Brett paid after dessert and they returned to the arcade for awhile, Olivia bouncing from game to game, hitting anything that smacked of racing especially, and returning multiple times to the bike games. She competed against Brett, and sometimes Amelia, but always won the racing games, no matter what they were.

As they were walking by one of the few games they hadn’t yet played, Olivia stopped and said, “How about that rematch?”

Brett paused, looking at the game, some sort of game with toy handguns, and he paused at it, before she continued, “I mean, I know I’d win, Dad couldn’t ever beat me at these types of games, so if you’re chicken, I guess, you know, we don’t have to.”

Amelia looked at Brett for a long time, watching, before she started to speak, “I’ll play with you, Livy.”

“No, its alright, she wants a rematch, she get’s a rematch.”

The game started out with a scenario where the players had to infiltrate and capture the boss. Which resulted in Olivia muttering angrily the entire time as her father dominated the action. But then, in the second episodes scenes, a hostage rescue, one of the terrorists in some uniform grabbed behind a nurse, holding her with a gun to her head. Instinctually, Brett took the shot, but then froze, froze completely, his grip on the toy gun white-fingered.

“Look out, look out, shoot that one, come on Brett,” and he just couldn’t move. The terrorist’s bullets and the loud, “You are dead” from the video game didn’t change him, and Olivia kept shooting and whooping it up next to him. Finally, a soft hand on his shoulder and a worried, perhaps pained, whisper from behind, woke him from the memories, “Brett, it will be ok, Brett, just relax,” and as he became aware again of the arcade noise, he also realized that he held a cracked toy gun in one hand, but worse, he had his opposite hand under his jacket ready to pull the real thing.

Taking a deep breath, and letting it out in a shuddering sigh, he watched his daughter take glee in advancing to the fourth stage, before standing back, glancing at Amelia. “Sorry about that,” he said quietly, so that only she could hear. “It’s ok,” just in time to hear a rising, “Noooo, you bastard.”

Which resulted in a nearly simultaneous, “Language.”

“Whatever, I got you there, didn’t I?”

Smiling briefly, “Guess I should stick to skee-ball…..who won that?”

Scowling, Olivia replied, “I don’t remember that game, are you sure we played?” and then she smiled brightly in sarcasm.

Amelia chimed in, “How about we go outside? I like mini-golf, then we can race the go-carts.”

Olivia took off….and as they started to follow, “Are you…..ok?

“No, but I’m working on it,” and he smiled back at her, a smile she hadn’t seen in fourteen years.

And then their daughter was back, grabbing their hands and pulling them faster.