sister sister // heathers au

two

Dear Diary, my teen angst bullshit has a body count.
- Veronica Sawyer, 1989

Veronica Dean was shocked to say the least when the police showed up at her house. She was worried it would be about Westerburg High School and the murders she was an accomplice in. But when the police said she was being arrested for supplying her drug dealer husband, she was furious.

For starters, Jason Daniel Dean, in all of his many faults never sold drugs. He had not put in hours of intensive therapy to throw all of his hard work away for drug dealing.

"What are you talking about?" Veronica asked, her voice taking an edge without meaning to. She sounded assertive because she was being backed into a corner.

"Your husband was found with three kilograms of heroin, a half ounce of marijuana and a bottle of Xanax with your name on it. There was pills missing from the bottle." The officer explained.

"That's because it's my prescription." Veronica told the officer.

"We can't prove who took those pills, ma'am. But we're going to have to take you in until we can verify that you received the prescription legally." The officer said, handcuffing Veronica and steering her outside.

Veronica's face was the same color of Heather Chandler's scrunchie, a flaming red. Her neighbors never saw her much but now when they did see her, she was being arrested. As the officer drove to the jailhouse, Veronica tried to think of what the hell heroin was doing in her husband's Porsche.

Jason Dean used weed, he drank occasionally and smoked constantly. But he had never touched a single hard drug in his lifetime. He experimented slightly in the first few years of college. And in senior year with Veronica, they played around with psychedelic drugs but that's it. It all fizzled out eventually, when she found out she was pregnant.

Was it a setup? Or did she just not know her darling husband as well as she thought?

When she got her one call, she didn't call her parents to bail her out. She called her daughters to let them know she was safe. She said a prayer that Emily and Chloe didn't see anything on the news about this supposed drug bust.

Her family was divided now, her daughters in someone else's home. Her husband was in a different jail cell, she hadn't seen him other than passing by to her own cell. They didn't converse, they couldn't. But they told one another what they always told each other, I love you. Veronica repeated the phrase in her head. It bounced around in her conscious the same way her daughters played with a ball as young girls.

Did he love her? She wasn't very sure at this moment, despite being sure for over two decades without a pause until now. Was her husband doing heroin? She didn't notice any tracks on his arms when they slept in the same bed. Perhaps he was dealing drugs, even though it was disgustingly out of character.

Could young and unstable Jason Dean have dealt drugs? Absolutely. But her forty year old husband, an architect and a family man, selling drugs? It was a farfetched thought that didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Momentarily, Veronica wondered if it was one of her children doing heroin. But again, there weren't any track marks on any arms. Veronica knew what tracks looked like. Brown lumps left behind from self-injecting needles, they were easy to spot. She had only ever known one person to do heroin, Heather Duke.

Heather began using when she married her first husband, Charles. They tried for two years to have a child, before finding out that Heather was infertile. They both started cheating. It was with Heather's affair that she started to use drugs. She divorced Charles and promptly married the drug addicted man called Tom. Heather stayed on drugs consistently until being arrested in 1994. Tom divorced her and it was in Rehab that Heather met her third husband, Patrick. He was her addiction counselor. They got married in 1997. Patrick had two sons and a daughter from a previous marriage. With her stepchildren and a loving husband, Heather got what she wanted for so long - a family.

But Heather had been clean since 1995. No one was around who did drugs and it made no sense to think anything other than JD was dealing. Veronica hoped that her psychiatrist would help. That she would verify what Veronica told the police about the Xanax.

"Why are you crying?" Veronica's cellmate asked. It wasn't until then that Veronica realized she was.

"I'm worried about my daughters." Veronica answered. The cellmate nodded but didn't offer Veronica comfort. Perhaps she didn't deserve comfort. However Veronica stopped crying after a while. Emily and Chloe would be okay. She just knew it.

"Veronica Sawyer, ever the fool." Whispered the echo of Heather Chandler's voice. An auditory hallucination brought upon by guilt.

Was she just as guilty this time?

author's note: updates every Friday 💕