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was Lynn not trusting her enough to tell her. In the next moment she realized that she no longer loved Lynn in a physical way, but she did love her as a best friend. A best friend doesn’t lie to her best friend.
    After the front door closed, she said, “Tell me what that was about, Lynn.”
    Lynn looked down. “Nothing.”
    Edie’s chest hurt. That was the problem with knowing someone so well. You caught all the nuances. “Don’t play me for a fool, Lynn.”
    “I strayed a little.” Lynn met her eyes. A worried frown was etched between her brows.
    “You sound like one of those philandering politicians. It’s okay, Lynn. Just don’t lie to me, please.”
    “Her name is Frankie. I met her at a meeting. We talked for hours.” Lynn drained her glass. “I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t be. Just give me some time to digest this. You better go.”
    Lynn hesitated, but Edie thought she looked relieved.  “You’re my best friend.”
    “I still am your friend, but I want to be alone now.”
    After Lynn left, Edie remembered how she’d been bursting to tell someone about the deer that had crossed her path, brushing against her as they went. Now there was no one to tell.  She got up slowly. Her muscles ached.
    She took a shower and stared at her naked body in the full-length mirror. It was a nice body, even if it showed her age in small ways—graying pubic hair, slightly drooping breasts. She pulled an oversized T-shirt over her head and turned off the lights on her way to bed. She picked up the book she was reading, Infidel , about an amazing woman from another world, and fell asleep in the middle of a paragraph.
     
     
     
    She wanted to avoid Lynn till she could look her in the eye and feel okay about it. When the phone rang early Saturday morning and Lynn’s name and number appeared on the display, she let the call go into her message box. She needed time and space. Not even the book and its upcoming deadline could keep her home. She decided to head to Minocqua and hit the ski trails.
    She was loading up her car, sliding the ski bag crossways from front to back, when a VW Jetta drove up. Pam got out of the car. Her jacket was open and her hands were stuffed into her pockets. “I just came to say goodbye. I guess you’re going somewhere too.”
    Edie put a small cooler in with her backpack. “Skiing,” she said.
    “Wish I could join you. Actually, I am going skiing with a friend as soon as I get back.”
    “Good,” she said. “See you next time.” As Pam got back in the Jetta, Edie lowered herself into the Focus and backed out of the driveway. She followed Pam’s VW out of the neighborhood and turned north on Interstate 39.
    She was lucky to get a small room at the Concord Inn, a Best Western across the road from Lake Minocqua, where snowmobiles were zipping across the ice. She skied at Winter Park the first day, using her skate skis on the wide trails. Up and down, up and down without stopping. She wanted to be so tired at night that she would drop into sleep. The sky was clear and whenever the sun penetrated the trees, it was blinding.  Her strong legs carried her till closing time, and during those hours she thought of nothing that she could remember. She picked up a sub sandwich and took it to her room. Opening a small bottle of Sutter’s cabernet, she washed down the sandwich and watched the news. Afterwards she took a shower and went to bed with her book.
    The next morning she drank coffee and toasted a bagel in the motel’s lounge before driving over snowy roads to the American Legion State Forest. The parking lot was empty, and she waxed her diagonal skis before heading off on the trail. She hardly noticed the cold. She’d be hot once she started to move. There would be no skate skiers on these trails. The tracked paths were narrow and steep. They twisted through the forest, sometimes widening at a sharp turn at the bottom of a hill.
    She was more than halfway through the one-way trails when she