I was stunned, but his urgency scared me enough to follow. We raced to the dump, Bryce tapping the steering wheel like a man possessed.

“What plan?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

He didn’t answer.

When we arrived, he sprinted past the office and into the mountain of junk. I watched him dig through couches like a man searching for buried treasure. After ten minutes, he found ours — stained, sagging, but still intact.

He ripped open the lining underneath.

That’s when I saw it: stacks of cash. Envelopes. Documents.

“I was hiding our emergency fund,” he finally said, breathing hard. “Thirty grand in cash, plus the deed to the lake house, and the safe code. I didn’t trust online storage or banks for that part of our retirement plan. I just… I meant to move it.”

I stared at the sagging couch like it had just spoken. “You hid our future in a couch you refused to get rid of?”

He winced. “I didn’t think you’d actually toss it!”

Lesson:
Never underestimate what someone’s hiding… especially in something they say they’ll “deal with later.”