“I Fixed My Mom’s Faucet — And Uncovered a Secret That Changed Everything”
After spending a year abroad teaching English, I finally came home — exhausted, jet-lagged, but excited to see my mom. She hugged me like she hadn’t in years. It felt good to be back.
But almost immediately, I noticed something was off.
The kitchen faucet barely worked. Just a weak dribble of water, and the sink drained slower than molasses.
“Mom, why didn’t you get a plumber?” I asked, crouched over the sink after dinner.
She waved it off. “Oh, I meant to, but I just forgot. I’ve been washing dishes in the bathroom. It’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine.
For the next few days, I offered over and over to fix it. I’m no professional, but I’m handy enough — especially with plumbing. Every time I brought it up, she’d either change the subject or outright say, “Leave it alone.”
And the way she said it? There was tension behind her voice. Like it was more than just about the pipes.
By the second week, I was losing my mind washing dishes in the bathtub. Mom was out grocery shopping one morning, and I thought, “Okay, no more games.”
I grabbed my toolbox and got to work under the sink.
The moment I unscrewed the U-bend and loosened the trap, I felt it — a strange weight inside the pipe.
Thinking it was just gunk or maybe a buildup of something gross, I shook it out into a bowl.
But what dropped into the bowl wasn’t sludge.
It was a small, ziplock bag… soaking wet, but stuffed with cash. Rolled-up bills, thick wads of them.
And then another one came out.
And another.
Four in total.
Each marked in faded black sharpie:
“For Eva – college”
“Emergency fund”
“House payoff”
“Don’t trust the bank.”
I sat there, stunned.
Thousands of dollars. Hidden. In the plumbing.
When Mom got home and saw me sitting at the kitchen table with the bags laid out, her face went white.
“I told you not to touch the pipes,” she whispered, barely above a breath.
“Mom… what is all this?”
She sat down slowly, staring at the money.
Turns out, after Dad died, Mom had grown paranoid. Scared of banks, scared of people stealing from her. She didn’t trust anyone — not even her sister or the neighbors. So she started hiding money around the house. Most of it she remembered. But this stash? She thought she’d buried in the attic years ago.
When the faucet started acting up, she panicked. She knew the pipes had one of her “emergency” stashes, but couldn’t remember which section or how much was left.
“I didn’t want you to think I’d gone crazy,” she said quietly.
I reached across the table and held her hand.
“You’re not crazy, Mom. Just… next time? Let me help before we start storing dollar bills in the plumbing, okay?”
We laughed. And cried a little too.
The faucet works perfectly now.
And so does our trust.