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"Trent?" I accused.
"Trent knows everything," he muttered. Seeing my unease, he added, "He knows only because his father needed a genetic blueprint to help base your treatment on. Mr. Kalamack could have used Robbie's, but the repair would have been slower and not as perfect. When your dad asked, I said yes. Not just for you, but so Robbie wouldn't have a summer of missing memories."
I made a face, remembering. Or remembering not remembering, maybe.
"So Trent knows I'm your birth father, but not why." Takata leaned into his chair with his tall glass of milk, his long leg hitting the table leg on my side before jerking it back. "It was none of his business," he said defensively.
I couldn't taste my toast anymore, and I set it down. I stared at my soup, took a breath to find my courage, then said softly, "Why?"
"Thank you," Takata whispered.
His eyes were heavy with moisture when I looked, but he was smiling. He set his glass down and stared out the window at the growing brightness. "Your dad and I met your mother at the university."
I'd heard this before, just not knowing that the other guy had been Takata. "She said she met my dad when she signed up for a ley line class she had no business being in. That she took it to meet the gorgeous hunk of witch in front of her, but ended up falling in love with his best friend."
His smile grew, showing his teeth. "I'd love to know which one of us she considered the hunk of witch."
Confused, I pulled my soup closer. "But my dad, Monty, I mean, was human."
Takata's head was bobbing. "There was a lot more prejudice back then. No, not more, just that no one was as afraid to show it. To avoid getting a lot of flack, he told everyone he was a witch. Until your mother, he would ransack my closet just to smell right."
I thought about that for a moment, then returned to eating.
"Your dad and me?" he continued, his pleasant voice seeming to fill the kitchen and sounding right. "I don't know how we got through those last years without killing each other. We both loved your mother, and she loved both of us." He hesitated, then added, "For different reasons. She thought it was hilarious when her scent charms worked so well that even the instructors couldn't tell he was a human. His ley line skills were more than good enough. It was crazy, the both of us vying for her, and her caught in the middle."
I glanced up and he dropped his eyes.
"But I got her pregnant with Robbie right as my music career started to take off. West Coast take off, not just local stuff. It changed everything." His gaze went unfocused. "It threatened to steal both her and my dreams—what we thought we wanted."
I felt him look at me, and I said nothing, tilting my bowl to get the last of my soup.
"Your dad always blamed me for getting her pregnant when she could have finished her studies to go on to be one of the premier spell-developers in the state."
"She's that good?" I asked, taking another bite of toast.
Takata smiled. "You won every Halloween contest you ever entered. She continually developed potions to pass the I.S.'s increasingly sensitive detection charms for your dad. She told me once that Jenks thought she was light on the magic, almost a warlock. It wasn't because she was not spelling, but because she was."
My head went up and down, and I wiped the butter off my fingers. Crap, I had forgotten to pick Jenks up at the gate. I hadn't even slowed down long enough for them to get it open. Maybe Ivy would go get him. I wasn't going back there.
"Okay, I got the picture," I said. "I get my earth magic from her. And Trent says you're good at ley lines?"
He shrugged, tossing his head to make his dreadlocks swing. "I used to be. I don't use them much. Least not consciously."
I remembered sitting next to him on the winter solstice and seeing him jump when the circle at Fountain Square closed. Yeah, I probably got my ley line skill from him. "So you got my mom pregnant and decided your dreams were more important than hers and left," I accused.
A deep flush colored his pale complexion. "I asked her to come with me to California," he said, pained. "I promised her we could raise a family and build both our careers at the same time, but she was smarter than me." Takata crossed his arms over his thin chest and shrugged. "She knew something would suffer, and she didn't want me to look back and blame her and the baby for taking my one shot at greatness away."
He sounded bitter, and I picked at what was left of my toast.
"Monty loved her as much as I did. As much as I do," he reiterated. "He wanted to marry her, but he never asked because he knew she wanted children and couldn't give them to her. It made him feel inadequate, especially when I kept reminding him of it," he admitted, tired eyes dropping in old guilt. "So when she wouldn't follow me to California, he asked her to marry him, seeing as she was going to get the child she always wanted."
I watched his face twitch as he relived the memory. "And she said yes," he said softly. "It hurt more than I like to admit—that she stayed with him and that peon I.S. job he took on a dare instead of coming with me and the chance for a big house with a pool and a hot tub. Looking back, I know I had been stupid, but I left thinking I was doing the right thing."
When desire's sold for freedom/and need exchanged for fame/those choices made in ignorance/turn to bloodstained dreams of shame. Son of a bitch.
His gaze flicked to mine and held. "Monty and your mother would be happy. I was going to California with the band. My child would be raised in a loving home. I thought I had cut all the ties. Maybe if I'd never come back it would have been okay, but I did."
I dabbed my finger on the crumbs and ate them. This all felt like a bad dream that had nothing to do with me.
"So I went on to make it big," Takata said with a sigh. "I didn't have a clue how much I had screwed my life up. Not even when your mom flew out to one of the shows one night. She said she wanted another child, and like a stupid ass, I went along with it."
His eyes watched his long hands, carefully arranging the spoon in the bowl. "That was my mistake," he said, more to himself than me. "Robbie had been an accident that your dad stole from me, but I gave him you. And seeing his eager smile when you were put in his arms made me realize how pathetically worthless my life was. Is."
"Your life isn't worthless," I said, not knowing why. "You touch thousands of people with your music."
He smiled bitterly. "What do I have to show for it? Selfishly now, what do I have?" His hands waved in frustration. "A big house? A fancy tour bus? Things. Look at what I could have been doing with my life—all wasted. Look at what your mother and Monty did."
His voice was getting louder, and I looked past him to the empty hall, worried he might wake her up.
"Look at what you are," he said, bringing my attention back. "You and Robbie. You are something real that they can point to and say, 'I helped make that person great. I held that person's hand until they could make it on their own. I did something real and irrefutable.'"
Clearly frustrated, he slumped with his long arms on the table and stared at nothing. "I had the chance to be a part of what life is about, and I gave it to someone else, pretending to know about life when all I have is what you can get by looking in other people's windows."
Left looking in the window, red ribbons hide my face. I pushed my plate away, not hungry anymore. "I'm sorry."
Takata met my eyes from under a lowered brow. "Your dad always said I was a selfish bastard. He's right."
I moved the spoon in a figure eight. Not clockwise, not counterclockwise. Balanced and empty of intent. "You give," I said softly. "Just to strangers, afraid that if you give to people you love, they might reject you." My attention came up, pulled by his silence. "It's not too late," I said. "You're only, what, fifty-something? You've got a hundred more years."