Hello, dear listeners.
I am pleased to welcome you to my channel and present a new and intriguing story from right here in the American Midwest.
Get comfortable.
Enjoy listening.
Kiana Jenkins never considered herself a suspicious person.
Simply an observer.
In his thirty-seven years of life, he had learned a simple truth: people don't lie with their words, but with their eyes and their hands, and with those little pauses when a question is asked and the answer has to be invented on the fly.
Darío had been lying almost constantly for the past two weeks.
She first noticed it that morning, when he brought her coffee in bed "for no apparent reason" on a Wednesday.
Kiana opened her eyes, saw her husband standing there with a cup in his hand, and felt something inside her tighten like a guitar string.
Darius never brought her coffee in bed, not even during the first year of their marriage, when they were still pretending to be a couple in love.
The most he did was grumble from the doorway.
“Get up, I’ve put the kettle on to boil.”
"Why did you get up so early?" he asked, propping himself up on his elbows.
She smiled too much.
“Oh, I slept wonderfully. I wanted to… surprise you.”
That momentary, barely perceptible pause before he said "surprise" was what gave him away.
Kiana picked up the cup and took a sip of coffee.
It tasted sweet, even though he hadn't had sugar in his coffee for about five years.
"Thank you," she said. "It's delicious."
He went to the kitchen whistling something cheerful, and Kiana sat there, looking out the bedroom window at the gray apartment buildings and the faint outline of the city center in the distance.
Outside, a fine autumn drizzle was falling, gray and tedious, just like his growing anxiety.
That day, in the office of the small construction company located on the outskirts of his city in the Midwest, he tried to focus on the numbers.
Accounting was a refuge for those who didn't want to think about life.
Columns, spreadsheets, reconciliation reports: the main thing was not to get distracted.
But his thoughts kept buzzing around him like persistent flies.
Darío was behaving strangely.
Not just strange, but suspicious.
He had become too attentive, too affectionate.
It was unusual and more unsettling than if he had simply been rude or hostile.
On Friday he bought her flowers, a large bouquet of white and yellow flowers wrapped in crumpled cellophane, "just because."
Kiana took the bouquet, thanked her, and went to find a vase.
His hands were trembling.
In the five years they had been together, Darius had only bought her flowers twice: on her birthday and sometimes on Mother's Day, and even that had been irregular.
"Do you like them?" he asked, peeking into the kitchen.
"Very much so," she replied, trimming the stems with scissors. "They're beautiful."
He stood in the doorway, his hands in his jeans pockets, looking at her as if he wanted to say something, but he didn't.
He simply nodded and entered the living room.
Kiana placed the vase on the windowsill and dried her hands with a dish towel.
Something was brewing.
I felt it in my skin, in my nerves, that ancient feminine instinct that never lied.
As night fell, Darío began to ask questions.
They were sitting in the small kitchen-dining room.
She was heating up dinner while he checked his phone.
Suddenly, without looking up, he said:
“Hey, how much have you saved for the renovation?”
Kiana froze, holding the ladle.
"Why do you ask?"
"Just out of curiosity. You wanted to renovate the kitchen, right? Do you have enough money?"
Slowly, she served the soup into their bowls.
“Yes. I have enough.”
Are you sure? It might be better to save a little more. Don't rush into anything.
Kiana sat down opposite him and picked up her spoon.
“Darius, I’ve been saving for three years. I have enough.”
He nodded, but it was clear that her answer did not satisfy him.
I was expecting something else: figures, perhaps, concrete details.
"And how much is there in total?" he asked, casually. "You know, in the account."
She stared intently into his eyes.
"Enough."
She let out a tense, forced laugh.
"Okay, okay. If you don't want to say it, don't. I just wanted to know in case you needed help."
Aid.
From Darius, who in his five years of marriage had never offered to contribute to the purchase expenses.
Kiana finished her soup in silence.
She felt a chill inside, but her face remained impassive.
That was his greatest talent: never showing what was going on inside him.
Money, he thought.
So it all revolved around money.
She did have a considerable amount in her account: more than one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
It was an inheritance from her grandmother Ruby, the only person who ever truly loved Kiana unconditionally.
His grandmother had passed away two years ago, leaving him a small apartment and her savings.
Kiana sold the apartment, added the money to her savings, and decided to put it away little by little: for the kitchen renovation she dreamed of, maybe for a vacation, or simply for an emergency fund.
Darío knew about the inheritance.
Two years ago, he even tried to suggest that she invest the money in a friend's business.
Kiana refused, gently but firmly.
Since then, the topic of money had not come up between them, until this week.
On Saturday, Darius started to take an interest in her bag.
At first it was subtle, small things like,
“Your phone wasn’t ringing, was it? I thought I heard something.”
Then he rummaged through his things "looking for a charger", claiming that his cable was broken.
Kiana watched as he took a quick look at his purse, which was on the dresser.
On Sunday, he asked her if she wanted to open a joint bank account.
“It’s easier this way,” she argued. “We can save together, spend together. We’re family, Kiki.”
Kiana stood in front of the bedroom mirror, braiding her hair, and looked at her reflection.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, just as sweet and affectionate... and lying down.
He lied so badly it was almost uncomfortable to watch.
