"Oh, you're not are you," I replied with a knowing grin as I looked over at the beauty of the bonsai sitting complacently on the table.

As I turned back, I swore I could see the faintest trace of a blush on her bronzed cheeks but wisely neglected to mention it as her face resumed its business-like mask. She shrugged again. "Anyway, I wouldn't know. She gave it up after she had me. Said she wanted to be a full-time mother and that was that." A small, almost shy, smile cracked the somber facade. "She could hum a mean lullaby, though."

"What about your dad?"

"My dad? He couldn't carry a tune in a bucket."

Groaning, I thumped my back against her shoulder. "That's not what I mean and you know it. What was he like? What kind of a man was he?"

"Uh . . .manly?"

"Ice . . . ."

"Angel, listen. It's kinda hard to talk about this, alright? I only took the picture out yesterday. I was hoping you wouldn't spy it quite so fast."

Biting my bottom lip, I nodded, understanding her gentle rebuke for what it was. "I'm sorry, Ice. I didn't mean to push."

"You're not pushing. I just need to be able to tell this in my own way, at my own pace, alright?"

I smiled warmly at her. "No problem. We can continue this another time if you want."

"No, that's alright. Just give me a minute here." Shifting on the bed, she pulled me in close once again, nestling my head against her neck and laying her cheek atop my hair. Then she took the picture from me and laid it on her own lap, the very edge of her thumb brushing over the static figure of the tall, handsome man who was her father. "My father was a good man. Hyper intelligent, but very easy going and friendly. I don't think there was a person in the world who didn't like him once they got to know him." I could feel her smile against my hair. "He probably should have gone into sales or politics, but instead he worked Research and Development at DuPont.

"He was also passionate about sports, especially the local teams. He had season tickets to watch the Colts play and even managed to score two Super Bowl tickets to watch Unitas get outfoxed by Namath. I was with him that day." Her voice grew slightly wistful. "It was one of the best days I can remember having, even though we lost."

"Sounds like a really special time," I remarked, more than a trace of wistfulness present in my own voice. I had spent most of my childhood aching for such a relationship with my own father. "How about your mother? Was she . . .jealous over your closeness to your father?"

She laughed. "Jealous? No, not exactly. She was an Orioles fan, with season tickets of her very own. She'd take me to some of the night games. I even got to hear her sing the National Anthem before a couple of 'em."

I straightened, gape jawed. "Your mother actually sang the Star Spangled Banner before baseball games?"

"Yeah. Her voice sounded really strange, echoing through the stadium. It was an . . .interesting experience, to say the least. I used to have a bunch of signed memorabilia from them. You know, jerseys, mitts, balls, bats," she shrugged, "stuff like that."

There was a moment of silence as she looked down at the photograph as if seeing into a past long buried. "She was a pretty soft touch as mothers went. Pretty much let me try my hand at anything I was interested in, as long as it wouldn't get me in trouble with the law." Her laugh this time was slightly bitter. "Bet she's rolling over in her grave about now. Her and my dad both."

I wanted so badly to tell her what she already knew. That if her parents were still alive, chances were excellent that Ice would never have done the things she did to wind up here. But I decided to keep my own council on the subject, hoping that by sharing more of this life with me, she'd eventually figure it out on her own.

"About the only thing she insisted on was voice lessons. Said that the human voice was God's instrument and you'd best keep it well tuned and not risk pissing Him off sometime down the road."

I shuddered with the memory of my mother forcing me to take deportment lessons for almost the exact same reason. "Did you hate them?"

"Nah. They weren't so bad. I suppose it could have been worse, if I'd been born with a voice like my father's. I was lucky, though. Singing came naturally to me, though I hated all things opera. Still do."

Tilting my chin up to meet her eyes, I smiled. "Maybe I can hear you sing sometime?"

She returned my smile with a little quirk of her lips. "Maybe."

Satisfied, I returned my head to its place burrowed against the warm skin of her neck. "How did your parents meet?" Not able to resist, I took a gentle bite of her sweet flesh, grinning as I felt a minute shudder pass down her body. Pressing a kiss into the mark I'd made, I felt her heart pick up its pace beneath my palm.

She shifted against me. "Keep this up, Angel, and you're never gonna hear the story."

If it had been any other story, the choice would have been an easy one. Ever since our first 'real' time together, my body had been in a constant state of sexual arousal. Just the smell of her would turn my insides into flaming gelatin and right now, I was surrounded by her heady, exotic scent.

The more logical part of my mind, however, reminded me that if I gave into my body's demands, I would more than likely have to wait months for the chance to question her on this topic again. If, indeed, that chance ever came. With Ice, nothing was ever a sure thing.

Lassoing my hormones, I pulled slightly back from temptation. "Alright, I'll be good. For now. More story, please?"

