Her husband called it worrying.
The peanut butter she'd checked before the playdate. The outlet covers before crawling started. The gate at the top of the stairs, installed on a Saturday while he watched the game, tightened again the following week when she noticed the left hinge shifting.
Three years and no ER visits. He said they were lucky.
She kept a list in her phone. Not for him—for herself. Sept 14: moved the glass vase to the top shelf. Oct 3: switched to the shorter bookcase, anchored it to the wall. Nov 11: checked the batteries in three smoke detectors, replaced one. The list ran to four pages. None of it had ever been tested. That was the point.
When her mother-in-law praised how easygoing their daughter was, how she'd basically raised herself, she smiled and said thank you. When the pediatrician noted the absence of injuries with a kind of professional approval, she nodded. When her husband said they should relax more, maybe stop hovering, she thought about the cabinet lock she'd installed on the cleaning supplies the week before their daughter figured out handles.
The budget meeting, when it came, was about who would stay home. His salary was larger. They both agreed hers was more flexible. These were facts, not arguments.
She'd be home anyway, he said. So they wouldn't need the backup childcare. Or the subscription to the safety-recall newsletter. Or the second car seat, the one she kept in her car for the days she drove instead.
She didn't argue. She understood the logic. Everything she'd prevented had, by definition, never happened. There was no line item for the ER visit that didn't occur, the fall that wasn't taken, the poisoning that remained hypothetical.
On her last day of work she filed her reports. Clean handoffs. Documentation for her replacement. Everything in order. Her manager said the transition would be seamless.
At home, she unpacked her desk things into a drawer and checked the baby gate. The left hinge had shifted again. She tightened it, noted the date in her phone, and didn't mention it at dinner.
He asked how she was feeling. She said fine. She was already compiling the next list, the one for the house they'd move to when the lease was up, the one with the pool in the backyard and the deck railing she'd already measured in her head.
Fine, she said again. Lucky.