Fateful beginning of vacations

Chapter 48: Kathi's Moving In

A few days had passed since the trial. Sandra had been given a good telling off by Jochen because she had not appeared in court. Since her mother had intervened a little bit, it had remained with the telling off. Kathi did not fare any better. Helen had given her a long lecture in her hospital room about how irresponsible it would be to simply disappear from the hospital and she should be glad that she had put Stefan on her, even if it bothered her a little that he had brought Kathi to the trial after all. But he would always have been there if anything had happened. Two days after her telling off, on Monday, Kathi was finally allowed to go home, or at least to the place that was to become her home in the future. She continued to live in the meager guest room. The condition of the room depressed her, but with all the hustle and bustle of the last days or weeks it was understandable that the room was still not really furnished. Kathi spent most of her time in the living room anyway, with Sandra or with Sarah in the room. But slowly she wanted to have her own retreat.

Kathi just entered the kitchen when she surprisingly met Helen.

"Um...morning. Why aren't you at work?" asked Kathi.

"Morning. I took the day off." explained Helen.

"Like just like that now?" replied Kathi.

"Well not exactly. I have a little surprise for you." she started to tell and put a cup of coffee on the table for Kathi and sat down at the table with her.

"A surprise?" beamed Kathi a little. "Come on what is it?" she asked excitedly.

"Now that we have a little peace and quiet and everything important has just been sorted out, we can finally see to it that you move in here properly." explained Helen.

"What do you mean I've already moved in?" replied Kathi, confused.

"Yes and no. So you do live here, but think about it, you live out of the things you brought with you weeks ago, sure they are washed regularly but all your other personal things, they are not here yet, we should change that and above all we should renovate the guest room, pardon your room a little bit or don't you think?" Helen explained what she meant.

"Oh, that's what you mean. Yes, that's right. It was starting to bother me a bit too if I'm honest." Kathi admitted.

"So why didn't you tell me?" asked Helen.

"Oh, you had so much stress the last weeks and days, I wanted to wait until everything has settled down." Kathi confessed.

"Oh Kathi why did we go through all this stress? But only so that you can stay here and Sarah too. I didn't do the adoption thing so you would have to be considerate of us. Right now it's more important that you feel comfortable here." replied Helen.

"Thank you." said Kathi, that was the only sensible thing she could think of.

Helen smiled and stood up. "I'm going to go wake up our late riser. We'll definitely need her for support." she said and left the kitchen.

Kathi took a few sips of her coffee and thought about her room at home with her mother. Would everything fit in her new room? What could possibly go or where could excess furniture be stored. There were some things she definitely knew wouldn't fit in her room and even if they did, they probably wouldn't be furniture she wanted in a room with her other stuff. A shame really, but she had to cut back on that. It wasn't long before Kathi heard a rather bad-tempered Sarah coming down the stairs. Helen and Sarah entered the kitchen at the same time.

"Oh, Mom, it's so early!" complained Sarah.

"You're out of luck today for once. No long sleep." said Helen.