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My shoulders relaxed at the clear signs she finally believed me. Though something still nagged at the back of my mind.

She slouched a little in her chair. “It made sense to me at the time that it had been deliberate, because you’d warned Izzy off your flowerbed, and then when I came over to discuss it—”

I raised my eyebrows at her use of the word discuss.

“Well, my intention had been to discuss rather than shout,” she said sheepishly. “I only yelled when you denied it because I was sure you were lying, and ergo, to me, that meant it had been a deliberate act. Because why lie if not?”

Despite how messed up it all was, I could kind of see it from her point of view. Almost. “My warning wasn’t sinister though. I didn’t mean that I was going to do anything to harm her in retribution.”

That comment earned me one of those small smiles.

“I just meant that I would put some citrus down to put her off the gardening bed. And, as I tried to tell you before, it wasn’t even me that was bothered about it. It was Aileen. She had asked me to say something because she didn’t like Izzy using our flowerbed to do her business. I didn’t really care.” I shrugged. “She was just being a cat. It’s different for dogs. They’re only outside their own property with their owner, so the owner can pick up the mess.” I ran a hand through my hair. “I tried to have this conversation with Aileen on more than one occasion but I never got anywhere.”

Nisa was watching me attentively. “Drew was the same. He never got cats. To be honest, he never wanted Izzy, but she had been my cat when we got together and I wasn’t going to rehome her. Even though he wanted me to.” A guilty expression flashed across her face after she added her last sentence, though I wasn’t sure if it was from misplaced guilt about not complying with his request to rehome Izzy (a very unfair demand, in my opinion) or (also misplaced) guilt over speaking ill of Drew.

She sighed. “I’m sorry. I took what Drew had thought he’d seen as gospel, because he was so sure of it and he has such a high level of self-​assurance.”

The admiration in her tone made me slightly nauseated and less inclined to be careful with what I said. “Self-​assurance doesn’t mean someone is always right, Nisa. It just means they’re confident even when they’re wrong.”

Her eyes widened a little and I knew I should probably stop there, but I was getting sick of hearing about how fucking perfect Drew was when I’d always reckoned the guy was a bit of a smug prick. “From the sounds of it he managed to convince you that he was always right, in order to get you to acquiesce your opinions and preferences to his. He shouldn’t have made you feel guilty for your choices, such as keeping Izzy, and he certainly shouldn’t have made you feel that you had to make yourself small in order to keep him.”

Her eyes were like saucers now, the smooth darkness of her irises shimmering with unshed tears and, much too late, I clamped my mouth shut. Shit.

“Nisa,” I said on a sigh, my skin prickling. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all of that. It’s absolutely none of my business and I’m probably way off the mark.”

She stayed silent, which I felt was a bad sign for this woman who would normally talk my ear off as soon as look at me.

I swallowed hard, standing up and lifting Izzy with me. “I’ll get on with stuff in the living room and stop bothering you with my terrible takes.”

She managed a nod and a weak smile, and I felt like the worst person in the world. I left the room, carrying Izzy as she nuzzled into my neck. I set her onto the sofa where she curled up to watch me get back to my duties. I vowed to get this done as quickly as possible in order to avoid traumatizing Nisa in her own home any longer. This was just like me, misreading the situation and putting my foot in it.

However, as I started work on cleaning the floor, I didn’t feel I had misread this situation. In fact, my overall problem wasn’t misreading, it was reading things absolutely correctly but then being a little too honest in describing what I saw, and people didn’t like that. And in this case, from what I had observed even over a short period, it seemed to me that Nisa curbed herself when she was delightfully loud or joyfully animated. Because she’d been brainwashed into thinking that was unacceptable in some way and she attempted to suppress herself. And, from what she’d said so far about Drew, he had been the one to do the brainwashing. I was sure of it. Though I of course knew nothing about her childhood or upbringing.

I had just finished taking out my frustrations on the wooden floor via a rather vigorous scrubbing, when Nisa came into the room. I looked up and took in her tear-​stained face and my heart dropped like a stone right into my gut.

“Shit, Nisa,” I said, standing and, without thinking, dropping my gear and closing the gap between us with two large strides. I lifted my arms to envelop her in a hug. Florally citrus notes wafted up as I inhaled her scent, holding her against me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She shook her head against my chest, burrowed in there like a small animal. “It’s not that.” Her voice was wavery.

My jaw tensed as I lifted her away a little, thumbs going to brush the tears from her face. Her cheeks were soft and smooth, and close up, I could see a tiny dusting of freckles. My heart stuttered for a second. “Then what is it?”

“My sister,” she said, her voice cracking, and cracking my heart in two in the process. “Aisha. She’s been admitted to hospital because she’s severely anemic.”

I frowned, trying to make sense of that in the only way I could—​using animal analogies. “Has she been bleeding?”

“No. But it’s bad enough that she needs a blood transfusion. She’d been so tired lately and we thought it was after this viral thing she had, but the doctor did some tests and the results—” She trailed off, clearly struggling to continue. Then she flicked those big brown eyes onto mine and the distress reflected within them hit me right in the chest. “But my car is still in the garage so I can’t get to the hospital to see her.”

I still didn’t understand the implications of what was wrong with her sister or why it was affecting Nisa quite so acutely and deeply but, in that moment, it didn’t matter. She was upset, and I could help her. In fact, I had to help her. I couldn’t stand seeing her like this, and a weird and irrational mix of desperation to protect her and anger toward whatever unknown entity had caused her distress wiped my brain of all logical thought.

I stepped away, grabbing the zip of my coveralls and shoving it down.

“What . . . what are you doing?” she asked, eyes darting down at where my coveralls were now gaping over my T-shirt-​clad chest.

I yanked my arms out of the suit, so that I was standing in my black T-shirt with the torso of the coveralls hanging down, legs still inside. “I’m taking these off and then I’m driving you to the hospital.”

She seemed shocked into silence, and I realized too late that she might have been worried about what I was or wasn’t wearing underneath. However, I had jogging bottoms on. I dumped the coveralls in the corner where I’d been working and grabbed her hand. “Come on,” I said gruffly. “Get your shoes on and grab your jacket.”

She blinked once, still looking a little shocked, then allowed me to lead her out of the living room to the front door, where she finally recovered her voice. “But she’s gone to the big hospital in Inverness. It’s a fifty-​minute drive. And I’m sure you saw enough of the place when we had to go to the emergency room after the fire.”