Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or any of the original characters. Those belong to Stephenie Meyer. The story Sweetbriar, as well as any original plots or characterizations are copyright to me.

A/N: A huge thanks to Susanpr for pimping and pimping and pimping Sweetbriar. Girl, you've been such an inspiration. She's also a mighty fine pre-reader, too. ;-)

Thanks to Rachel for betaing on her day off. You rock!

Next chapter- about two weeks.

I apologize for the short chapter, but it's full of information. So many of you have asked what was going to happen, and I've asked for your patience, not wanting to spoil what was about to unfold. Thanks for hanging in there with me. I suspect this chapter will answer many questions.

~Sweetbriar~

Chapter Six

It had been a long day, made exponentially worse by the burning need to get away from everyone else so that I could examine my discovery without the scrutiny of prying eyes. While I had been pulling up boards in the great room, Carlisle and Esme had gone over the electrical service to the kitchen to ensure its safety, and by the time the Amish carpenters were done laying the flooring in the great room and on the second floor, a feast, fit for a king, awaited us all in the dining room.

I could barely contain my excitement as I suffered through the huge dinner my mother and Esme put together for Emmett's carpenters. For the first time in weeks, I wolfed my meal down, just wanting to get done so I could go back to the privacy of my room at the carriage house. I would have had to be blind to not notice the smiles that passed between Esme, Carlisle and Mom. I was sure they assumed that if they worked me this hard every day I'd begin eating like a normal person again. If they only knew why I was in a hurry...

I grabbed a handful of my mom's sugar cookies and bundled them in a large paper napkin. I suspected a long night would lie ahead of me. Muttering something about wanting to work on Tanya's case and not wanting to be disturbed, I kissed Mom goodnight and asked her not to bother me when she came back home. She looked perplexed, but nodded as she busied herself with putting away the leftovers from dinner.

Eagerly, but gingerly, I placed my backpack on the passenger seat of my Volvo and headed down the lane. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so alive. I wasn't sure what had gotten into me, but I knew...I just knew something exciting was about to happen.

It was dusk when I pulled into the parking area. Grabbing my pack, I headed inside and made a pot of coffee. Taking the 2-quart carafe from the cupboard, I dumped sugar and creamer into the thermos while I waited for the brew to stop. I wasn't sure why, but I suspected I'd be awake into the early hours of the next morning.

I settled into my room with my confections and caffeine. I set up a folding table I'd seen my mom put in the hall closet before locking my door and placing the chair I'd be sitting in right up against the knob. I did not want to be interrupted.

I took the dirty bundle from my backpack, dusting it off over my trashcan before removing the covering. Originally it looked like the dirty oilcloth I'd seen in other places in the house, but, realized upon further inspection that it was some sort of tapestry type material. Someone had rolled it up and secured it with a rawhide strap. With shaking hands, I untied my treasure. Ever so gently, I placed the items onto my table. There were several soft, leather bound books, a bundle of envelopes that were tied together with cotton twine and several loose photographs. Suddenly my room seemed to fill with the musty, damp smells of the old inn.

The books were dilapidated and dirty. The binding was broken, the covers falling off of them. There were no markings on the outside of the grungy brown books. Cautiously, afraid they would disintegrate in my hands, I opened the book. The first page bore a name and a date, Isabella Whitlock, 1855, and below that, Happy 13th Birthday, Izzy. I opened the book to the first pages and my eyes fell to the antiquated script. The scrawl looked like that of a young girl— loopy and slightly messy. Were these diaries? Disappointment stung my high hopes. When I'd pulled the bundle from the wall, I had been certain that I had unearthed some priceless mystery from the past. I gently flipped through the first few pages. The entries were sporadic, and short. They spoke often of Miss. Payne— a school marm who was quick with a ruler when Isabella's handwriting was sloppy and crooked. I noticed, with a smile, that the handwriting began to improve after several entries.

Not quite ready to give up, I poured a cup of coffee and settled in to read the private musings of a young girl who put ink to paper more than a hundred years ago. Hoping to learn more about this mystery girl, I opened the second diary. The spine of the book was badly broken, with nothing to hold the pages in place. A page of paper fluttered to the floor. Setting the book on the table, I stooped to retrieve it. Scratched in pencil and barely legible, I realized it was an entry from 1863.

We barely escaped the tracker and his pack of dogs last night. Jacob carried me on his back as we traveled upstream through a river bed. Thankfully, because it's been hot, the water was low. Several times Jacob lost his footing and we both got wet. I could barely hold onto Jacob's neck last night; I was so ill. Tomorrow night we hope to visit a conductor with medical schooling. Jacob is afraid there is something bad wrong that is making me so sick. My belly hurts all the time. Jacob has been so good to me, sneaking off to catch fish or find clean drinking water for me. I keep telling him I'll be fine after we get to Jasper's house. Jasper will take care of us.

