“Call and let me know how you get on.” Karen Lennon let the comment float between Miss Ella and me. After a few questions about “Miss Claudia’s” condition, the chaplain trotted back down the hall.

I got off to a rocky start as soon as I walked in. The room was tiny and crammed with the mementos of Miss Ella’s life—tables and shelves stuffed with Hummel figurines, china vases, glass animals, a large bronze head of Martin Luther King, Jr.. I knocked against a teetery table and rattled a tableau of china gazelles and zebras. Nothing fell, but Miss Ella muttered “Hmmpf,” adding, “Bull in a china shop,” in a loud undervoice. Only a small round table near the kitchenette was free of breakables, but it held Miss Ella’s workbasket, an enormous wicker affair that sprouted knitting needles like porcupine quills.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s and Barack Obama’s portraits hung on either side of the wall-mounted television, framed religious texts stood among the figurines. “During your times of suffering and trial, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then I carried you,” I read, and “Try to live each day He sends / To serve my gracious Master’s ends.”

The messages seemed incongruous with Miss Ella’s bitter mouth and harsh tone, but maybe when she was home alone she was softer, more malleable. She motioned me to a wooden chair next to the porcupine quills and pulled up a second hard chair to face me. When I tried to help her, she gave me a look that could have slit upholstery and told me to sit.

The first few minutes, she only offered the briefest answers to my questions:

I hear you’re looking for your son.

Yes.

What is his name?

Lamont Emmanuel Gadsden.

How old is he?

Sixty-one.

“When did you last see him, Ms. Gadsden?”

“January twenty-fifth, 1967.”

I was startled into silence. No wonder Karen Lennon hadn’t wanted to tell me. That was more than a long time to be missing. It was two lifetimes.

Finally I asked if Miss Ella had looked for him at the time he went missing. She nodded grimly but didn’t volunteer anything further.

I tried not to sigh out loud. “How did you search for him then?”

“We talked to his friends. They said he just disappeared.” Her jaws clamped shut, but she pried them open after a moment to add, “I didn’t approve of those friends. It was a hard job to go to them, and they weren’t respectful, but I don’t think they were lying.”

“And you filed a missing persons report in 1967?”

“We went to the police.” She pronounced the word to emphasize the first syllable: poh-leese. “There we were, two Christians in our Sunday best, and they treated us like we were darkies in a minstrel show.”

“My dad was a cop,” I blurted out.