The first time the HOA president called the sheriff on me for swimming in my own lake, I was floating on my back at sunset, listening to loons and trying to remember how to breathe without my wife. The water was cool and clear, fed by springs that had run under my family’s land since before my grandfather built the cabin in 1952. Above me, the sky over rural North Carolina was turning orange and lavender. Pine branches moved in the evening wind. Crickets had just started up in the grass. It should have been peaceful. Then sirens cut through...
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