Lexie gets accepted into Yale, and Mrs. Richardson takes her, Izzy, and Pearl out to lunch. She asks Pearl for details about her upbringing and her mother during the meal for her investigation. Pearl says she was born in San Francisco and that Mia doesn’t like the East Coast and might have grown up in California. Mrs. Richardson uses that information to find Pearl’s birth certificate which in turn leads her to Mia’s birthplace, along with her parents and their phone number and address.

The May Ling/Mirabelle controversy continues to get public attention, and the community is divided, including the Richardson children, with Lexie on the side of the McCulloughs and Izzy and Moody rooting for Bebe. When Mrs. Richardson was younger, she had some sympathy for social justice causes, but in the end, her “lifetime of practical and comfortable considerations settled atop the spark inside her like a thick, heavy blanket” (Ng ch. 11). She is now focused on helping her friend get what she wants. The intensification of the debate in the community also intensifies Mrs. Richardson’s anger towards Mia and her drive to find some sort of secret to use against her. While she might have had some sympathy for Bebe’s plight at some other point in her life, her pragmatism has turned into a win-at-all-costs approach to life. All pretense of fairness and generosity toward others is shed as she is determined to find some dirt on Mia to get back at her for her support of Bebe.