“Thank you,” she said. “It’s delicious.”
He left for the kitchen, whistling something cheerful, and Kiana remained sitting there, looking out the bedroom window at the gray apartment buildings and the faint outline of downtown in the distance.
Outside, a fine October drizzle was falling, gray and tiresome, just like her growing anxiety.
At work that day in the small construction company’s office on the edge of their midwestern city, she 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 her thoughts kept buzzing around her like persistent flies.
Darius was acting strange.
Not just strange—suspicious.
He had become overly attentive, overly caring.
It was unusual and felt more unsettling than if he had simply been rude or hostile.
On Friday, he bought her flowers, a big bouquet of white and yellow blooms wrapped in crinkly cellophane, “just because.”
Kiana took the bouquet, thanked him, and went to find a vase.
Her hands were shaking.
In their five years together, Darius had only bought her flowers twice—on her birthday and sometimes on Mother’s Day—and even that had been inconsistent.
“Do you like them?” he asked, peeking into the kitchen.
“Very much,” she replied, trimming the stems with scissors. “They’re beautiful.”
He stood in the doorway, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets, looking at her as if he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.
He just nodded and walked into the living room.
Kiana set the vase on the windowsill and wiped her hands on a dish towel.
