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