Photos gone even after being in Google photos

[Mrslazar]

My pixel xl got sand in the charging port on Friday night. Acted fine but wouldn't charge. During this time, I could see all my photos in Google. Got it to charge, then the screen started acting weird. I switched to an old phone and could only see 6 photos from the whole week on the other phone (s6 edge). The pixel finally did a factory reset. Started working fine. Pictures from last week are still gone. Even though they were backed up in Google bc I saw them multiple times during the week even after the sand incident. They aren't in drive, trash, picasa, archive etc. The weirdest thing is there are 6 photos from the first day and 1 from Thursday (the phone incident was Friday night).
Where are these photos???

 

[SpookDroid]

Are you certain they had been backed up? You mentioned you saw them in Photos, but that might have just been the local copy. Did you see the missing pictures on the website or another device? I think you can revert Photos back to a previous back up up to 30 days prior; if for some reason the older device got any files overwritten, this should help bring them back IF they were backed up to begin with.