PLOT

    Plot was always the last thing I thought of, if at all.  It was being able to express myself, feeling through the ends of my fingers, the few I used, connecting with my characters as I connected with the keys that carried me along.  That anything would hinge on who did what never occurred to me.

     But yesterday I started to sort out maybe not exactly what had happened to my daughter Madeleine.  But only some of it.  I think.  I can't be really sure.  This much I know for sure: she is dead.  And 
somebody might have killed her.
      I got the most beautiful picture of her, recent, pulled together like a teenage model, sent me by her dearest friend, the sad way life works out, her own life pulled together many miles away. Sending me the loveliest picture of Madeleine, looking like the supermodel it would have made her happy to be. Only dead at just turned 50.  A bad dream.

    I had an actual bad dream last night, the first I have had, at least I am aware of having, where I didn't know anybody in it, or where I was: it was a museum, I think someplace like Philadelphia, only I have been in Philadelphia and this place was foreign to me.  Filled with uptight, aloof people, who didn't know who I was, and didn't care.  And I was inarticulate, and frightened.  Knowing nothing, most especially why I was there, or where 'there' was.  And then I realized I was dreaming, and woke, abruptly, remembering Madeleine was dead.

    My poor little girl.  This is all so hard, and hard to believe.  Europe shattering, Trump re-surfacing yet again, and Madeleine dead.