Wow, thank you so much for the reviews and encouragement so far! As a newbie here it's really spurring me on. I hope you enjoy the next chapter.

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June 5

Dear Mr Dixon,

Thank you for writing back to me. I realised after I read your letter that I'd gone about it all wrong: why would you want to help me when you don't know Maggie and me? So let me tell you about us.

Maggie's my big sister. She'll be twenty-three by now (her birthday's in March) and she's a real pretty girl. Taller than me, with brown hair just skimming her shoulders. But she ain't no pushover. She's always been the feisty one. One time when she was fifteen she rode one of daddy's horses bareback, this big white mean one called Phantom that you could barely call broken, right round the perimeter of our property, whooping and hollering like a banshee. Laughing too. She'd been told she wasn't good enough a rider to take him out, but she went ahead and did it anyways, and made all that noise so as everyone would know she'd done it. She got in trouble of course. Had to dig fence posts for one of the top fields for a whole week. But after, she road Phantom as much as she liked and daddy didn't make a squeak.

After she finished high-school daddy started to teach her how to run the farm. He's a bit older than my mama was and he's almost seventy now. She's going to run the farm after he's gone.

She's my half-sister, but she's never felt half. She's the real thing to me. My mama married daddy after Maggie's mama died, and then they had me. Now my mama's dead too and Maggie's disappeared so it's just daddy and me at the farm, and the farm-hands of course.

When I finished high-school I didn't fancy going to college either, but I also didn't want to learn farming. I love music and I play the piano. I've been writing little songs almost as long as I can remember. When I was sixteen I sent a song to a record label in Atlanta, and what do you know! They sent me back a check. I couldn't believe it when I saw my name printed on it. I banked that money, and I've been banking every check they have sent me since. I've sold three more songs to them. Just before I graduated high-school I heard one of them on the radio. It's called Two Hearts and a Diamond. It's funny, I don't really play poker but after I watched Maggie playing with one of the farm hands one time I had this idea for a love song with all these poker puns and it just wrote itself. This trio of girls called The Sweetgums who sing country music got given it and it was sorta a hit for them.

Daddy gave me such a talking to when he saw your letter with that official prison stamp on the front. He didn't want to give it me, but I persuaded him. There was no way he was keeping your letter from me.

Please write back, and tell me about yourself. No strings attached.

Yours sincerely,

Beth Greene

…

Daryl put down the letter with a groan. This girl sure was pushy. He hadn't expected to hear from her again after he'd sent his letter, but here was another one, just two days after he'd sent his. She must have sat down to write it straight away.

He was in a far corner of the prison yard in some shade thrown by a high wall. He'd waited till he was alone to open Miss Greene's letter. He didn't want anyone thinking she was just another one of those crazy girls who wrote love letters to inmates. She seemed like sweet. Naïve, that was for sure. But reading her letter was the first thing that had taken him out of himself in months. She spoke of her sister with such love, and she was smart, too. Smart enough to compose songs that bigshot producers wanted to buy and turn them into hits on the radio.

He read it again, but this time he frowned. Every reference to her sister was in the present tense. That wasn't good. It just meant that when Maggie's body finally turned up or somebody confessed to her murder she was going to get her heart broke.

He couldn't help reading between the lines of the letter.

I banked that money, and I've been banking every check they have sent me since.

Was this a way of telling him that she was willing to pay for his help? He had never taken handouts from anyone and he wasn't going to start now. Especially not when he was in prison. A couple of the guys who received love letters from women were scamming them, making all these empty promises in exchange for cash and presents. It was disgusting.

In the afternoon he was making road signs. He liked working with metal and it gave him something to do with his hands. Today it was stop signs and he stood at a heavy-duty machine chopping them into octagonal shapes.

When he got back to his cell his cell-mate was elsewhere, so he took out a paper and pen.

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June 7

Miss Greene,

There ain't nothing to tell. I'm a ward of the state. I eat when they tell me. I sleep when they tell me. The food ain't fit for pigs and the company ain't either.

I'm sorry about your sister. She sounded like a real nice girl.

Good luck with your songs. I hope I get to hear one someday.

