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It’s only after they’ve loaded the moving truck halfway with boxes that the parents finally notice Parker’s gone.

They spend three days yelling for him. Mom waits the longest, wanders the farthest into the forest in the dark. Her voice is a plea, an agonized howl, an echo of the day Eli closed his eyes and never opened them again. “Parker,” she cries, “Come on, be a good boy. Please.”

Parker’s a very good boy, but he doesn’t come. He curls up in a hollowed-out stump, tucks his nose under his back leg to stay warm, and waits.

Eventually, all the lights in the house go out, and the moving truck pulls away.

For six months, he’d led the parents up the stairs, to where Eli sat quiet and distraught on his bed, and whimpered and woofed and begged them to notice that Eli was still there, in the house.

Upstairs. Alone. In the place the parents called Heaven.

When the moon crests the treetops and all is silent, Parker wanders back to the house. The figure at the attic window watches him, silver as starlight, then fades back into the darkened house.

Parker hurls himself against the kitchen door until the bottommost glass pane shatters, and then bolts upstairs to the attic.

• • • •

The parents, the grandparents, all of Eli’s relatives and friends—they all told Eli he’d go to Heaven, afterward. A better place, they said.

Parker is, at his core, a dog, and so he had pictured Heaven as a grassy, boundless field, with a single great house full of scritches and warm blankets and chewed rubber balls and the smoky scent of bacon.

But Heaven, it turned out, was only Eli’s own attic bedroom, with its slanting roof and a window overlooking the backyard. To Parker—who had dreaded the impending loss of his favorite boy and had slipped his head under Eli’s weakening hand, silently begging him not to go away, to Heaven or anywhere else—the fact that Heaven and home were one in the same now seemed inevitable, obvious. Of course there was no better place than here, with the parents. With Parker.

And yet—despite the long months of the parents sobbing, growing gray-faced and thin, Parker could not persuade them that Eli was still here, inside the house, alone in his attic bedroom.

Pale as the walls and hollowed out, like he might blow away in a gust.

But here.

One day the parents brought home boxes and rolls of packing tape. They rolled up Eli’s Minecraft posters, crumbled his Lego cities. Eli stood in the corner and watched, his mouth open but unspeaking, his eyes filled with intangible tears, little more than a forgotten, boy-shaped shadow.

That day Parker lay down at Eli’s feet and decided he would never leave. Not with Mom and Dad. Not with anyone.

• • • •

Parker pushes the cracked attic door open. The room is entirely bare—they took Eli’s bed! Where will he sleep now? His TV is gone, his PlayStation, all his soccer trophies and photos, the raggedy purple Bear that sat on his bed and whom Mom once stitched back together after Parker played with it a little too hard.

Gone. All of it.

Except Eli.

Eli sits in the corner, knees to his chest, head resting on his folded arms. He is shaking, overcome with tears.

Parker whines and bounds toward him. Eli looks up but does not smile. Parker tries to lick the tears away, but Eli tastes only like dust floating in sunlight, so instead he whimpers, circles twice, and lays on the carpet at Eli’s feet.

• • • •

In the daylight, people come to the house—electricians, painters, a redheaded woman in a gray suit—and so Parker hides in the forest until the sun sets and he’s certain they’re gone. At night, he sleeps beside Eli, who sometimes sits, sometimes paces, sometimes stares into the yard, sometimes weeps so hard that his face takes on the shape of a scream but no sound comes out at all—and in those moments, Parker moves closer, whimpers, even lets himself howl on Eli’s behalf.

And sometimes Eli reaches his hand out to stroke Parker’s fur so gently that Parker can hardly feel it.

But Eli never speaks, and he never leaves his room. It’s just as the parents said. No one can leave Heaven.

• • • •

One morning, a man in an orange t-shirt arrives; he replaces the broken pane of glass. Parker breaks it again that night.

More people come now, often in groups, always with the gray-suited woman. They circle the outside of the house, pointing at shutters and shingles and leaning in close to whisper to each other. First a man and a woman, the woman’s belly so round that Parker thinks she must have swallowed a pot roast for lunch. The next day, a gruff man with a ponytail and grease on his shoes, two sour-faced teenagers trailing behind him. After that, a pair of young men, the taller of the two bearing a limp, snoring infant strapped to his chest.

