Summary
Run Away delivers its biggest, saddest twist yet in “The Man I Knew”, which is also arguably the best individual outing thus far.
Okay, Run Away, you got me. Harlan Coben shows typically have a moment like the one in Episode 6, the major plot development you think they won’t possibly commit to. It’s always a surprise, especially something like this, since it isn’t immediately clear how the plot can continue to work without the presence of certain key figures. Then you remember there are only two episodes left, and someone had to pay the price to raise the stakes. Poor Elena.
On the upside, the more personal focus here in “The Man I Knew”, leading to an incredibly sad conclusion, makes this one of the better episodes. Perhaps the best, actually. And, as I said in the previous episode, we now definitely have enough information to put all the pieces together. Well, almost all of them, anyway.
Ash and Dee Dee’s New Mission
If you’re paying attention, you can see it coming. “The Man I Knew” opens with a cosy flashback between Elena and Joel, which is never a good sign. In the present day, Alison is watching her, and she gets in touch with someone to say they have a problem. Before long, Ash and Dee Dee, who have dug up a treasure trove of firearms that the Shining Truth pointed them towards, have a new mission. It doesn’t take Poirot to work out what that mission might be.
But you don’t expect them to pull it off. Elena is on the front foot for much of this episode. She threatens Alison’s assistant with pressing charges for grabbing her on her way out of the office, and he reveals that Alison has a girlfriend named Stephanie. Elena puts Lou to the task of tracking her down, despite remaining reluctant to address anything personal. Alex also gets back to her with information about Kevin Gano.
Elena visits Kevin’s house and speaks to a neighbour, who mentions having seen two kids hanging around. She’s getting closer. Too close, as it turns out.
The Man She Knew
Lou eventually messages Elena to clarify that Joel wasn’t having an affair. She’s waiting for Elena when she gets home and gives her the full explanation. Remi, Maria’s mother, was Joel’s friend. She asked him to be a donor for her, and he agreed without really thinking of the potential repercussions. Since Elena couldn’t have children, he kept the whole thing a secret to spare her feelings.
Having spoken to Lou, Maria has dropped the charges and invited her and Elena for dinner. Comfortingly for Elena, she now knows her husband never cheated on her. She can begin to mourn the man she knew, not be bitter and resentful about the man she thought he had revealed himself to be. It’s a nice development, coming at exactly the wrong time, since nice developments at this stage of a Harlan Coben show always foretell doom.
And so it is. Elena receives a call from “Stephanie”, who asks her to meet. But when Elena gets there, it’s Dee Dee. She lures her to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, into a room with a suspicious-looking sheet on the ground, and Ash reveals himself behind her, holding a gun. Elena closes her eyes and recalls Joel’s face as Ash shoots her in the head.
Brotherly Love
As mentioned at the top, Run Away Episode 6 reveals enough information that you can put almost everything together. Some things are admittedly clearer than others. For example, it isn’t immediately apparent what Luther is frightened of when Isaac and Ruby interview him, but he’s definitely frightened of something. We also don’t know what Jay is hiding about Ingrid, since he refuses to tell Simon, even when he approaches him in a calmer fashion.
But it’s much more obvious what the Shining Truth has been up to. Before her death, Elena had passed on the information she got about Kevin Gano, who was also adopted. When Damien’s husband, Neil, came back with login information for the ancestry site, Henry, Kevin, and “AC” – it doesn’t take a genius to work out this is Aaron Corval – were all listed as half-siblings for Damien.
So, it seems very much like all of these illegitimate children were conceived through the cult, all re-homed through the same adoption agency, and had now begun to find each other via ancestry websites. There’s your key connection.
What Happened to Paige At Lanford?
“The Man I Knew” also reveals – mostly – what happened to Paige at Lanford University. And it comes from an unlikely source. As it turns out, Professor van de Beek isn’t quite the creep that everyone has been describing him as.
Sam and Anya managed to bait van de Beek with a fake Instagram profile belonging to “Paige”, and through his story, they’re able to track his location. Simon goes to speak with him, but van de Beek shows him a bunch of crazy harassing emails from Katie. After he rejected her advances, she went bonkers and was jealous of his relationship with Paige, whom he was helping to transition into medicine, totally platonically.
Van de Beek also reveals that the university has a policy of not informing parents about certain incidents in the interest of protecting the students. This backfired pretty badly in Paige’s case, since she told van de Beek that she had been drugged at a party and woken up in a boy’s bed with no memory of the night before. She was raped, but didn’t want to report it to the authorities. When van de Beek was obligated to report it to the university, she stopped talking to him and completely denied it. Shortly after, the boy whom van de Beek thinks did it, Doug Mulzer, was brutally attacked in the gym.
Of course, Simon recognises Doug, since he saw him back at Lanford. The theory is that Doug raped Paige, and Aaron attacked Doug on her behalf.
Did Paige Kill Aaron?
Simon takes this information to Isaac, who’s sympathetic but can’t do anything in the short term. In private, though, he reckons this makes Paige even more of a suspect. She was brutally assaulted by Doug, and then turned to Aaron as a knight in shining armour, who then himself was revealed to be an abuser. What might that do to a person?
The end of Run Away Episode 6 supports this theory. Cornelius visits Simon at home and tells him that he saw Paige on the night Aaron was murdered. When he checked the flat, he discovered the body and disposed of the murder weapon. As far as he’s concerned, Paige killed Aaron, and he helped to cover it up.
Simon isn’t convinced. But don’t the pieces add up?
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