Unconditional

"Oh my God. Is she..."

Rachel couldn't finish the question, and Ted couldn't speak at all. So he simply nodded. And before Rachel could even wonder how this horrible thing had happened, the universe answered her unasked question by drawing her eye to the soapstone countertop, where a .38 revolver lay in silent menace.

She forced her trembling lips to form a single word: "Ted."

He followed her gaze and pulled himself to his feet so he could see what she was looking at. "Oh, God no." Whatever blood was still coursing through his cheeks, it too drained away.

Rachel pointed a shaky finger at the gun. "That's...Is that...?"

Ted's gun. Yes, it was Ted's gun.

He started toward the living room, tracking blood across the floor. He paused to kick off his bloody shoe and then continued stumbling toward Josh, still on the sofa, still glued to his videogame.

"Josh?"

But Josh kept playing. So Ted grabbed the iPod cord and yanked the ear buds out of Josh's ears. "Josh! What happened to Rosa?"

Josh's eyes still didn't leave his game, but a shadow of emotion passed over his face. The little boy inside of him struggling not to cry. Ted willed himself to speak in a softer, less accusatory tone.

"Josh, please...What happened here?"

"She got all up in my face."

"She—what?"

"She told me to do my homework. I said I was gonna...She tried to take my DS away. Look!" Josh turned his game—a Nintendo DS—toward Ted, to show him a crack stretching across the glass. "She fucked up the screen!"

Rachel appeared beside Ted. "Josh...What happened? What did you do?"

But Josh just went back to his game, chewing his lips and hammering the buttons with his trembling hands. Ted reached out and smothered Josh's game unit with both hands, shoving the damned thing down into Josh's lap and forcing it closed.

"Josh! How did you get my gun out of the safe?"

Josh looked up from his interrupted game and right into his father's eyes, maybe for the first time in months.

"You wrote the combination inside the medicine cabinet...Duh."

Ted never hit Josh, not even once, but God how he wanted to in this unbearable instant. But, before his brain could issue the instruction to his clenched fist, Rachel darted for the nearest bathroom, a hand raised to her retching mouth.

Ted looked back at Josh, and realized his fist was cocked and ready. But he couldn't let it fly. All he could unleash were some words that he couldn't believe even as they left his mouth.

"Josh...Go to your room."

He never felt more helpless in all his life.

When Rachel had nothing left to throw up, she flushed the toilet and sank down against the side of the tub. Ted was standing in the doorway. How long had he stood there, watching her vomit, never thinking to come beside her and put a caring hand on her back?

"I don't believe this," she finally spoke, her throat stinging.

"It was an accident."

"He said that?"

"No, but, come on. He—he got the gun out, and he—he probably tried to scare her with it...That's all...He couldn't have meant it."

She nodded. Of course he was right. Her little Josh, her only child, given all he ever wanted, loved by parents who remained married even while his every last friend, it seemed, was watching his own parents get divorced. Her little Josh could not have meant to do...that.