"There never was any turkey. Didn’t you know?"

Martin and Melissa Buntell were a married couple that worked in my office. Nine days out of ten they’d mention their pet turkey, at least in passing. Sometimes they’d have in-depth discussions about its behavior or temperament. I had come to know more about the turkey than about their son. Now Milly Charlton was telling me that they had never had a turkey, that they had made it up.

"How could there not be a turkey?" I demanded. "Why would they have gone to all that trouble to fool us?"

"It wasn’t to fool us," said Milly. "It was just a game they were playing."

We were speaking in the past tense because the Buntells had recently packed up and moved to Hawaii. I had no way of reaching them to verify Milly’s allegation.

"How do you know there’s no turkey?" I asked her.

"I’ve known for years," she said. "I went to their house once to drop something off and there was no evidence of a turkey so I asked them and they told me."

"They just told you. They didn’t even pretend?"

"They laughed a little. They hadn’t realized that anyone believed them."

"Why not? It’s not as if it’s absurd to have a pet turkey. Some friends of my parents had one once. Besides, their stories were so consistent and so detailed."

"I don’t know what to tell you," said Milly. "There was no turkey."

I asked around the office and pretty much everyone had believed the turkey story too, so I didn’t feel too gullible or stupid. Until I asked Joanne, that is. After speaking with her, I was just confused.

"So," she said, "you trust a five minute conversation with Milly over five years of knowing Martin and Melissa? That turkey was practically a member of the staff here."

I feel like I should get out of that office, find a new job where things are up-front and on-the-level. Maybe I should leave town, get away from here and as far as possible from Hawaii. It might seem like a little thing, this turkey-or-no-turkey, but, God, maybe they didn’t even have a son.