Page 1 of Scarred By Sin

1

Brooklyn Walsh

July 2004

Thursday — 2:16 pm

The heat had been building all afternoon, heavy and unmoving, the kind that pressed against the skin. Brook turned the corner onto her street with sweat collecting at the base of her neck, her tank top clinging to her back. She had spent the last three hours at Sally's house reading magazines and drinking lemonade. She should have accepted Mrs. Pearson's offer to drive her home. The walk was only four blocks, but the July sun made it seem much longer.

She spotted her mother from halfway down the sidewalk. She was standing on the front lawn, though her shoulders were hunched forward. As Brook's steps brought her closer, she realized that her mother had one hand pressed against her mouth.

Something was wrong.

“Mom?”

As Brook edged nearer, the damage to the front lawn finally came into focus. The rosebushes that had lined the front walkway for as long as Brook could remember were gone. Not trimmed or wilted or suffering from the heat. They had been ripped from the ground, some of their root systems exposed and crusted with dry soil.

Clumps of dark earth were scattered across the grass in wide arcs, as though someone had torn them out and flung them aside. The ceramic border her father had installed the previous Spring, the one he had spent an entire Saturday leveling and pressing into the ground, had been kicked apart. Jagged pieces of painted clay lay in the flower bed and on the walkway, some reduced to nothing more than gritty powder ground into the concrete.

She turned around at the sound of Brook’s voice. Her cheeks were red, and while there were tears brimming in her eyes, they were more from anger than anything else.

“It was those Bushel boys,” her mother murmured, shaking her head in disgust. “I just know it. They've been tearing up everyone's yards on their bikes. I'm going to have your father call their parents tonight.”

Brook peered at the rosebushes again. They hadn't been run over with bicycle tires. Literally, every single bush had been uprooted. And the ceramic border hadn't been cracked by a bicycle tire rolling over it. It had been stomped. The shoe tread marks were visible in the soft soil where someone had stood and driven their heel down again and again.

Brook glanced across the street to Maxwell Simmons' house. He'd fallen in with some troublemakers at the end of the school year. It hadn’t helped that her father had scolded him for parking his mom’s car directly across from the driveway, which made it difficult for her dad to pull out.

Had Max ruined their landscaping in retribution?

“Mom, the Bushels are in Florida,” Brook said, pulling her gaze from Max's front porch. “Tyler was bragging about going to Disney World the other day.”

Her mother yanked a pair of gardening gloves from the pocket of her apron. She then pulled them on with sharp tugs. She shook her head again, more firmly this time, frustration etched across her features.

“Well, they must have just left.” She gestured at the ruined flower bed while giving an audible huff. “Who else would do something like this? They've always been troublemakers.”

Brook had planned to go inside, ask her father for some money so she and Sally could rent a couple of movies at Blockbuster. They wanted to rewatch the first two Harry Potter movies since the third had come out in theaters last month, but she couldn't very well leave her mom to clean up the front yard herself.

“I can't believe this,” her mother muttered as she bent down to gently pick up some crushed rose petals. “My poor babies.”

The woman spent most days pruning and weeding. She diligently watered the rose bushes every single week. Not too much, not too little. She had even nursed those rosebushes through two harsh winters and a late frost that had nearly killed them back in April.

The screen door suddenly opened before slapping shut with a sharp crack.

Brook turned toward the house, expecting to find her father. Instead, her brother stood on the front porch, hands tucked casually into the pockets of his jeans. Her first thought was that Jacob must be suffocating in that denim, because it had to be in the nineties.

The humidity didn't seem to bother him, though.

His posture was loose, almost lazy, like he had just woken up from a nap and wandered outside to check the weather. His brown hair was slightly damp at the temples, and his T-shirt was untucked. He didn't even glance at the destroyed flowerbeds. He didn't pay any attention to their mother, either.

His gaze found Brook instead.

The way he was staring at her was direct. Steady. A few seconds passed before a smirk slowly crossed his face. The kind of expression that existed only long enough to be registered before it vanished behind the mask of indifference he wore so effortlessly.

There and gone, like a match struck and extinguished with a single puff of air.

Brook's stomach tightened, and she instinctively wrapped her arms around herself. She held his stare without blinking, without moving, her sandals planted on the edge of the walkway where a piece of broken ceramic lay near her toe.

“Jacob, honey,” their mother called out. She had turned partially toward the porch but was still glaring at the rosebushes, as though she couldn't quite pull her attention away from them. “Dinner's at six. I'm making your favorite.”