"Or drives a car," said Danielle.

What a thing to teach the children. That a man's not a man if he isn't making money. Does that mean that the more you earn, the more of a man you are? Does that mean if you get fired, you've been emasculated?

But there was no point arguing the point. Word wasn't a man yet, and when he was, Byron would make sure he got a man's respect from his father, and then it wouldn't matter what the boy's mother said. That was a power a father had that no woman could take away.

While the rest of the family bantered, Byron's thoughts turned again to that baby. If it was real, was it a child of Nadine's, or some kind of magical changeling? If it was her child, then who was the father? Byron? Was it our son that freak toted out of our bedroom in a grocery sack? Word's little brother, now bound for some miserable grave in a dumpster somewhere?

Is he really dead? Or will the old man's magic find some spark of life inside him? And if he does, could I find him? Claim him? Bring him home to raise?

And now Byron realized why Bag Man hadn't given Nadine a choice about whether to remember or not. If the mother didn't believe she had given birth, then how could the father go claiming paternity? Nobody gave maternity tests to mothers.

If that's our baby, that old man stole it from us.

I should have told him to let me forget.

But that was wrong, too, and Byron knew it. It was important for him to know—and remember

—that such a thing as this was possible in the world. That his life could be taken over so easily, that such a terrible thing could happen and then be forgotten.

And now this man knows where we live. This man can do whatever he wants in our neighborhood.

Well, if magic like this is real, then I sure as hell hope that God is also real. Because as long as Bag Man is walking around in Baldwin Hills with dead babies in his grocery sacks, then God help us all.