I peeled back the cloth and found a stack of cash held together with two brittle rubber bands.
Not a fortune. Just enough that I sat there in the driveway counting it twice because I thought I’d made a mistake.
There was a folded note tucked underneath.
The handwriting was my ex’s.
I almost put it back without reading it. Then curiosity got the better of me.
The note was only three lines long.
“Emergency money. Don’t touch unless things get bad. If you’re reading this, I forgot where I hid it again.”
I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the bumper.
That was him in a nutshell. The same man who could never find his keys, forgot every password he ever created, and once spent an entire weekend looking for a ladder that was leaning against the garage the whole time.
I called him.
When I told him what I’d found, there was a long silence.
Then he said, “Wait. In the old car?”
“Wrapped in a shop rag.”
Another silence.
Then I heard him groan.
Apparently he’d hidden the money years earlier after a relative had a break-in. He’d meant to move it somewhere safer and completely forgotten about it. By the time of the divorce, he didn’t even remember it existed.
For once, neither of us argued.
The settlement had been signed months earlier. The car was legally mine.
He finally said, “Well, I guess that’s one repair bill the car paid for.”
I sold the car the following week.
Between the sale price and the cash from the spare-tire well, I got a lot more out of that old “money pit” than anyone expected.
Especially the man who handed it to me.