Eleven. I kept count on my fingers because my hands were shaking.

He found wires that were not secured. He found the wrong gauge of cable behind the walls. He found a mess of connections that looked like a bird’s nest. He looked at me, and his face went serious.

“This is not just a code violation,” he said. “This is a fire hazard.”

I felt a cold shiver go down my back. I thought about all the nights I spent proofreading those reports. I thought about how many times Arthur had closed down a job site for less than this. I felt proud for a second. I had done the right thing. I had protected my home.

Then the contractor came back inside. He saw the inspector standing there with the clipboard. He looked at me. His face turned a deep, ugly red.

“You called them?” he asked.

“I had to,” I said.

He didn’t yell. He just laughed. It was a dry, nasty sound. He walked over to the counter and started shoving his tools into his bag. He didn’t even look at the inspector. He just looked at me.

“Do you have any idea what you just did?” he asked.

I didn’t answer. I just held the code book tighter.

“You just red-tagged the whole job,” he said. “I am not coming back here. Nobody is going to finish this now.”

He walked out the front door. He didn’t even slam it. He just left it wide open, letting the cold air pour into my kitchen. The inspector started writing up his official report. He told me I had to vacate the kitchen area until it was brought up to code. He said it could take months.

I stood there alone. The house felt huge and empty.

I looked at the code book in my hands. I opened it to section 210.8.

I looked at the page where Arthur had written a note in the margin. He had written: “Safety is not an option.”

I realized then what I had done. I had used Arthur’s own rules to tear my home apart. I had been so busy being right that I didn’t stop to think about being happy. The kitchen was ruined. The contractor was gone. The house was a legal mess.

I looked at the counter where the contractor had been working. There was a small scrap of paper he had left behind. I picked it up. It was a bill for the materials he had already installed.

I realized I couldn’t afford to hire anyone else to fix his mistakes.

I had spent my savings on this renovation. I had nothing left. I had the code book, and I had a kitchen that was now a condemned workspace. I sat down at the table, the same table where I had proofread those reports for thirty years.