The journey from Bangkok seemed forever, but nothing compared to the anguish in my chest when I saw Mom waiting at Riverside Airport.
Twelve months of street food vlogs and temple visits kept me occupied, but they couldn’t erase the void that missing home had left.
“Jeremy!” She wrapped her arms around me before I’d even gotten through the gate. Her shoulders shook against mine, and I detected the familiar aroma of her rosemary oil mingled with something I couldn’t identify… worry, perhaps.
“Hey, Mom!” I clutched her tightly, feeling like the terrified eight-year-old who used to hide in her bed during thunderstorms. “I missed you so much!”
The journey to Millbrook felt strange. The streets seemed narrower, and the houses were more aged. Mom talked about the neighbors, her reading club, and everything except the black circles beneath her eyes, which makeup couldn’t quite conceal.
“I made your favorite,” she explained as we parked into the driveway. “That potato soup with the—”
“Extra thyme!” I concluded, grinning. “You remembered!”
But when we entered the kitchen, my smile faded. Dirty dishes were stacked everywhere—on counters, in boxes, and even precariously placed on the ledge.
Oh my God, Mom! “What happened here?”
Her face turned crimson. “The sink has been acting up. “I have been washing everything in the bathroom, dear.”
When I turned the faucet handle, water trickled out like an old man’s sneeze.
“How long has it been like this?”
She refused to meet my gaze. “Oh, you understand. “A few weeks.”
“A few weeks?” I knelt down and looked at the cabinet beneath the sink. The pipes appeared to have not been touched since the Carter administration. “Why didn’t you call someone?”
“I forgot.”
The following morning, I dug through Dad’s old toolbox in the garage. The metal felt cool in my hands, and each tool brought back memories of Saturday mornings when he would let me help with small repairs around the house. He’d been gone for three years, yet his presence remained in the orderly jumble of nuts and bolts.
I was halfway beneath the sink, flashlight clamped between my teeth, when Mom’s footsteps echoed across the kitchen.
“STOP! Do not touch that! PLEASE!”
Her voice sounded like a whip, and I smashed my head against the pipe as I scrambled out.
“What in the hell, Mom? You freaked me out.”
She stood in the doorway, as white as fresh paint, her hands trembling so much she had to hold the counter.
“You cannot repair that right now. “I need to call someone first.”
“Who do I call? “It is just a clogged pipe.”
“NO!” The word exploded out of her. “No, Jeremy. Please. Just leave it alone.”
I glanced at her, the wrench still in my hand. In all of my 26 years, I’d never seen her look so afraid… not when Dad was sick or at his funeral.
“Mom, what’s going on?”
She opened her mouth and then closed it. She then glanced toward the window before returning to me. Her gaze kept darting to the sink cabinet, as if it could sprout legs and flee.
“Nothing is going on. “I just want a professional to handle it.”
Two weeks have gone. Two weeks spent washing dishes in the bathtub like a medieval peasant. Mom hovered around the kitchen for two weeks, jumping at every sound I made.
She acquired an anxious habit of checking the front, back, and window locks several times before going to bed.
“Mom, you’re scaring me,” I told her one morning over coffee. “What happened while I was gone?”
“Nothing occurred, sweetheart. I’m… I am fine. “Just tired.”
But I didn’t purchase it. Something in that house seemed strange.
When she departed for the grocery store that afternoon, I had made my decision. Whatever was bothering her, I was determined to remedy it… starting with that spooky sink.
I took the wrench and got began. The pipes came apart more easily than I imagined. Years of mineral buildup flaked away like old paint. But when I got to the elbow joint, my fingertips hit something that wasn’t meant to be there.
Plastic. Wrapped tightly around something solid and rectangular.
My heart pounded as I carefully pulled it out. The waterproof packaging included an ancient flip phone and numerous thick rolls of hundred-dollar bills. I counted them two, three times.
Thirty grand, crammed into our pipes like a suburban treasure box.
“What the hell?”
The front door slammed.
“Jeremy? “I’m home!”
I tried to get everything back into the wrapping, but it was too late. Mom came around the corner and saw me seated on the kitchen floor, wads of cash thrown around me like confetti.
The grocery bags slid from her grip, and green apples rolled across the linoleum.
“Oh, God!” What have you done? “Oh, no, no!” She put her fists on her face. “Why did you have to find it?”
“Mom, who’s money is this?” “And this phone?”
