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private number ring over into the general hotline if he wasn’t working? Hopefully. He’d rather talk to Tom, but at this point, Carson wasn’t really in the position to be turning down help, wherever he could get it.
    Five rings in, Carson’s stomach dropped. The hotline probably wasn’t even open. It was after nine on Christmas Eve. The thing probably closed in the afternoon like everything else. Carson was going to have to call the fire department or something—
    “Hello? Carson?” Tom sounded a bit hoarse, like he’d just woken up. “Carson?”
    Carson slumped in relief, letting Terry—and his arm— thunk back into the sink. “Tom? God, I was worried you were closed for the day.”
    Tom cleared his throat. “The hotline closed at two,” he said awkwardly.
    What? “But why are you still at the office? Are you snowed in or something? That’s terrible!”
    “Er, no. Well, yes. I’m snowed in. My flight was canceled, and they’ve rebooked me on one the day after Christmas. But I’m at home.” He paused. “There isn’t an office. The 1-800 number hooks into a service that routes the calls through a system that lets me answer them on my laptop. Everyone who works for the hotline does it from home. The calls just go to the next available person.”
    All this time Carson had been picturing Tom sitting in a cubicle with dozens of ringing phones around him. It seemed oddly intimate knowing Tom was actually at home.
    “Oh.”
    “Did you need something?”
    “Wait. So the number I called—it’s not a hotline number?”
    Tom sighed. “It’s my personal number, Carson. I wanted to make sure I got you if you called again, so I gave you my cell.”
    “You did?” He’d been calling Tom’s cell? So had Tom even been getting paid for the calls he’d taken? Had he even been technically at work for their conversations? Despite his predicament, Carson felt butterflies in his stomach at the thought that Tom had given him his personal number just to make sure he was the person Carson talked to when he needed turkey help.
    “I did,” Tom said shortly. “You sounded fun, and you were new to the city, so I thought….” He cleared his throat again. “Anyway, what did you need? Are you having trouble with your turkey? Terry, wasn’t it?”
    Carson cringed and looked down at Terry. “Terry and I have become very close.”
    Tom groaned. “Let me guess. Now that you’ve named the thing and had conversations with it, you can’t bring yourself to cook it.”
    “Something like that,” Carson muttered. “See, I can’t cook it because it’s stuck.”
    “Stuck how? Stuck in the pan? Stuck in the refrigerator? Stuck—”
    “Stuck on my hand ,” Carson barked.
    He expected laughter or recriminations, so Tom’s utter silence surprised him.
    Carson lowered his voice to normal tones and explained. “I was taking the bag thing out and now my hand is stuck in the turkey.”
    “I’m just… I’m having a hard time understanding—”
    “In the turkey, Tom. I put my hand in the turkey and now I can’t get it out,” Carson said, exasperated. “Help me get my hand out.”
    “I don’t understand how that’s possible. I mean, once you cut the ties on the legs the whole cavity opens up.”
    Carson studied Terry silently. The turkey’s legs were bound with some kind of twine, and with hindsight he could see how snipping them would have opened up a much bigger hole. Hell, even without cutting them, it was a bigger opening than the one he currently had his hand inside. He hadn’t realized there was more than one.
    “Oh, Carson,” Tom said, his breath leaving him in a noisy gust. “You put your hand in the neck.”
    “Yup.”
    “ How did you put your hand in the neck? It’s tiny!”
    “I know,” Carson said flatly.
    “Jesus. Okay. I’m assuming you’ve tried pulling it out?”
    Carson didn’t even justify that with an answer.
    “Right, right,” Tom muttered.
    Carson could hear typing. “Are you