I didn't understand. Were these the journals of a slave girl? Customarily, slaves were not taught to read or write. Why was she being tracked by a bunch of dogs? What was making her sick? A million thoughts passed through my mind. My hands shook so badly I had to set the book down to keep it from falling apart. I couldn't imagine what other secrets I was going to stumble across.

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine this girl from the antebellum south; I could almost picture her here sitting at a small table writing in the dim glow of a kerosene lamp.

With the utmost caution, I turned to the front of the book. I felt like I was in shock as I began to read. This girl, this Isabella, was telling me who she was and what had happened to her. She was relaying to me all of the places she had been and what she had seen. I suddenly realized that I could very well be living life on the Underground Railroad through the eyes of a young girl.

I was overwhelmed with the prize I had sitting in my hands. Setting the book on the table, I drew a deep breath and tried to clear my head to make sense of all of this. Where did I begin? There was so much in front of me to be explored. The voice in my head replied, Why don't you start at the beginning. I could almost hear the youthful voice of Isabella, taunting me to dig in and discover the secret she had left me. Obviously this had been left here for someone to find. Somebody didn't want Isabella to be lost to the sands of time.

For the first time since the murders, I looked forward to the silence that nighttime brought forth. Soon my mother would be home and head off to her room and for hours, I would be able to enjoy the quiet solitude that could only come while my mother was lost in her slumber.

Picking up the bundle of envelopes, I marveled at their simplicity. While many were plain, dirty paper, some were intricately embossed with a raised design of some sort. These were sent during a time when Isabella Whitlock, Lynchburg, VA was enough information to ensure delivery to their rightful owner. To say I was transfixed would have been an understatement. So many emotions coursed through me as I fingered the delicate missives.

For the first time since I left Chicago, I felt myself slipping back into my Detective Masen persona. If this was a case, how would I have handled it?

I went to the coat closet and grabbed my brief case, opening it— I was momentarily overcome with the aroma that hit me. It smelled of my life— my life back when I had a life. It smelled like... home. A home I'd never return to. My first instinct was to slam it shut and save it so that I could open it over and over, repeatedly punishing myself in some sick, twisted way. I tended to be a masochist, but that didn't mean everyone around me wanted to endure another setback.

Thinking of the family I still had left, and what my job had cost them as well, I left the briefcase open, allowing the sweet smells of home to surround me like a blanket while I worked. The next time it would be fainter, and eventually it would be gone, and while the healing wouldn't be as quick as ripping off a band aid, in the long run, this would be better than the perpetual punishment I had originally considered.

I removed the tools of my trade, a notebook and my favorite pen. I pulled out my PDA and after plugging it in, I opened the calendar program— by changing the date, I could actually see what day of the week each entry was written. I pulled out my long-forgotten laptop and fired it up. It had been idle so long, I wondered if the battery would even take a charge. Esme had installed internet as soon as she had moved Mom and me into the carriage house, saying it was a necessity for running the inn, but I'd yet to use it.

It wasn't long before my internet explorer loaded. I pulled up my email program, and saw that it was full. The last mail had come weeks ago. I imagined by now they had decided it was a lost cause. I had been a lost cause then. I'd like to think I was getting better.

I Googled the Civil War... Lynchburg, Virginia... anything I could think of that would give me a timeline.

I spread everything from the bundle on the table. The term carpet bag came to mind. It was a makeshift suitcase made out of heavy material, like this tapestry that was bundled together with rawhide. That was, no doubt, the very bundle Isabella carried with all her worldly possessions as she was fleeing whatever it was that chased her out of the south.

There were a lot of letters. I noticed that they were not bundled in any particular order, although some of them appeared to have been read over and over. I sorted the envelopes by the addressee. Some were written to an Isabella Whitlock, some but not many to an Isabella Newton, and others were addressed to an Alice Brandon and, later, Alice Whitlock. There were also letters to Isabella Whitlock at Abingdon, VA.

The journals were literally falling apart at the seams. I tried to push the delicate papers back into the binding and set them off onto a stack of their own. Then there were the pictures. There were pictures of a couple; the tall blonde man was young, mid twenties, wearing a Civil War uniform. Next to him, stood a petite girl who couldn't have been more than twenty. She was small and waiflike with dark hair and pale skin. In stark contradiction to most pictures I'd seen from that era, the couple was smiling at each other. They looked to be very much in love.

Another picture, showed the couple later in life with a small raven haired child.

The third picture showed a young girl with huge doe eyes. Her hair was dark and pulled back into the customary bun most women wore in that era.