Leaning in, she gave me a kiss, then pulled away, resting her head against the wall. "Unlike me, my father loved the opera, as did his fiancee at the time. My mother's company was putting on their rendition of Massenet's 'Werther', and she was singing Charlotte. To hear him tell it, from the moment my mother walked on till the time she left the stage before the final curtain, he didn't have eyes for another living being."

"God, that is so romantic!"

"Yeah, well my father's fiancee didn't think so. After the show was over, he dragged her backstage to meet my mother. She might have been a piece of lint on the carpet for all the attention he paid to her after that point."

"Did your mother feel the same way when she met him? Smitten, I mean?"

"Oh yeah. She said that when she looked into my father's eyes, someone she knew was looking back, even though she'd never met him before." Ice laughed. It sounded almost frightened. "All my life, I never knew what that meant. Until now."

When this kiss connected, it was almost a carbon copy of the first we'd ever shared. Images flitted though my mind too quick for me to follow, but I knew, down deep in my soul, that we were connected on a level far deeper than mere surface attraction. There was something elemental and bedrock in what we shared, something both primitive and new and ageless at its very foundations.

It was not a kiss of passion, though it was indeed passionate. It was a kiss of healing and of home. If the ancient sages were right and we did spend our lives searching for the other half of our souls, I had found mine in almost as deep a pit of hell as it was possible to go and still be able to struggle to the surface intact and alive.

When it ended, I collapsed against her, weak and spent, yet filled with strength and energy, as if I had connected with some elemental force that nourishes the soul and relieves the heart of its heavy burdens.

My voice was very definitely plaintive as I asked my next question. "More?"

Ice chuckled. "Of what? The kiss or the story?"

"Mmmm. How about both?"

"Nope," she teased, "one or the other."

"Oh alright. The story then. I'll always be able to get kisses out of you."

"Ya think so, huh?"

"I know so."

"Hmm. I'll remember that." She tightened her grip around my waist once again. "Let's see, where were we? Ah yes, the meeting. Well, after the girlfriend left in a huff, they sat and talked until the opera house closed for the evening. After that, they had what my mother called a 'scandalously short' courtship. Two months. The scandal came in because of the fact that the ex-fiance's father was a noted patron of the arts and wasn't very happy to hear that his daughter had been dumped like yesterday's trash by the side of the road while someone who's career he funded made off with the goods."

"You have such a way with words, Ice," I snickered.

"Yeah, well in many ways, I'm my father's daughter. Anyway, after two months of dating, they got married, bought a new house, and a year afterwards, had me."

"It sounds like they loved one another very much."

"They did. Even though they'd have a fight every now and then, even as a kid I knew they'd always be together. I know most kids don't think their parents will ever split up, but there was just something about them that even I could notice, young as I was. It was almost like they were two halves of the same whole or something." She shrugged. "I can't explain it any better than that."

"I think you did a great job. That describes the feeling perfectly, don't you think?"

She smiled. "Yeah. It does."

I spent the next several silent moments trying to gather up the courage needed to take the next, obvious step. I was torn with indecision. Torn between needing to know and needing not to open up what was obviously a wound that still festered deep inside Ice's heart.

As if reading my thoughts, her body stiffened once again and she took in a deep breath before letting it out slowly. "They got hit by a bus."

"What?"

"My parents. You were wondering how to ask me how they died. They were hit by a bus. They had driven in to DC for their anniversary to see 'Werther'. They never made it. My mother was killed instantly. My father managed to hang on for a few days, but he never woke up. They finally decided to pull the plug."

"Oh, Ice. I'm so sorry."

"Yeah," she said quietly, wiping the tears from her eyes. "So am I."

Later that night, in the solitary darkness of my own cell, I lay on my back as tears wended their slow course down my cheeks, dampening my pillow. As I replayed our conversation in my mind, part of me wondered whose life had the more tragedy. Ice's, whose family loved and doted on her and were taken away? Or mine, whose family had, at best, only tolerated me and now considered me, though still very much alive, dead in their eyes?

I cried for us both that night. For the young girls we had been and for the women we had become. For our families. For ourselves.

But within the tears of sadness there also mixed tears of joy. If new life can spring from the ashes of the old, then a new life had sprung up between us from the barren soil of our individual tragedies.

A snatch of an old lullaby I had heard in some movie or other sprung to my lips and I hummed it to myself as I fell asleep, tears slowly drying on my cheeks.

PART 10.

AS DAYS TURNED into weeks, I felt my frustration level reaching new heights. Every new clue regarding the whereabouts of Ice's transcripts led to a blind alley with no answers and little hope of finding them.

When dead end after dead end spurred fantasies of homicide, I would take a walk outside into the crisp fall air and take out my frustrations on the ever-ready punching bag. I often found myself having to share it with a disappointed Critter who had failed her first parole hearing. She had found out during the hearing that while surgery had saved the store-owner's life, his health had never fully recovered. As months turned into years, he continued to become more and more frail. If he died as a direct result of the previous heart attack, Critter was afraid they'd add a manslaughter charge to the ones she was already serving time for. In any event, it looked as if she would have to wait yet another year for her next chance at freedom.

