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and family.
    To the outside world, she and Petey were great friends. They’d been part of the same circle for years, always part of the crowd every summer.
    Only they knew about the strain—or should that be stain ?—on their relationship, which would never allow her the closeness he had with Lizzie, Zeke and Katie. Geez, Petey was even on speaking terms with Katie’s ex, Ron, again.
    “ And I just can’t help but think I should be a better friend, you know?”
    Alison nodded agreement with her patient, then pulled herself out of her own thoughts. Oops. Denise was off the mother phone call. “Wait. What did you mean by that?”
    Denise looked at her like it was a trick question. “That I should be a better friend?”
    “ Go on with that,” she said, motioning with her hand for Denise to go a little deeper.
    “ Well, I mean, you know, being single and all.”
    “ Mmm-hmm….” Alison mentally kicked herself for letting her mind wander. This may be something much more pertinent to Denise than her love-hate relationship with her mother. Not that the mother issue wasn’t fodder for many of their sessions—warranted or not.
    “ When you’re single, your friends become your family.”
    “ In many cases, yes. Go on.”
    “ But it seems like all my friends have either just gotten married or are about to. I’m feeling…very….”
    “ Left out,” Alison finished for Denise. Which she absolutely never did. And honestly, was she finishing Denise’s thought or her own? The situation might be babies instead of husbands, but there was no denying her tight circle of friends—yes, her family in many ways—was moving in a different direction. And Alison was feeling…what exactly was she feeling? Is that why she’d slept with Petey the night of Katie’s wedding?
    In the months since that night, she hadn ’t allowed herself to even try to put the drunken pieces of the puzzle together let alone analyze why she’d done it in the first place.
    Enough. It wasn ’t the time or place to be thinking about… Petey barely letting the heavy hotel door close behind them as he pushed her up against the wall of her room and started kissing her.
    “ But why do you feel you need to be a better friend?” she asked Denise, trying to shake the flash of memory.
    “ Because…maybe then….” She couldn’t finish, and this time Alison kept quiet. Denise was in her late twenties, and not originally from the U.P. She’d gone to Tech, fallen in love with the Copper Country, and decided to stay. Not entirely uncommon. Though most Tech grads with degrees in engineering found their way to larger cities.
    Not being a native, and with most of her classmates gone, Denise had a smaller group of friends in the area, who were now apparently marrying off.
    “How’s your sleep lately?” Alison asked, glancing at the small wooden clock on the end table. Time to wrap it up.
    Denise had a guilty look on her face as she said, “Fine.” Alison gave her a questioning glance, which made Denise turn her attention to the window.
    Alison paid more than she probably should for her office space, but it was high on a hill on the Houghton side of the bridge and had the most spectacular view of the Portage canal and lift bridge. In the fall, the colors of the Hancock trees were incredible. Even now, with the immense white blanket of snow and ice covering everything, it was breathtaking.
    Unless you were suffering from seasonal affective disorder, as Denise was. Then the frozen tableau could be seen as one incredibly long emotional jail cell.
    “ Well, maybe not fine. But not as bad as last year.”
    “ Did you try the special lamp I told you about? For light therapy?”
    “ Not yet.”
    Alison nodded. She could lead the horse to water…. She continued to go through the things that she and Denise had identified in earlier sessions as behavioral goals. Each week she gave Denise a new strategy or tool for dealing with the issues they ’d