For Evelyn, being banished to the old laundry shed in the northwest corner of the estate was less a punishment and more a brutal form of liberation.
Here, there were no hysterical screams from Aurora, no looks from Isabella that regarded her as trash, and no trace of the man who had sparked her delusions only to push her into the abyss with his own hands.
There were only moldy plank walls, two massive copper vats that never seemed to get hot enough, and mountains of rough wool blankets caked with horse manure and mud.
Evelyn's high fever had broken. She had survived solely on a ruthless determination not to die in this filth.
Early morning, before the sun had risen.
Evelyn rolled up her sleeves, revealing thin but wiry arms, and stood before the waist-high water trough. Her injured right hand was still wrapped in gauze. Although the wound throbbed with a dull ache, she had learned how to use leverage to avoid the tender spot, scrubbing the heavy horse blankets with ferocious intensity.
The well water was bone-chilling, and the strong lye soap abraded her skin like sandpaper.
"Look at you, Evelyn," she mocked herself silently, staring at her reflection in the murky water. "This is where you belong. What silk? What velvet? Were those dreams you were ever worthy of dreaming?"
Yet, in this extreme exhaustion and cold, her mind was clearer than it had ever been.
She was thinking about money.
She had only two hundred and twenty dollars. In the Lower East Side, this could last a long time, but against a "rich man's disease" like tuberculosis, it was a drop in the bucket.
She was uneducated. She didn't understand the "short selling," "leverage," or complex financial models that bankers prattled on about. She couldn't even fully read the financial pages of the newspaper because there were too many vocabulary words she didn't know.
But she possessed one thing the Wall Street elites did not.
The memory of suffering.
She closed her eyes, letting her mind drift back to the early spring of 1900 in her past life.
That winter had been exceptionally cold. She remembered it so clearly not because she had read the news, but because she had no money for the trolley and had to walk five miles to the factory every day.
Then, one day in late February, the streets of New York descended into chaos.
The usually crowded Third Avenue Railroad trolleys suddenly stopped running. That day, a blizzard was raging. Countless poor people like her stood in the wind and snow, cursing because their only means of transport was paralyzed.
She remembered the newsboy shouting: "Bankrupt! Third Avenue Railroad into receivership!"
She also remembered that night, back in the tenements, the old cobbler next door had hanged himself. He had put his life savings—five hundred dollars—into that company's stock. Before he died, the honest old man had been crying out, "It's the biggest company! Its cars are everywhere! How could it fall?"
Yes, how could it fall?
The Third Avenue Railroad Company of today was just like the Ashford family in this manor: massive, sturdy, and seemingly invincible. Its stock was the most popular investment among the poor, second only to bonds. Everyone thought it would never drop.
But Evelyn knew it would.
Not because she understood the balance sheets, but because she remembered the frostbite on her toes in that blizzard, and she remembered the cobbler's corpse swinging from the rafters.
That was a memory bought with the lives of the poor.
Evelyn opened her eyes, her hands pausing in the water.
"Today is January 15th."
Less than a month before the crash.
She didn't need to go to the prestigious Stock Exchange; she couldn't get in, nor did she know how to trade there. she only needed to go to a "Bucket Shop" in the lower city.
Those were casinos disguised as brokerages, built specifically for the poor. They didn't buy or sell actual stock; they simply let you bet on the rise and fall of the numbers on the board.
As long as she dared to bet.
As long as she dared to bet every last cent of her mother's life-saving money that this seemingly safe giant would "die."
It was madness.
But for someone who had already died once, was there anything more terrifying than poverty?
"Hey, new girl!"
A rude shout came from outside. A stable boy responsible for transporting the blankets poked his head in. It was Sam, a black teenager of about fourteen or fifteen, wearing the wary, slick expression typical of the underclass.
"Miss Aurora sent word. These blankets need to be washed immediately. The Polo Club needs them this afternoon." The boy chewed on a straw stalk, sizing up the exiled former "personal maid."
Evelyn wiped the foam from her hands and turned around.
She didn't cower as she used to, nor did she put on any airs. She simply looked at the boy calmly and fished a 25-cent coin—a whole day's wage here—from her pocket.
"Do me a favor, Sam." Evelyn called him accurately by his name.
The boy paused, catching the tossed coin and biting it to check its authenticity. "You know me?"
"I used to work in the study. I heard the butler mention you're the fastest runner," Evelyn lied without blinking. In truth, she remembered this child from her past life; his leg had been broken later for helping William deliver messages.
"I need to go out. For about two hours." Evelyn pointed to the pile of blankets. "If anyone comes to check, tell them I'm out back hanging the laundry. In return, I'll wash these blankets cleaner than new, so you can claim the reward."
Sam looked at her suspiciously, then at the money in his hand. 25 cents was enough for a good meal.
"There's a fence. You can't get out."
"I know there's a dog hole under the fence in the northwest corner, hidden by weeds," Evelyn said flatly. "Don't ask me how I know. In this manor, anyone who wants to survive knows where the dog holes are."
The boy whistled, revealing white teeth. "Deal. But if you run off, I'm not taking the fall for you."
"I won't run."
Evelyn took off her apron and put on a rough hooded coat, pressing the roll of dollars tightly against her chest.
"My life is still here."
Evelyn crawled through the gap in the fence, disappearing into the snowy woods.
She didn't look back.