Friends Forever by Danielle Steel Page A

insane.”
    Katherine looked surprised, and Jeff didn’t say anything. The difficulties for Izzie had occurred to him too, but Katherine thought it was “fair.” “I suppose we could alternate weeks, if that works better for you,” she said to Izzie, like a client she was trying to satisfy.
    “I don’t want to go back and forth between the two of you,” Izzie said as tears sprang to her eyes. They were destroying her life. “You’re both crazy. I can’t live like that. It’s not my fault you don’t love each other, and you got a new job. Why are you taking it out on me?”
    “But that’s what joint custody is all about,” Katherine said calmly, trying not to react to the distress in her daughter’s eyes. She would never have asked for the divorce—she had made her peace with the living arrangement they had. But when she told Jeff about the new job, he had asked for the divorce. And when she thought about it, it made sense to her too, and Izzie was old enough to understand.
    “I’m not a piece of furniture that you can shove back and forth at each other and expect to move twice a week.”
    “You’ll get used to it. It may even have some advantages for you. I just found a very nice apartment downtown, near my office, in a building with a pool.”
    “I don’t want a pool. I need a mother and a father and a home. Can’t you work this out, or something?” But the moment she asked the question, they both shook their heads.
    “We both deserve a better life than this. Our marriage hasn’t worked for a long time,” Jeff said sadly. “And I’m sorry this is hard on you.”
    “A year from now, when you’re fourteen, you can tell the judge what you want. But right now, it’s up to your father and me to come up with an equitable arrangement,” Katherine explained again.
    “Equitable for who? Doesn’t it count what I think?” They both stared at her blankly, and didn’t know what to do. “I think joint custody sucks, and so do you,” Izzie said, and ran into her room and slammed the door. She called Gabby and burst into tears and told her what had happened. Gabby couldn’t believe it and toldher that she could stay with them as often as she liked. But Izzie didn’t want to stay with Gabby, she wanted her own home. She called Sean and Andy after that, and they were both sorry for her.
    Izzie lay in her bed and cried all night, and the next day at breakfast her father told her that they would try to set it up some way that was easier for her.
    “Maybe you can do a week at a time with each of us, or two weeks, or a month. You could stay here all the time if it were up to me, but you have to see your mother too.”
    “Why? She’s going to be traveling all the time anyway. Why don’t you two alternate, and let me stay here all the time? I’ve heard of parents who do that.”
    “I think that would be pretty uncomfortable for us,” Jeff said unhappily, hating what they were putting Izzie through, but the marriage had been over for years. He had been going to group therapy for a year, and he didn’t want to live in a dead marriage anymore, with a woman who didn’t love him, and whom he no longer loved. But Izzie was the casualty of it now too.
    “But it’s okay to make me uncomfortable, I guess,” she said bitterly as she pushed her cornflakes around the bowl with a spoon. And then she looked at him unhappily. “Just don’t blame me if I flunk out of school. I can’t get decent grades and be moving three times a week, because you and Mom don’t like each other anymore. And the minute I turn fourteen, I’m going to tell the judge that I won’t go back and forth between the two of you, so you’d better figure out something else.”
    “We’ll try,” her father said sadly, but he couldn’t think of anythingyet. And a moment later he heard the front door close, as Izzie left for school.
    The only thing that comforted her that day, and for the next many months, was her friends. She spent