Page 78 of Ideal Life

“Seat open at table one,” the tournament director announced.

Talia gaped at her losing hand.

That was it. She was out of the tournament at 1,244th place.

No winnings.

$5,000 buy-in, gone.

And the $1 million hole for Ideal Life now felt like a bottomless pit.

“Ma’am,” the dealer said, when she hadn’t moved. “You’ll have to vacate that seat now.”

She looked up at him.

Then Talia shook her head. “No. I won’t. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Ma’am,” the dealer said, louder. “You must—”

She rewound the watch’s crown to the beginning of level 5, and this time, she played it right. She kicked ass in level 6, too.

That’ll show ’em.

There was a spring in her step as she exited the ballroom for the second break. They had an hour before competition would resume, so the hotel had set up a small buffet in the corridor. With over 700 players still in the tournament, though, the hall was crammed to the gills with people waiting for food. By the time Talia got anywhere near those steam trays, they would be empty and she’d hardly be able to eat before she’d have to report back into the ballrooms.

So instead, she went out to her car, drove to a sandwich place a few minutes away, and grabbed a roast beef and cheddar on rye—analytically, it seemed like the right balance of protein, fat, and whole grains to sustain her for three more rounds of play before the next break. Assuming she made it to the next break.

Talia looked at her watch.

It’s still just in case, she told herself. She knew it wasn’t technically fair what she was doing, but she thought of Erin and Jody and Jonathan and everyone else at Ideal Life. Talia was here to save the company so they could keep doing what they believed in. So she could save them from a future under Omni’s reign.

She got back to the Magnolia Hotel with ten minutes to spare and stopped into the ladies’ room. When she exited, she gasped and retreated, plastering herself inside the door.

Sam was in the main corridor outside the ballrooms, filling his water bottle at a dispenser.

What is he still doing here? Level 6, when he lost, ended an hour ago. He should have been home at Lighthouse Books by now.

Unless he hadn’t lost? Talia took out her phone and looked up the Summer Million players still in competition.

Samuel Chang was definitely still in the tournament for level 7.

“How?” she asked.

A woman washing her hands at the sink looked up. It was Louise Enger, the woman Sam had previously lost to during level 6 over the course of eight iterations.

“How what?” Louise said. “Do you need help?”

Talia shook her head. “Sorry—just talking to myself. Actually… what table were you at in the last level?”

“Table 14 in ballroom B. Why?”

“I thought you looked familiar is all, but I’m in ballroom A, so I must be mistaken.”

Internally, though, the cogs in Talia’s brain were whirring at full speed. During the earlier rewinds when she’d been trying to help Sam win, both he and Louise had been at table 23. Why had Louise’s table changed now?

Maybe because me being here shifted the player assignments for the tournament, and that set off a cascade of little variations in how each hand was played because there were sometimes different people at the table than before? And something in that butterfly effect allowed Sam to make it through level 6, whereas he had lost eight times in a row when the rewinds were identical.

Talia had known that her past rewinds would result in small butterfly effects, but she’d never actively sought out what had changed. She’d only focused on the big revisions and hoped that the other ones were inconsequential. You can’t be sure that any change you make would have made this world better or worse, she’d reasoned.