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empathy lay between Ella and Claudia that helped Ella understand her sister, but it was only habit. She cranked Claudia up in bed and helped her eat a little meatloaf, a few spoonfuls of mashed potatoes, a bite of garish Jell-O.
    “ ’ Ank ’ou, Ellie.” Claudia lay down, and Ella sat with her until her sister slid away from her into sleep.

5
    IT’S A BIRD . . . IT’S A PLANE ... NO! IT’S SUPERCOUSIN!
    TRAFFIC’S BECOME LIKE MARK TWAIN’S OLD BROMIDE: WE all whine about it, but no one tries to fix it. Even me: I complain about the congestion and then keep driving myself everywhere. Trouble is, Chicago’s public transportation is so abysmal, I’d never have time to sleep if I tried to cover my client base by bus and El. As it was, my trip home took over forty minutes, not counting a stop for groceries, and I only had to go seven miles.
    When I’d squeezed my car in between a shiny Nissan Pathfinder and a boxy Toyota Scion, I couldn’t summon the energy to get out. As soon as I went inside, my downstairs neighbor and the two dogs would leap on me, all eager for company and two of them eager for exercise.
    “A run will do me good.” I repeated the mantra, but couldn’t persuade myself to move. Instead, I stared at the trees through the Mustang’s open sunroof.
    In June, summer comes even to the heart of a great city. Even to the world of the steel mills, where I grew up. The light and warmth of spring always fill me with nostalgia, perhaps more this year because I’d been immersed so recently in my mother’s childhood.
    After seeing the rich green hills in Umbria, I understood why my mother kept trying to create a Mediterranean garden under the grit of the mills. By July, the leaves, including her camellia, would be dead-looking, coated with sulfur and smoke, but each spring the trees put out hopeful tendrils. This year, it will be different. Maybe the same would be true of my forebodings about my new client. This time, events would prove my pessimism false.
    When I’d left Miss Ella’s apartment, I stopped at Karen Lennon’s office. Miss Ella had signed a contract agreeing to a thousand dollars’ worth of investigation—essentially, two full days at half price—to be paid in installments, with seventy-five dollars in cash in advance as a retainer.
    A passing nurse’s aide told me Karen was making pastoral calls in New Manor’s skilled-nursing wing. I sat on a scarred plastic chair in her office for almost an hour; my other choice was an armchair whose springs sank almost to the floor. I wasn’t idle: I studied Pastor Karen’s books: Pastoral Theology in African-American Context , Feminist & Womanist Pastoral Theology. I read a few pages, but when Karen still hadn’t shown up I answered phone calls and did an Internet search for a different client, a high-paying law firm. I hate cruising the Net on a handheld—the screen’s too small, and it takes forever to load text—but Karen Lennon’s computer needed a password to get online.
    When Karen finally returned, she was in a hurry, ready to pack up and get out of the building. She tried to give me a welcoming pastoral smile, but she clearly wasn’t ecstatic at my demands for time and information, so I said I’d follow her to the parking garage.
    “Did you know that Lamont Gadsden hasn’t been seen for forty years when you asked me out here?” I asked as she locked her office door. “Was that why you were so cagey with me?”
    Karen Lennon was still very young. Her soft cheeks flushed, and she bit her lips. “I was afraid you’d say no outright. It’s so long ago. My own mother was only a teenager then.”
    It rattled me to realize her mother and I were almost the same age. “Why did Miss Ella wait so long to make inquiries?”
    “She didn’t!” Karen stopped in the middle of the building’s lobby, her hazel eyes large and earnest. “They asked questions of Lamont’s friends at the time, they went to the police, who treated them