Anne Whitney Pierce

My brother Andrew was never more to me than a round face in a baseball cap smiling out of a photograph on our living room wall. It was the last picture ever taken of him; a month later he drowned. The wall was papered with faded flowers, but the ro [...]

My parents gave me a surprise 30th birthday party, which I couldn't enjoy because of its bad, bad timing, catching me off guard in a rotten mood and with three-day dirty hair, when I was vulnerable and least in need of surprises. There was a moment [...]