Friends Forever by Danielle Steel

thing Izzie could think of to say. But she was sure it was her mother’s. She always acted like she didn’t really want to be there.
    “Both of ours,” her father answered as Katherine looked at her husband and daughter like strangers. She had felt like a stranger in their midst for years. She had never wanted children and had told Jeff that when they married. They had met when they were both in law school, and he had had big corporate ambitions then, but he later changed his mind and fell in love with the work he was doing for the ACLU. He took a summer job with them and never left, and turned it into an internship while he continued school.
    Katherine’s ambitions and goals had never changed, but Jeff had become a different person over the years. He had thought that having a baby would help their marriage and be good for them, and had promised to do everything he could to help her, and he had. He had been far more attentive to Izzie than she was, and Katherine knew it. But even after Izzie was born, much to her own horror, she had never warmed up to the idea. As far as she was concerned, it was a terrible mistake. And there was a human beinginvolved. Izzie was a wonderful little girl, but Katherine didn’t feel like a mother, never had, and still didn’t now. She knew it was some important piece missing in her. She couldn’t bond. She felt guilty about it, and she hated Jeff for forcing her to do it, or talking her into it. He had been so convincing. Katherine’s own parents had always been cold with her, and nothing in her background had taught her how to be a mother, and in her heart of hearts she didn’t want to learn. She felt like a monster every time she looked at her own child, and she knew that Izzie knew it too. Jeff had denied it for as long as he could, but although he hadn’t admitted it to Izzie, he had asked for the divorce, and Katherine had been relieved.
    “Your mother has a very important new job,” Jeff explained. “She’s going to be the senior counsel for a very large corporation, and she’s going to be traveling a lot of the time. That’s not the way that either of us want to be married. Sometimes things change between two people,” he said, looking at his daughter. “Our marriage no longer makes sense with your mother’s work.”
    “So you’re dumping us for your new job?” Izzie said to her mother with an anguished expression, and Katherine felt a knife slice through her heart. She had always known that she shouldn’t have children, and Izzie was paying the price for it now. Even she knew how wrong that was, but it didn’t change how she felt about it, or the maternal instincts she didn’t have. And Izzie knew that most of all. She had never been able to win her mother’s affection, or even more than a small slice of her time. She had grown up feeling like an imposition, and in many ways, in her mother’s life, shewas. Jeff tried to make up for it, but he was her father, not her mother, and Izzie had been starved all her life for a mother’s love. And now she was leaving. For a job.
    “I’m not dumping you,” Katherine said, looking at her daughter, knowing she should hold her arms out to her, but she couldn’t. “Your father and I have drafted a very fair agreement. You’ll be spending three days with him every week, followed by three days with me, when I’m in town. And you can spend Sundays with whichever of us is available. Or we can just do three days straight and three days on a revolving schedule, whichever you prefer.” It sounded sensible to her, for a business deal, but not for a child.
    “Are you serious?” Izzie asked with a look of horror. “You expect me to bounce between the two of you, like some kind of ball you’re throwing at each other, or a dog? How am I supposed to live any kind of life like that? I’ll be packing my suitcase every three days. I’d rather be an orphan and live in an institution. I can’t live like that. It’s