Chapter 29 #2
Charlie reached out and ran her fingers gently through Molly’s hair. She didn’t know what she could say without either lying or telling an eight-year-old far more than she needed to hear, so she settled for leaving her hand on the girl’s head for a moment.
Around them, life at HQ carried on as usual.
Someone laughed out in the garage, an engine died away in the yard and Mia was soon muttering something about grown men apparently being incapable of putting away their own plates.
Everything sounded almost offensively normal considering the way the day had unfolded, and Charlie had just about convinced herself that she needed to stop worrying when the front door opened.
Billy’s attention immediately shifted towards it, and the grin that appeared on his face came so quickly that Charlie knew it wasn’t Reeze.
“Well,” he said. “Now it’s official.”
Charlie frowned. “What?”
He didn’t answer.
The woman who stepped through the door didn’t have to do anything to draw the room’s attention.
The bulldog trotting at her side seemed to regard the entire clubhouse as his personal property, while the woman herself carried the sort of effortless authority that made people move aside without quite knowing why.
She stopped a few steps inside, let her gaze travel around the room and took in the noise, the people and the general chaos before shaking her head.
“Oh, for God’s sake. I leave you alone for a few weeks and you still haven’t learnt how to clean.”
Her voice was dry, but there was warmth beneath it that made several of the men grin.
Billy was already laughing as he took the first step towards her.
“Come here, you ugly bastard.”
He looked almost offended. “Thank you very much.”
“You look worse every time I see you.”
“That’s genetic.”
“Poor man.”
Then she pulled him into a tight hug, and Charlie saw something she had never expected to see. Billy suddenly looked about twenty years younger, not in his face but in the way he carried himself, in the brief smile that appeared before he could stop it.
The bulldog dropped heavily onto the floor beside them and surveyed the room with the expression of a retired bodyguard who had seen absolutely everything and had never once been impressed.
Molly, on the other hand, shrieked with delight. “Grandma!”
Now it was the woman’s turn to change. The sharp, watchful look in her eyes softened immediately as she crouched and caught Molly in her arms.
“My little wildcat.”
“I got called to the headteacher.”
“So I heard.”
“I bit someone.”
The woman nodded thoughtfully. “I assume there’s a story behind that.”
“He started it.”
“They usually do.”
Mia nearly choked on her coffee. “You’re not helping.”
“I never claimed I was.”
Molly looked extremely pleased with this development and almost immediately disappeared down beside the bulldog, where she seemed to begin a conversation with him that was clearly far more important than anything the adults had to offer.
When the woman straightened, her gaze landed on Charlie, and Charlie immediately had the distinct feeling that she was being thoroughly assessed.
Not unkindly, and not as though the woman were looking for faults, but her eyes were sharp and attentive. She seemed to gather information, weigh it and reach her own conclusions long before anyone had been given the chance to introduce them.
“Hmm.”
That was the first thing she said before holding out her hand.
“So you’re Charlie.”
It wasn’t a question, and Charlie doubted it had been intended as one.
“Yes.”
“Ingrid.”
Charlie took the offered hand and found herself met by a grip considerably firmer than she had expected. “Nice to meet you.”
Ingrid tilted her head slightly without taking her eyes off her. “That’s not what I heard.”
Behind her, Billy burst out laughing loudly enough to make several people turn.
“Fucking hell, Mum.”
“What?” Ingrid replied with an innocent expression that fooled absolutely no one. “I’m only being honest.”
Mia looked as though she was fighting for her life not to laugh as well, and Charlie could suddenly see exactly where Reeze had inherited certain parts of his personality.
Ingrid had the same quiet confidence, the same sense that she never needed to raise her voice to make people listen and the same kind of presence that filled a room without demanding attention.
“You look less frightened than I expected,” Ingrid continued.
Charlie raised an eyebrow. “Was that a requirement?”
That earned her a genuine smile, and Ingrid glanced briefly towards Molly, who was still crouched beside the bulldog. “No. But it usually makes life easier in this family.” Her attention returned to Charlie. “So you’re the journalist.”
“That’s me.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
Ingrid lifted one shoulder. “The way you look at people. You watch before you speak.”
Charlie smiled. “That sounds very flattering.”
“It wasn’t meant as a compliment.”
“No?”
“Journalists make me nervous.”
“That seems like a healthy attitude.”
The faint smile that crossed Ingrid’s face made Charlie feel as though she had passed some sort of initial inspection, although she had absolutely no idea what the criteria had been.
“She likes you,” Mia announced.
Ingrid sighed. “I haven’t said that.”
“No, but you’re still standing there talking to her.”
“I’m standing here talking to you too.”
“Yeah, but you feel sorry for me.”
Billy laughed so hard he nearly lost his balance against the wall.
Charlie looked between them and began to understand the dynamic. These weren’t people who needed to say they cared about one another. They showed it by turning up, by staying and by being there when life became complicated.
Perhaps that was why she suddenly understood a little more about Reeze.
He had grown up among people like these, people for whom loyalty wasn’t something you talked about. It was something you lived.
“He was a terrible child,” Ingrid said suddenly.
Charlie blinked before realising she meant Reeze.
Billy already looked far too pleased. “Not even slightly true.”
“You didn’t live with him.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Exactly.”
Ingrid accepted the mug of coffee Mia handed her and settled comfortably against the edge of the table.
“He was four when he decided to rescue a hedgehog.”
Billy started laughing. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
Charlie looked between them. “What did he do?”
“He found one in the ditch behind the house and became completely convinced it was alone in the world. I discovered several days later that he’d smuggled it into his bedroom and built a little nest for it in the wardrobe.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Several days?”
“It smelled bloody awful.”
Now Mia was laughing too, and Molly looked as though she had just been granted access to the greatest piece of information she had ever heard. “Dad had a hedgehog?”
“Two.”
Molly’s eyes widened. “Two?”
“Not at the same time.” That didn’t help.
Now half the table was laughing while Molly became increasingly fascinated and Charlie tried to picture the big tattooed man who had stood bloodied in a car park earlier that day sitting on the floor beside a hedgehog hidden in his wardrobe.
The problem was that the image didn’t even seem particularly unlikely any more.
Not after seeing him with Molly.
Not after seeing the way he took the people he loved, along with all their problems, and somehow made them his own.
Mia leaned a little closer while Ingrid remained surrounded by half the room and Boris lay stretched out at her feet like a four-legged doorman.
“That’s Reeze’s mum,” she said quietly. “She was First Lady here before me. Long before me, actually. Before Rollo. Before all of this.”
She made a vague gesture towards the clubhouse around them and Charlie let her gaze return to Ingrid.
The more she learnt, the easier it became to understand why people had reacted the way they had when the woman walked through the door.
It wasn’t fear, and it wasn’t exactly respect either.
Ingrid had been there while Wallhalla was still being built, through the years when the club was small, through the successes, the losses and the tragedies that followed.
Reeze hadn’t joined the club as a young man searching for somewhere to belong.