Parker, hidden under a leafy fringe of forest, watches them. They pass through the foyer, the living room, the kitchen, and up into the attic—solid shapes that ignore Eli’s pale presence. They stare out the attic window at the passing clouds. They smile at the view and the delicate slant of sunlight through the pines. They do not see Parker.

The last to visit is an old woman. She is tall, straight-backed and slow-moving, her white hair cropped short, her hands built for work.

Two weeks later, before the sun has a chance to rise, Parker wakes to the sound of a truck in the driveway and boots on the front steps.

He bolts out the broken glass door before he’s caught.

• • • •

The white-haired woman stares into the forest. Unlike the others, she’s noticed Parker, peering out of his hollowed stump a half-dozen yards into the trees. She stands at the edge of the grass, her wide hands on her hips, and looks right at him.

“You come here, boy,” she says. “Or are you a girl? Doesn’t matter to me. I’ve got food. I won’t hurt you.”

Parker huddles further into the darkened hollow of the stump. He is certain she will send him away—back to the parents, far from Eli.

The woman goes inside, lets the glass-paned door swing shut behind her.

She returns carrying a steel mixing bowl, sets it on the back stairs, and wanders back inside again.

Parker holds out as long as he can. He can smell it through the scent of pine and cold soil, through the smoke of a distant neighbor’s chimney. Grilled chicken.

His belly gets the better of him.

He makes a wide circle across the yard, along the edge of the house, under the attic where Eli watches him approach from above. He pads up the back stairs, careful not to let his nails click on the wood.

He’s about to plunge his face into the bowl when the woman flings the door open.

Parker leaps backward, ready to flee.

“Wait,” she says. She holds her hand out, fist closed, and lets Parker sniff it. Once he’s done, she runs her palm across his head, along his jowls, and scratches behind his left ear.

She smells warm. Alive.

“That’s a good boy,” she says. “Come on in, then.” She holds the door open. Parker slips inside.

When he races straight for the attic, she doesn’t object.

• • • •

Of course, if Parker had known the woman planned to take him to the vet, he would have stayed in the forest, within view of Eli’s window, for good.

The tech—young, with scarlet flowers tattooed up both arms—picks through his fur, pokes him in the ears. Sticks a needle in his rump and prods at his belly. Parker huddles on the exam table, making himself as small as he possibly can.

Parker’s already assessed the sprinting distance from the cold steel table to the door, from the door through the lobby to the parking lot, from the parking lot across the town, through the forest, and back to the attic where Eli’s stuck, forever, in Heaven. But the white-haired woman rests her hand on the back of Parker’s neck. Her touch is soft, consoling. It’s the only thing keeping him still.

“Yep, he’s got a chip,” says the tech.

“Oh?” says the woman. “What happens now?”

“We check the database. Find his people.”

The woman squeezes Parker’s fur.

“If we can reach them,” the tech says, “then we can give them your contact information to arrange pickup. Or you can drop him at the shelter instead. They’ll keep him until his owners arrive.”

“Give them my number,” says the woman. “Please.” She runs her hand over Parker’s head and scratches his ear, just like she did the first night.

Parker lifts his head, nudges her hand, and whimpers. He can’t leave Eli. He can’t. They all told Eli he’d go to Heaven but they didn’t tell him that Heaven meant being alone in his room, being forgotten, being left behind. Parker is all Eli has now.

And he can’t make the woman understand.

The woman scratches under Parker’s chin. Parker rests his head in her palm.

“No,” she tells the vet tech. “No shelter. I’ll take him home for now.”

• • • •

Weeks pass. There are no calls from the parents, no calls from the vet. The woman spends her days unpacking boxes, unwrapping dishes, filling the living room with a faded gray couch, bookshelves, a lamp shaped like a silver dolphin, three potted plants with leaves twice the size of Parker’s head, and a wide-screen television on which she watches shows about mustachioed men solving murders and women hurling orange balls through nets.

The woman pets him whenever he is near; it is an idle, unconscious gesture, an instinctive affection. She feeds him—dog food, mostly, but occasionally a slice of bacon, a nibble of grilled chicken off her plate.

She is no Eli, of course. She doesn’t play catch. Once, Parker brought her a weather-chewed ball from the woods, but she mumbled about pain in her back and tossed the ball into a corner by the front door.