The next picture showed doe eyes with the blonde gent; they didn't appear to be teenagers, yet. I assumed they were brother and sister. They sat on some sort of carpet covered bench, a woman with dark hair sitting directly behind them in a large chair, a man with dark hair and a bushy mustache standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder. I assumed this was Isabella with her family. I turned the picture over, and barely legible, written in smudged lead, were the names. Charles Whitlock, Renee Whitlock, Jasper Whitlock, Isabella Whitlock. Summer, 1850.

Next, I came across another small picture of the raven-haired child. She was adorable and wore period clothing, a white parasol resting over her shoulder. I turned it over; the back of the photograph labeled her as Gabriella Ruth Whitlock.

Finally— there was a photograph of Isabella with a different man. He looked to be about ten years older than Isabella. His hair was light. Neither of them appeared to be happy. I assumed that was Mr. Newton.

Not wanting to damage the very worn and fragile originals, I stepped out of my room to go to my mother's desk. I was relieved to hear her snoring in her room. I didn't want to explain myself tonight. I looked at my watch and was surprised to see it was nearly 3am. I fired up the all-in-one printer/scanner and made copies of the photos.

With a pad of sticky notes, I began to dissect the mystery as if it were a case. I wrote the names of the Whitlock family on the first page and stuck it to the border of the photograph. Based on the envelopes, I assumed that the other young woman was Alice Brandon/Whitlock with Jasper Whitlock. I labeled it as such. Each one of the photos was tentatively labeled.

I remembered that there was a dry erase board, and some other things that had been used at the inn, in the hall closet. I rummaged around and located the dry erase board Mom used to post the menu each day, before she had been shut down. I also found a cork board, a box of thumb tacks, and some dry erase markers. I dragged everything back to my room. Before long my bedroom looked like one of the temporary headquarters we'd set up while working a case.

I pinned the copies of all the photographs up on the corkboard and sketched out a family tree on the dry erase board. It was official; Detective Masen had made an appearance.

From what I could decipher from the information before me, Isabella began the journals at the age of thirteen in 1855 and they continued into the late 1860s. The final journal was dated 1869, and had the name Alice Whitlock inscribed on the inside of the front cover.

Flipping through the journals, it appeared that the first one spanned a number of years; the entries were sporadic. Isabella talked of teas and cotillions, and ice cream socials in the summer time. There was mention of her parents and her brother, and someone named Nanny. Based on several of the entries, I assumed that Nanny was Isabella's nurse or nursemaid.

From time to time I felt myself nodding off. I poured cup after cup of coffee from the thermos and before I realized what time it was, I could see the gray sky outside my window; a new day was beginning. I'd been awake all night exploring a world that most people could only imagine. It gave me goose bumps, looking over my discovery. I was excited and nervous... and totally sucked in.

I decided it would be best to try and get a little sleep. Not quite ready to share this with anyone, I began to systematically gather the information. I took a calming breath before I dumped the contents of my briefcase onto my bed. I knew the next time I opened it, all traces of home would be gone, or at the very least intermingled with the musty odors from Isabella's documents. It was almost as if I were replacing Tanya with Isabella, and it tugged at my heart to do so, but I had no place safe to hide everything and somehow I knew this was important.

I piled the stacks of letters, the copies I'd made and the original photographs neatly inside. On top, I placed the journals. My thin briefcase was getting full. I left my electronics on the table and set the combination lock on my case. I wasn't ready to share my secret with anyone. While my family meant well, they were notoriously nosy and I didn't want to leave anything lying around until I was ready to share on my terms.

After wiping it down, I stuffed the dry erase board along with the corkboard under my bed. No one would bother them there.

Crawling into bed, I felt a strange sense of satisfaction; however, that satisfaction was eclipsed by the nagging questions that followed me into slumber.

Who was Isabella Whitlock/Newton and why did someone take the time to hide her personal possessions so carefully?

Why were her things here in Albany, NY, when everything clearly showed that she was from Lynchburg, VA?

She mentioned a conductor; I knew that at some point she had been traveling the Underground Railroad, but... why?

Why was she running? Because, based on the one page that had fallen from the second journal— it was obvious she was running.

Who was she running from?

And who was Jacob?

Fic Rec: My pal Shirley007 has written a new O/S called The Grand Escape. I'm not normally a Team Jasper sort of girl, but I have to say I really enjoyed it and was honored when she asked for my input. Incidentally, The Grand Escape is an entry in the Many Faces of Jasper Contest, see the link in my profile. Reading over some of these stories has sort of set the mood for the Jasper interaction that is forthcoming in Sweetbriar. Go check it out, especially if you're a Jasper kind of girl.

Thanks for reading. Please drop a line and let me know what you think. How am I doing? I'd love to know. I welcome constructive criticism. For me, it's a learning experience.