Chapter Four

The edge of the Arcata Marsh was not an obvious place for a cookout but Emily's family had never been defined by the obvious. They went way back in Arcata, or at least as far back as the early 60s, and her parents had been in a motley sequence of psychedelic bands, communes, protest groups and various combinations of the three.  

Their house, a ramshackle affair with several unpermitted add-on rooms and extensions, backed right onto some grassy, mucky grounds that blended gradually into the protected marshland. On their occasional cookout nights, Emily's older brothers would clean out the unsanctioned, technically illegal, homemade fire pit that was arguably past the rear border of the Lander's property, fill it with organically grown wood and grill sustainably harveste...

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