduction

The story begins:

Bill was a thirty-five year old hermit. Fourteen years ago when he was falsely accused by statutory rape. Unfortunately for him he didn’t have any kind of alibi, as he had been home alone sleeping. He had, as a favor to a friend of the family, babysat the girl who at the time was ten and a half. Anyone who saw her would have to agree that the girl was cute, for her age. Her name was Sarah Smith and she was developing early for her age. Even at her young age she had small half-orange sized puffy points sticking out from her chest. Not enough to require a bra, but enough to be noticed.

As she had tried to explain to her parents and the police, someone had climbed through her window after her parents had returned and Bill had left. She knew that it wasn’t Bill because whoever the man was had had a full beard and Bill was clean shaven. Her parents and the police however assumed that she was merely protecting Bill, which admittedly she had a crush on.

No one would believe her. Bill with little opposition, unless he wanted to spend years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, packed a few clothes and ran away. He went into the local forest reserve. He had already sold his car before he decided to run. As a way of hiding his tracks, he bought a bus ticket that he never used. The police uselessly followed the false trail. When they never caught up with him, they just assumed he’d changed his name when he got out of state.

Sarah, obviously, had gotten pregnant from the rape. How else could they have discovered the rape, as she had never said anything about it, until her pregnancy began to show. She had never had a period prior to the rape and didn’t realize she was pregnant until then.

Sarah, despite the means by which she had gotten pregnant, refused to get an abortion. Her parents supported her decision. Both had been brought up Catholic, though neither of them were practicing Catholics anymore. When the baby was born, they helped to raise her. She was named Samantha after her grandmother, who had passed away three years before. Samantha’s DNA was analyzed, and compared to Bill’s father’s. It was determined that there was no way the baby could have been Bill’s.

Bill having run away and not contacted anyone, could not be found to tell him that he was no longer a suspect.

Bill:

Bill had lived in the forest for years. He had learned survival skills from his grandfather, before he died, and knew how to not only hunt and process what he killed, but also how to hide the smoke from his campfire. So he was never detected in the forest. Of course the hunt for him had been called off, with the discovery of his innocence was confirmed. Therefore he was safe out there in the woods, but he didn’t know that.

Bill had found a cave that, as far as he knew no one knew about. Part of it came out on the side of a hill and was covered by dense trees. The other side of it was behind a small waterfall, where he could obtain fresh water. The trees at the hillside entrance also hid the smoke of his campfire. Bill lived day to day as best he could. He would get up every morning and hunt for small game and berries that he could eat. One of the most important skills he had learned from his grandfather was how to smoke meat to preserve it and he did so. Even on days where he could kill game to eat, he still had meat to eat.

Occasionally he would venture out far beyond his cave home and find things others had left behind. This is how he acquired a couple of pots and pans to cook in, and was able to make stews and boil roots and other things to help keep him alive. Eventually he lost track of how long he had been out there on his own.

One day he saw a couple of girls make a camp across from the waterfall. The image was somewhat distorted because he was looking through the waterfall itself. He didn’t know for sure, but thought they were probably sisers as one appeared to be in her mid-teens and the other not more than five or six. Neither of them seemed to care about modesty as both stripped of their clothing and swam in the small pool created by the waterfall. He sat and watched them for hours, as they played in the shallows on the far end of the pool. He knew from experience that the water closer to the falls was much deeper. He admired the teens B-cup breast and rather large nipples. They looked as they had breastfed a child in the past, but she didn’t look old enough to have done that. The girls camped there for two days and he watched them every day. On the third day the girls packed up and left and Bill had to go hunt for more food again. When he came to the spot where the two girls had camped, he found a dozen potatoes and some fresh tomatoes. There were also some onions and a sharp knife, to peal them with. In the cool water where the girls had swam he found a ripe watermelon chilled by the water and ready to be cut open and eaten.

He thought back to seeing the girls. The young one he didn’t recognize, but the older one looked somehow familiar. It was like he had seen her before, but where? He didn’t puzzle over it long, for a rabbit soon appeared and he began to stalk it. He was able to catch it and he took it and the food that had been left to his cave. That night he feasted on rabbit stew, complete with potatoes and onions and cut open the watermelon for an added treat.

Sarah:

Sarah, over the course of her pregnancy, kept insisting that Bill hadn’t done anything to her. She told them repeatedly that a man had crawled into her room, held a knife to her throat and told her not to make a sound or he’d kill her parents, who were just down the hall. Mo one would believe her.

Her parents knew that she had had a crush on Bill for years and they had told the police so. They assumed that she was just trying to protect him, until she gave birth to Samantha. Samantha’s DNA was compared some of Bill’s family and found to be totally different.

A month after Samantha’s birth, a man matching Sarah’s description of the one who had raped her was caught he’d handed raping another girl of Sarah’s age. DNA test proved that he had been the one to rape Sarah not Bill.

The man, after being caught, not only to Sarah’s rape, but also to a string of several rapes over a three year period. Sarah’s was the only one that had resulted in a pregnancy however. After his conviction, he had plea bargained for a lower jail sentence, Sarah’s parents along with the others filed lawsuits against his estate. They won. Each family received a half a million dollars in compensation. Sarah, being the only one to have gotten pregnant, however got the largest share of it at over one million dollars and the small ranch that he had owned.