Then She Was Gone

by Lisa Jewell

That was how she’d once viewed her perfect life: as a series of bad smells and unfulfilled duties, petty worries and late bills.

All those hopes and dreams and talk of ballerinas and pop stars, concert pianists and boundary-breaking scientists. They all ended up in an office. All of them.

May was like the Friday night of summer: all the good times lying ahead of you, bright and shiny and waiting to be lived.

The blame game could be exhausting sometimes. The blame game could make you lose your mind… all the infinitesimal outcomes, each path breaking up into a million other paths every time you heedlessly chose one, taking you on a journey that you’d never find your way back from.

the father of your children, as a friend, as someone who shared a journey with you and as someone who loves you and cares about you. I don’t need to be married to you to be all those things. Those things are deeper than marriage. Those things are forever.”

But she is remembering now. Cooking doesn’t just nurture the recipient; it nurtures the chef.

she doesn’t know that this isn’t how you grow up. That wearing shiny shoes with bows on and rolling your eyes at other kids is not a sign of maturity, but a sign that you’ve missed a whole set of steps on the road to maturity.

I will never guilt trip my children when they are adults, she’d vowed. I will never expect more than they are able to give.

“Stories,” she says, “are the only thing in this world that are real. Everything else is just a dream.” Laurel and Paul smile and nod. Then they turn to each other and exchange a look. Not a wry look this time, but one of disquiet. Ellie used to read two books a week and when they teased her about always having her nose in a book, Ellie used to say, “When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it’s like I go back into the dream.”

“Do you love him?” “Yes.” “Do you love him enough to hurt a lot of people who don’t deserve to be hurt?” “How do you expect me to answer that?” “It’s a tough question, but you do need to answer it. Not now, but over the next hours and days. I’m not going to tell you that in ten years you’ll look back and wonder what the hell you were thinking, because I remember being twenty-one and thinking that my personality was a solid thing, that me was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But now I know that me is fluid and shape-changing.

She would be hurting. She would be blaming herself. Ellie wanted to reach through the walls of this house and into hers, place her arms around her sister’s body and hold her tight and say, I know you love me. I know you do. Please don’t blame yourself.

“I mean,” says Blue, “that a man who can’t love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed.

I was never anywhere long enough to get a nickname.