"You are going away?"
"Yes." Katrina replied as she looked up the driveway in anticipation for the taxi that would take her home. She had finally made up her mind. Staying with Ryan was not healthy for her. Despite the wounded expression she had seen on his face, Katrina needed to do some things alone and away from his stifling presence. Her new business also awaited her and with the orders now coming in, working from Ryan's place was proving to be a pain especially now that he had somehow convinced himself that she was not supposed to do anything in her present condition.
"Where will you go now?" Her grandmother asked. She was speaking to her on the phone after examining the possible locations for her new venture.
"That is for me to know and you to get into your mind that it is none of your business." She said with a smile, laughing at what she knew would be her grandmother's crazy expression.
"Why you..."
"Just kidding. But I will be fine. I assure you."
"And the baby?"
"Ryan already knows all the dates for my antenatal appointments. Like I told him, he is free to attend all the sessions. I won't be changing doctors so it won't pose a problem, but I really need this time for myself." She explained to her.
"And there is nothing that can be said to change your mind?"
"Not likely, especially if this means that you want me to come back home. Anyway I am going back to my old house so you know and stop stressing out. I figured, it is the least that I can take from my father after everything his choices have taken me through. " She spoke thoughtfully remembering how hard it had been to come to a decision and that specific conclusion. She hoped that this would pacify the matriarch and keep her from worrying about her safety being out in the countryside.
"And the other place?" The other question she was expecting came out of her grandmother's mouth. It was almost a month since she first left home, and having spent all that time out there even she that leaving it would not be an easy choice to make.
"I am turning it into a workshop. Since it is remote, the house can house my workers and with time we will see how that goes along."
"It seems that you've really thought about everything." Katrina smiled. So far her plans were working out well and in a few months time she hoped that her business would finally stabilise and in that way she would prove to her father that she was worth taking seriously. All the same, she still wondered how her father would take this news. Not from her mouth though but from the many spies and secret bodyguards that she knew he had posted around. If he was lucky he would even get to hear it from her ever calculating grandmother.
"I have no other choice grandmother." She told the old woman. "Anyway, Now you can go and tell your beloved son all I have told you you and this too, that I am fine and that he can call of his faithful watchdogs back to him. That is,unless they are actually spies and not bodyguards."
"Hehehee...Dearest granddaughter, You know that I am not a snitch."
"Really?"
"Fine. I do what I do because I think it is best for my family and if I happen to come off as a snitch, fine. Go ahead and sue me."
"Well...how I am now living is really not a secret so it doesn't matter anyway. So, he can watch all he wants and you can snitch all you want as long as none of you does anything to interfere in my plans."
"He misses you though, you know that?"
"I do." Katrina smiled again. "Anyway I have to go now my ride is here."
"Okay, take care."
With that Katrina hang up and got into the cab that had just stopped in front of her. She gave the female driver the address to her place and settled back thinking of all the changes she needed to effect. To remodel or not to remodel? The question hang heavily in her mind. Despite the decision she had come to, there was still a lot of pain she had gone through in that place and all the bad memories were etched into the very walls and items she had left there. She needed to erase all that.
To start anew, afresh and despite the urge to simply sell the place,s he actually loved the house and did not want to get rid of it. Remodel, she finally decided. She would start by auctioning off everything and strip it down to the wall papers and then she would begin again, a life on a fresh new canvas.
As the cab pulled up before the massive two storey mansion within the gates community in the suburbs of the capital, Katrina found herself frowning. The first thing that would need to go was that rug. The black welcome mat with red letters that someone had brought them as a house warming present. Not because she hated it,but because of what it reminded her of. Her very first night as a wife and in that new house.
How could she forget the sneer that had transformed her smiling husband. The disgust and the vehemence after he had carried her across the threshold? She had thought that he loved her so she had agreed. After all the two of them and their families had been friends for a very long time. Was it so wrong to imagine that love could grow out of friendship? She folded up the rug and threw it in with the trash.