She becomes obsessed with Ellie, thinking that being around Ellie will make her happier and will solve all the problems in her relationship with Floyd. Then she meets Ellie, her bright and beautiful new tutee. Convinced that having a baby will help her keep Floyd’s affection, Noelle feels desperate after repeated miscarriages. Meanwhile, in flashbacks, Noelle chronicles her obsession with Floyd and the ups and downs of their relationship. She also catches Floyd lying about Noelle, and she alternates between suspicion of Floyd and love for him as she tries to solve the mystery. Poppy’s self-assuredness, while impressive at first, strikes Laurel as strange and wrong, as if Floyd coached her on what to say and do. While investigating Noelle and her connection to Ellie, Laurel also begins to notice peculiarities about Floyd and Poppy. Laurel follows the clues to Noelle’s house, where she sees Noelle’s creepy basement “guest room” full of hamster cages and secured with three locks on the basement door. Furthermore, Floyd’s other daughter from a previous marriage, SJ, tells Laurel she saw Noelle naked at eight months pregnant, and she didn’t have a baby bump. Laurel soon realizes that Noelle was Ellie’s tutor in the months before she vanished and wonders at the connection between their disappearances. For example, Noelle Donnelly, Poppy’s mother, disappeared when Poppy was four. She even begins to heal her relationship with her daughter Hanna, realizing that she has always seen her as a “consolation prize” to Ellie (301), rather than as a brilliant daughter in her own right.Īlong her journey of healing, Laurel also discovers strange coincidences. She seeks forgiveness from her ex-husband, Paul, shares happy moments with her elderly mother, and finds herself taking an interest in daily routines such as cooking and getting dressed up.

Throughout her relationship with Floyd, Laurel begins to heal the wounds of the past.

However, when she meets Floyd’s nine-year-old daughter Poppy, Laurel is struck by the similarities between Poppy and Ellie.

Laurel meets Floyd Dunn, and for the first time since Ellie’s disappearance, feels a sense of happiness and hope. When the police find Ellie’s partial remains, and Laurel says goodbye at the funeral, she thinks she will find closure, but instead, she finds a mystery. Her marriage to her husband, Paul, ended she doesn’t have a close relationship with either of her two remaining children, Jake and Hanna and she struggles to find purpose in her life. When Laurel Mack’s daughter, Ellie, disappeared 10 years ago, Laurel’s life fell apart.

The she was gone book