And as Laurel never truly introspects, despite the hints here and there that she should realize her own failings, her own rage, her own horrible preference for her one child, the narrative never looks too deeply. It’s not a story of hope or redemption, and that becomes apparent early, set as it all is against the too-good-to-be true relationship Laurel finds herself in. Jewell prefers a twisting timeline, a superimposition of present and past against the backdrop of Laurel reaching out, moving on, and making her own realizations about exactly what kind of mother she has been to her neglected, living children. Then She Was Gone is a dark thriller told through multiple viewpoints and a conglomeration of characters who are never sympathetic, but are always interesting. And like that, the past and all its dark secrets come rolling back. When her new boyfriend takes her to meet his oddly secretive daughter, Laurel is shocked, for in this girl, the same age as her once-upon a time, now forever gone daughter, she sees the echo of a familiar face. Yet the secrets of her missing, now known to be dead daughter, aren’t over. When second chances come in a café, at the behest of a handsome stranger with no knowledge of her past, something compels her to reach out again, to move on. Laurel Mack, the bitter mother turned divorcee, is now left to look at what her life has amounted to, the effects of shutting out her remaining children, of choosing only to love and want the one who is gone. No chance of ever seeing any sort of return. And then, ten years later, finally some closure. A husband who still loves his now hateful wife, but is forced, from both exclusion and the boundaries set by his own lack of ostentatious grief, to move on. A remaining daughter who won’t speak to her. A future that is stuck in the past and so much resentment.

And from here comes divorce, estrangement, and an endless loop of unanswerable questions and horrific what-ifs.

Left in the rubble is her mother, pining for the loss of her favorite daughter, the bright child with the good future. One bright fall day she is walking to the library, the world lying shimmering in front of her.

Ellie mack then she was gone