Daryl

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He'd written those last two sentences without thinking and now he wished he hadn't. It sounded too friendly and the last thing he wanted to do was encourage this girl. He thought about scribbling them out but that might only make her wonder what he'd written and write back and ask him.

Daryl shoved the letter into an envelope, wrote the girl's name and address on the front and put it into the pocket of his jumpsuit.

…

Beth tore open the envelope. It was another letter from Mr Dixon, and he'd written back right away. She knew that telling him about her and Maggie would do the trick. They weren't just strangers to him now.

But when she looked at the letter she saw it was just a couple of short lines like the last one, and they were just as disappointing.

Or were they?

Good luck with your songs. I hope I get to hear one someday.

It was a small olive branch, but it was something. Maybe he was just shy and needed a little drawing out.

Beth went to her desk and picked up her pen.

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June 9

Dear Mr Dixon,

Here's a picture of me and Maggie taken just a few weeks before she disappeared. She's the one on the left in the white t-shirt. I'm the one in the denim shirt. We're grinning so hard because Maggie's mare had just foaled and it was a beautiful little boy. He's getting so big now, and his name is Billy.

Maggie was friendly with the farm-hands and all our neighbours. She had friends in town, too, the ones she went to school with. She didn't have a boyfriend … but there was something giddy about her those last weeks. I asked her straight out several times if it was a man, and she'd just shrug and look mysterious or grin like an idiot. I don't know why. She'd always told me about guys she'd gone out with in the past. I hate her keeping things from me. Not because I'm nosy, but because I love her. Maybe she knew daddy wouldn't like him for some reason, but I wouldn't judge her.

Sometimes I find myself looking out the window and wondering what you're doing at that precise moment. If it's sunny I wonder if you're outside. We had meatloaf with peas and carrots last night and it made me think about what you said about prison food. Is that the sort of thing they give you to eat? Can you even ruin meatloaf so it's not fit for pigs?

Yours sincerely,

Beth Greene

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June 11

Beth,

Good God, girl. You gotta stop calling me Mr Dixon. I've been just Daryl my whole life till I found myself in court and then it was Mr Dixon this and Mr Dixon that. I'm not even Daryl in here. I'm Dixon to the warders and the inmates both.

Don't go sending pictures of you and your sister to just anyone. Specially not into a prison. This place is wall-to-wall creeps and you don't know want to know what would happen if one of them got hold of it.

Your sister was seeing someone? Sure sounds like it. That there's your best lead. Nine times out of ten it's the boyfriend, and ain't that just one of the saddest things you've ever heard. I know it's nine times out of ten because they're all in here with me.

Daryl

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He looked at the letter a long time, thinking. This wasn't going to get her to stop writing. In fact he'd practically given her a green light to keep going by telling her to call him Daryl. When her letter had shown up that morning he'd felt the weight of his incarceration lift a little from his shoulders. He'd put it straight in his pocket and hurried away, one hand clamped firmly around it. If anyone had tried to take it off him he would have dropped them whether a guard was looking or not.

He looked at the picture again. Maggie was just how she'd described: tall, capable. Beth had called her pretty, but he thought handsome was a better word. Striking. Now Beth, she was pretty. Big blue eyes and the sweetest expression, though there was something determined in the set of her pointed chin, and something in those eyes that said, I know I don't look like much, but you just watch me.

He should chuck her letters and her photo straight in the garbage but instead he found himself looking around his cell for a safe place to stash them. They weren't contraband but he didn't want his cell-mate getting a hold of them. He'd probably swap them for two cigarettes so the buyer could do lewd things to himself over them.

He had a book of walking trails that he'd traded for a Stieg Larrson paperback and he stuffed the letters and the photo between the pages. It was a hefty book and the letters didn't show.

Then he looked back at his letter. Don't send it. Don't send it. End it now.

But instead he found himself reaching for it and putting it in the envelope. They were just letters, he reasoned. There was nothing perverted in them, and he wasn't exploiting her.

'What the hell,' he muttered, and went to pay for another stamp.

...

I hope you like where the story is going, and please comment to let me know what you think! I'll be posting another chapter tomorrow.