Chapter 8 — THE DOOR I INSTALLED

In June, Sophia started sleepwalking.

Not often. Four times over about five weeks. Twice she got as far as the kitchen. The fourth time, on the ninth of July, I came home from a night shift at seven in the morning and found the French door standing open and my daughter asleep on the patio steps in the sun.

She had turned the thumb-turn on the deadbolt in her sleep and walked out.

So on the eleventh of July I drove to the hardware store on Route 9 and I bought a double-cylinder deadbolt.

If you do not know what that is: a normal deadbolt has a key on the outside and a little knob on the inside that you turn with your thumb. A double-cylinder deadbolt has a keyhole on *both* sides. You cannot open it from inside without a key.

I installed it myself. It took me thirty-five minutes.

I hung the key on a cup hook on the inside of the pantry door, at adult height, and I showed Claire, and I showed Sarah, and I did not show Sophia, because that was the entire point.

I felt good about it. I want to be honest about that too. I remember feeling like a man who had solved something.

There is a section of the residential code — R311.2 in the version this county adopted — that says an egress door has to be openable from the inside without a key, a tool, or any special knowledge or effort.

I have made a career out of reading code. I read boiler code, pressure vessel code, backflow code. I have a folder of it in the truck.

I did not read the door code, because it did not occur to me that a door was something with a code.