I did it because I trusted it, because it was warm and it was family and it was convenient, because a woman working the hours I work needs somewhere safe to put her child and that house had always looked like the safest place in the world.

None of that was unreasonable.

I have told myself, on the hard nights, that no reasonable mother could have foreseen what those people would do, that the failure was theirs and not mine, and I believe that, mostly.

But there is a part of a parent that does not deal in reasonable, that holds itself responsible for every harm that reaches its child regardless of fault, and that part of me drove to that hospital carrying a guilt that the facts do not entirely support and that I have never entirely been able to set down.

I did not lock the door.