The low tone of “Look What You Made Me Do” by Taylor Swift plays, and I smile. It’s been a few days since Stevie just let it play on repeat. When I open the door, I find Clover huddled in the corner, her arms wrapped around her knees.
“Brought you breakfast,” I say.
“Please turn the music off. I’m begging you.”
I place the food on top of the dresser and tap my finger to my chin a few times, contemplating her request. Logically, I know that maybe I’ve taken this too far. But she fucked my boyfriend and tried to kill me, so I squash that negative way of thinking quickly.
“What information can you give me? If it’s good enough, maybe I will turn the music off.”
Her eyes scan the room like a crazed person as she tries to come up with something valuable.
“I think I might know where your mom is,” she says, looking down.
“Why don’t I believe you?”
“I said I might. Not that I know for sure.”
“What do you know?”
“Ryan helped her purchase a cabin in North Point, all cash, and I don’t think it’s under her name.”
I tap my chin again, irritated with this little bitch for not telling me this sooner. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because I fucking love Taylor Swift, and you psychos are ruining everything for me.”
“You know what, Clover? I think I might just believe you. The downside of this means I’m going to need to talk to Ryan.”
“The sex really wasn’t worth all this,” she says.
“You’re definitely not wrong there,” I say before I turn around, silencing the music and leaving the basement.
When I return to the kitchen, Stevie has her hip pressed against the kitchen counter as she blows the steam from her tea to cool it down. Her hair looks like a rat’s nest, and she looks like she hasn’t gotten much sleep.
“You look like shit,” I say, pouring myself a cup from the kettle.
She ignores my comment but rolls her eyes and places her mug on the counter. “You turned off the music?” she asks as she puts two pieces of bread in the toaster.
“Seems little Clover has decided to actually be useful.”
‘Oh, yeah?”
“She said Ryan helped my mom buy a property in North Point.” Stevie arches a brow at me and pushes the mechanism to make the bread disappear.
“So you’re going to have to talk to Ryan?”
“Looks that way, but I had an idea first, maybe to get some insight into what happened last night.”
“Your dad?” she asks.
“I wish, but you know he just always shows up on my birthday. I was thinking Adelaide.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asks as the toaster pops and she ignores it.
“Listen, I know how you feel about divination, but you can’t deny that she’s good at what she does. In a world full of things that don’t make sense, you really don’t think there’s any value in what she might know?”
“It’s not that I think divination is shit, it’s just Adelaide.” She turns so I can’t see her face. My cousin is easy to read, so her turning away tells me enough.
“You fucked her,” I say confidently, more like a statement, not a question.
