Abandoned by her mother?

I've seen several people here on the boards who think that the mother was taking the girl to her father's to leave her there for good. I don't believe that's what was happening. During their exchange at the gas station where the mother was smoking a cigarette outside the car, she gives her daughter her grandmother's watch, the little girl asks,
"Why?"
"Because you're not coming back."
"I didn't say that," says the girl quietly, hesitantly.
"Yeah, but you're not gonna."

The girl obviously intended on staying with her father. She wasn't being abandoned by her mother, her mother had left a long time ago, even if she was still there physically; the girl had been mentally and emotionally abandoned for quite some time.










something terribly clever.