““As with most small town southerners, respectability was as much a part of my DNA as was my hair and eye color. It was the goal everyone strived for, the standard by which every citizen of Morganville was judged. And while my family, the Frenchs, weren’t the richest- that honor going to Ian and Helena Morgan- we were one of the most respected. Thanks mostly to the Judge, my grandfather. His name was Carl, but no one, including his daughters, had ever called him anything but Judge. He retired from the bench when I was five, and since my own father pulled a vanishing act shortly before my birth, the Judge stepped forward to fill that role for me. I thought the man walked on water and took every word from his lips as gospel. “Alix,” he told me. “Stay away from the railroad tracks. A wowzer cat lives under the trestle, and you don’t want to get tangled up with one of those.” “What’s a wowzer cat?” I asked, enthralled. “It’s a fifty pound cat with eight legs and nine bung holes, and it’s meaner than a gar.” The Judge had an odd sense of humor.””