Pony and Sonny were on the outs over some failed love triangle and Ice was working long, enforced hours in the auto shop, breaking down and fixing up a whole slew of stolen cars designed to line the pockets of our corrupt warden.

All in all, it was not a good season for any of us, and it was about to get worse.

Frustration is a dangerous emotion in that it often leads us to make stupid mistakes in trying to relieve it. I made one such mistake and it cost me dearly.

About at the point of tearing my hair out in frustration, I finally gave in to Corinne's oft-repeated suggestion of allowing an investigative reporter friend snoop around a little to see what he could find. All previous suggestions of this sort had been rebuffed by me with the knowledge that many reporters of this type are greedy bastards who will stop at nothing to blow the lid off a big story if they can find one. This was one story I didn't want to be taken public.

Corinne promised me that she had so much dirt on this man that he wouldn't dare act against her wishes or he'd find himself ruined both personally and professionally. After what seemed the hundredth time of hearing the same suggestions and the same arguments, I was finally at the point where I'd either tell her to stuff it or to go with it. I chose the second option.

The next two weeks crawled by with semi-regular reports from the man who called himself 'Slim Jim' for reasons I'm sure I don't want to know. And those reports didn't tell me anything I didn't know already; that there appeared to be a cover-up of some kind regarding Ice's court transcripts. His contacts within the justice system were rebuffing his overtures with uncharacteristic stoniness and he sensed something big was going on behind the scenes. Something he couldn't possibly be expected to uncover given the strict ground-rules I'd laid out for him. Though I understood the hint, I didn't rise to the bait and left the man grumbling but determined to crack what could well be the case of a lifetime.

I was beginning to become seriously concerned that this man's innate greed for a big story would outweigh whatever dirty little secrets Corinne had on him and had finally come to the decision to tell her to call off her dog.

I sat in the library, rehearsing my arguments in my mind, knowing Corinne would use all the verbal charm at her disposal to talk me out of this decision. Against my better judgement, I had bowed to her formidable will once already and didn't want to do so again. This was too important to me.

As I opened my mouth to speak, another voice interrupted before the first sound exited my lips. "Angel, may I speak with you for a moment?"

I turned to see Ice filling the doorway, her face an expressionless mask that usually denoted anger and her eyes cold as her prison name. I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry. I looked over to Corinne for support, but found her staring at Ice as well, her own face showing trepidation, an expression I'd never before seen on her. Turning back to my lover, I nodded. "Yeah, sure."

Taking a deep breath, I pushed myself away from the table and out of my chair, trying to control the shakiness in my muscles as I made my way across the library and out into the hallway. Ice led me halfway down the dimly lit hall before stopping and turning so that my back was against the wall, her presence looming over me. "This stops now."

"Um . . .excuse me?"

Her hand flung out, palm up. "This . . .investigation . . .of my missing files. You're in way over your head on this one and everything is about one step from tumbling down all around you. I must have been out of my mind for agreeing to this in the first place."

"But, Ice . . . ."

"No, Angel. No, you listen to me. Call off whatever dogs you've got riding on this and close it down. Now."

"Ice . . . ."

Her hands came down and clamped painfully on my shoulders. "Now, Angel. Do us both a favor and back off." Releasing my shoulders, she glared at me for a moment more before turning on her heel and stalking off, leaving me to stand and stare after her retreating form, totally stunned.

A sound coming from the other direction caused me to whirl around. Corinne stood a few steps from the library door, looking down the long hallway. Her eyes slowly moved to meet mine. "I heard," she said in a soft voice. "And I'm sorry. I should have listened to you and not tried to bully you into something you didn't want in the first place."

"That's alright, Corinne. You were only trying to help."

"Regardless, this is more my fault than yours. I'll try to explain that to her."

I snagged her arm as she walked up to me. "No. I don't think that's a very good idea right now. I don't think she's in a listening mood."

My friend dragged a hand through her gray hair. "I suppose you're right. What should I do?"

"Get your friend on the phone and threaten him with every piece of dirt you've got. If that isn't enough, make something up, but get him off that case. Please."

Corinne nodded. "That I can do." She looked at me, her gaze both apologetic and compassionate. "Will you be alright?"

"I'll have to be, won't I." That came out more harshly than I intended and I clasped her wrist. "I'm sorry, Corinne. That was uncalled for." I sighed. "I'll give her a while to calm down and then go up to her cell. Maybe by then she'll be willing to tell me what's going on, huh?"

"Good luck," she snorted, returning my clasp before disengaging and walking back into the library to carry out her instructions.

"Thanks," I whispered after she was gone. "I think I'll need it."