There was no Mrs. Pierce. Well, no, that wasn’t quite true. There had to have been one at some point, or Mikey wouldn’t be in the picture. But he didn’t quite know what had happened to her—his story changed every time he told it, and each year at school when he had to introduce himself to the class, he had a different take on why he only lived with his dad.
The first time I heard it, Mrs. Pierce had died in a horrific auto accident when Mikey was just a baby. Somehow, miraculously, he’d managed to escape, a death-defying feat that left the whole first grade class breathless and the teacher close to tears. The next year, Mrs. Pierce had died in childbirth, taking with her Mikey’s unborn sister. Third grade, she’d been offed by the measles, and fourth, the plague. By the time we reached mi