And sometimes she loses herself. She stares at framed photos she’s arranged in rows on the bookshelves—her in the arms of a second woman, shorter, both of them young and dark-haired. In some photos, they are surrounded by a huddle of brown-eyed children. In others, they are both graying, the short woman suddenly thinner, smaller, wilting, or gone.

Afterward, the woman sits on the couch and cries in the silent, breathless way Mom cried after Eli went to Heaven.

In those moments, Parker rests his jowls on the woman’s bare feet.

And eventually, her tears fade and she scratches Parker’s ear and turns on the television. As the mustachioed man finds another clue, Parker slips up the stairs and finds Eli at the window, or in the corner. Parker comes back to the attic every night, sleeps curled at Eli’s side, always under the shadow of Eli’s hand.

Parker wants to tell Eli that the woman downstairs is gentle and kind, that she grills chicken and has the largest television Parker’s ever seen. But Parker can’t talk, and here in Heaven, Eli can’t either.

So they rest together instead, and listen to the sounds of life downstairs.

• • • •

Parker comes downstairs late and finds the woman clutching her phone to her cheek.

“Yes,” she says, “that’s right, a yellow lab. Male. No, he’s fine, no injuries. I’ve got him here in the house.”

Parker freezes. He slinks back up the stairs.

“Oh god. I’m so sorry,” the woman says. “How awful. No wonder he didn’t want to leave.”

It is. It’s the parents. They’ve called because of the chip, because of the vet. Parker dances from one paw to another. He flees to a corner of the attic, out of sight of the door, lies on the floor, and makes himself small.

Eli follows. He moves slow now, as if the world has become syrup and he must wade through it to reach Parker’s side. He sits on the carpet. He passes a hand over Parker’s head, scratches his left ear.

Parker can almost, almost feel it.

He tucks his head between his paws. He can still hear the conversation downstairs. He wonders if Eli can hear it too.

“No, I understand. It’s fine,” says the woman.

There’s a long silence. Parker closes his eyes. He has never lived anywhere but this house. He has never believed in anything but the scent of grass, the smiles of his family, the taste of good meat, and the intense love he has for Eli.

He wills his tiny world to please, please let him stay here in Heaven with Eli.

“I understand,” says the woman. “It’s a hard decision. His name’s Parker, right? Well. Parker’s been a very good boy.” Another long silence and then, in a low voice, the woman says, “Of course, yes. Absolutely. I’ll keep him here.”

That’s it, Parker thinks. The parents will come soon. They will walk right past Eli like he’s nothing more than dust and cobwebs and they will take Parker away from Heaven forever.

He nuzzles his head close to Eli and does his best to sleep.

• • • •

In the morning, Parker wakes as the sun rises, to the sound of a minivan sputtering into the driveway.

They’ve come, then. The parents have come to retrieve him. So soon. He circles, frantic, then huddles in the corner and waits for a hand on his collar to pull him downstairs and into the van.

But Eli does not come to sit beside him. Instead, he stands at the window, in the sunlight. Smiling.

And then Parker hears it: squeals and giggles.

Parker is, at his core, a family dog. He recognizes the shrieks of young children running through an open field of grass. He understands the sound of joy.

He leaps to his feet and bolts to the window beside Eli. There are children—five of them. Four girls and a boy, all dark-haired and dark-eyed, like the women in the photographs downstairs. A man and a woman, too, younger, holding hands. The white-haired woman—his woman—is outside, walking with them, her palm propped against her aching back.

She carries the chewed blue ball, the one she abandoned by the door. She shouts to the children, “I’ve got a surprise.” She looks up to the attic window, where Parker is perched with his paws on the sill.

She catches his eye, waves the ball, and tosses it onto the grass.

The children look upward, all of them at once. “Grandma got a dog!” shouts the oldest, the boy.

“Parker,” says the woman. “His name’s Parker.” She smiles up at the window. “I think he likes kids.”

Parker licks his chops. He whimpers. He shifts on his haunches and prances, then spins in a circle and sits again. He has not chased a ball in months. He has nearly forgotten the feeling.

He looks up at Eli.

And Eli looks back at him.

Eli—still shadow, still little more than motes of dust reshaped by the morning sunlight streaking through his tiny Heaven—makes no sound. But he cocks his head toward the window and grins, and Parker recognizes “Go play, Parker” on his favorite boy’s lips.

And so Parker leaves Heaven, bounding down three stairs at a time, and chases the first thrown ball out into sunlit grass.