She dropped into the chair, her shoulders slumped as if something inside her had finally given out.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, Jeremy. I’ve been lying to you your whole life.”
My stomach dropped. “About what?”
“You have a brother.”
My mind stalled and I couldn’t compute what I’d just heard. “WHAT??”
“I had a baby when I was 17… before I met your father.” Tears leaked down her cheeks. “His name is Gerard.”
I couldn’t breathe or think. “Where is he?”
“I gave him up for adoption when he was five. I was so young, Jeremy. I was scared out of my mind. His father disappeared the minute I told him I was pregnant. I didn’t know how to raise a child on my own.”
“You never told Dad?”
She shakes her head. “I felt humiliated. Then years passed, and it became simpler to pretend it never occurred. Until…”
“Until what?”
“Gerard discovered me six months ago. We did the DNA test and everything.” She wiped her nose with trembling hand. “At first, I was quite thrilled. My boy is all grown up. “But then…”
“But then what, Mom?”
“He started asking for money. Said he was in trouble and needed help getting back on his feet. Things started disappearing from the house… like Dad’s vintage pocket watch, my grandmother’s ring. Small stuff at first.”
“Then one night last month, he showed up here… panicked. Gave me that phone and all that cash. Told me to hide it somewhere safe, that people might come looking for it. Then he disappeared.”
“What kind of people?”
“I don’t know! That’s what terrifies me. He wouldn’t explain anything. Just said if anyone came asking questions, I should tell them I’d never seen him.”
I turned on the phone. The battery showed 3 percent. The call log had dozens of numbers, most of them from the same contact: “G.”
I dialed it from my phone.
“Yeah?” A man’s voice answered, rough and tired.
“Is this Gerard?”
A prolonged pause. “Who wants to know?”
“I am Jeremy. Lisa’s son.
Another pause, longer this time. When he spoke again, his tone was different… and softer.
“Jeremy?? You’re my younger brother, correct?”
***
We met at Murphy’s Diner on Highway 9. I spotted Gerard immediately. He had the same dark hair as mine and the same stubborn jawline that Mom always said came from her side of the family. But where I was soft around the edges from too much travel food, he looked like he’d been carved from stone.
“You look like her!” he exclaimed, sliding into the booth across from me.
“You look like me, brother!”
He laughed, but it did not reach his eyes. “God, this is weird.”
“Tell me about it.” I leaned forwards. “What the hell’s going on, Gerard? Mom has been terrified for several weeks.”
His expression became serious. He then reached into his jacket and took out a badge.
“I’m a cop. Eastside PD. I was working undercover, trying to infiltrate a drug operation that was moving money through the city.”
I froze. “You’re a cop?”
“Was. Am. It’s complicated.” He rubbed his face. “I got in too deep. These guys were into everything… drugs, weapons, laundering money through fake businesses. When they started getting suspicious, I had to disappear fast.”
“So the money..?”
“Evidence. And my personal savings. I needed Mom to hold onto it because I didn’t want them to trace it back to me. And yes, I grabbed some items from the house. I was desperate, trying to keep my cover. “I planned to repay her for everything.”
“She thought you were a criminal.”
“I know.” His eyes welled up with tears. “My adoptive parents informed me that I was adopted.” I found down Mom through the agency. I couldn’t tell her the truth without jeopardizing her safety. The less she knew, the more secure she was.”
“The case was wrapped up last week,” Gerard said. “Three arrests and two convictions. I waited to be sure it was actually over before contacting her again.”
I stared at my half-brother — this stranger who was family… and the cop who’d lived in the shadows to protect people like us.
“She hid it in the pipes, man. And she’s been washing dishes in the bathtub for two weeks.”
He winced. “I’ll fix the sink. And I’ll explain everything to her. I owe her that much.”
“We both do.”
***
That evening, the three of us sat at Mom’s kitchen table. Gerard repeated his story, this time slower, to fill in the gaps. Mom cried with relief, years of repressed shame, and the sheer delight of having both of her sons in the same room.
“I’m sorry I gave you up,” she said quietly to Gerard. “Every day, I wondered if I made the right choice.”
“You did what you had to do,” he stated kindly. “We all did.”
Later, once Gerard had mended the sink and the dishes were finally rinsed in their proper location, I found myself reflecting on secrets and how they grow in the dark like mushrooms, feeding on shame and dread until they are too huge to hold.
