Fool Me Once

Unable to drop in on Franklin Biddle until they reopen the next Monday, Maya invites Shane and a few friends to sweep her home for bugs. After getting the all-clear, Maya wells up, grateful for Shane’s help. She fills him in on her suspicion that Andrew’s death is connected to Claire’s and Joe’s before taking Lily for a mother-daughter day of apple picking, which Shane—relieved that Maya is taking a day off from sleuthing—deems “so cool” (275).

That night, Maya’s PTSD episodes return. The new drugs are not working, but she decides to muscle through it. After dropping Lily off at daycare, Maya drives to Philadelphia. Franklin Biddle’s campus is “pampered, patrician, privileged, [and] powerful” (277). Maya acknowledges the illusion of security that wealth can provide and the desire to “get deeper and deeper into a protective cocoon” (278). She meets the prep school headmaster, Neville Lockwood IV, who is complete with an argyle bow tie and tweed blazer. He heaps on condolences and praise about Joe, and Maya senses that Neville is angling for donations. He blanches when Maya brings up Theo. He confirms that Claire came to Franklin Biddle to poke into Theo’s death. Maya threatens him, thinking that Neville will not be forthcoming, but he cites the school’s Quaker ethos: “The more one knows, we believe, the more one is protected by the truth” (281).