Luckily for me and Stormy, Bay liked puppies. She always did. Any time a puppy walked by, she greeted it with as much enthusiasm as my tail held on any given day.

I watched with wide eyes and a slipped tongue as Stormy inspected its—his new home. Seeing Bay exercise so much patience took me back to when she trained me as a young dog. She never yelled and always showed me what to do instead of what not to do. She was always kind, gentle, and rarely got upset with me.

The puppy must have relished in testing her fortitude because she looked ready to rip the hair out of her head.

The puppy had not destroyed anything since the Squeaky Duck incident a few moments before, but that was due to Bay constantly herding him away from anything chewable. All I could do was sit back and watch as it attempted to pulverize anything it could get its teeth on. All our training and hard work had flown out the window.

Stormy was wreaking havoc on Bay's life and I was responsible. My insides clenched at the thought. I failed. Instead of bringing joy back to Bay's life, I only sent her destruction and anxiety.

A groan rumbled in my throat as I lowered my head.

"Quiet down," a familiar gravelly voice said next to me. I turned to find Ziggy staring back at me, her beady eyes peering through her bushy schnauzer eyebrow fur. When she spotted my screen, she stiffened. "Hugo, what did you do?"

"Nothing," I said, my voice turning defensive. "I did what had to be done."

Ziggy groaned as she pulled herself to her paws, acting as if her limbs still creaked and ached like they did before she died.

"Geronimo's not going to be happy about this," she said. "And I'm not going to be anywhere near you when she finds out."

The old schnauzer sauntered by and settled several televisions away, putting more distance between her and the door. I watched in awe; Ziggy never left her post.

She settled down and the television blinked on to show her sleeping, decrepit human still clinging to life.

"I'll deal with Geronimo when she shows up," I said with more confidence than I should have had. Ziggy slowly turned away and assumed her usual curled position to watch her human sleep.

I tried to push Geronimo out of my mind to focus on Bay and Stormy. I knew she would be angry; that was always going to be the case. There was not a single scenario I had gone over that led to her dismissing my act with understanding and empathy. All I could hope for was enough time to make sure Stormy settled in well enough before Geronimo realized her trainee was missing.

Seeing as I was the wish granter, rather than the wish maker, my hope of a delayed reaction was squashed when the retriever growled my name from the Earth Observatory door.

"Hugo!"

I cowered and flattened everything I could, even my chin, to the ground in hopes that my show of submission would dissuade her from ripping my head clean off.

Geronimo wasn't just pissed; she was furious. Fuming. Vengeful.

"Where's my trainee?" Geronimo barked. "What did you do with him? I swear if this has anything to do with those questions you ask about the Earth door..."

Geronimo trailed off as she spotted the screen. There in front of her was an image of her black puppy with a cloud-shaped eyepatch obsessively squeaking a squishy ball in his mouth, Bay flanking him on one side.

Geronimo took in the scene in front of her in stunned silence. The longer she waited to react, the worse I knew it would be.

"Listen," I said, crouching further into the floor. The invisible blades of grass scratched at my belly. "I can explain—"

"Explain what?" Geronimo snapped, ripping her attention from the screen and funneling all her anger toward me. "How you stole my trainee? How you went behind my back for months to fulfill your twisted agenda? Give me one good reason I shouldn't crop your ears right here, Hugo!"

"I just wanted to help—"

"Help? This isn't helping anyone! Newsflash, every dog here misses their owner. Everyone was loved at one point in their lives and their humans suffered when they died. You're not special and neither is Bay."

My tail curled around my side. Geronimo was wrong about at least one thing. I may not have been special, but Bay was.

Ziggy lifted her head from where she had been listening on the sidelines.

"Go easy on him, Gerri. He's been watching his human mourn for months now."

"Stay out of this, Ziggy," she said. "You know what happens to dogs who break the rules."

I tilted my head towards Ziggy, but the schnauzer turned away without a care.

Geronimo's eyes grew darker. The black holes burrowed into mine, void of any light or compassion.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, panicked. Geronimo looked ready to pounce on me, the long yellow fur on her back standing on end. "Geronimo, you have to listen to me. Stor—that puppy can still help someone. He can help Bay. I know what I did was wrong, but Bay needed someone."

"You stole a promising young soul and put him at risk to make your human feel better. No excuse is good enough for what you did."

I recoiled, terrified of whatever my punishment could be. One look at Ziggy told me nothing. The old dog had turned her back to me in favor of her human.

Geronimo followed my gaze. As she stared at her, the fur on her back slowly fell. If a dog ever could scowl, Geronimo was doing it. "What's done is done. We can't get him back now. If anything happens to that child, I'll make sure you regret it."

The fuming retriever left, leaving me a shaking, whimpering mess.

"Don't worry about Gerri," Ziggy said without lifting her head. "She'll cool down."

"There aren't... punishments in Dog Heaven, are there?" I lowered my head and my tail fell limp.

"Just enjoy your victory, Hugo."

"No, tell me what Geronimo meant when she said you know what happens when the rules are broken."

Ziggy sighed and showed her beady eyes. "She meant that I've been punished in the past and I'm still facing the consequences."

My legs stiffened at her confession. Ziggy, a rule breaker? She practically lived in the Earth Observatory. She would never have the time to do something so heinous as to warrant punishment, let alone the heart to do so.

"Don't look at me like that," she snapped.

"What happened?" I asked, pretending that her eyes weren't shooting knives at me. "How did they punish you?"

Ziggy huffed another sigh and struggled to her shaky legs. Without so much as a single word, she walked right past me. I took her silence as an invitation and followed her out of the Earth Observatory. I'd had enough of watching Stormy destroy my home.

"Dog Heaven isn't a permanent place for anyone," she said as I trotted next to her along a paved path. The high sun beat down on us, but it was not hot enough to make us pant. "Some spend more time here than others, but everyone leaves eventually. That was something I had trouble understanding when I first got here.

"Geronimo tried to help me settle in, but I missed my human. She was getting on in her years at the time, but she was still active as could be. We warmed ourselves by the fire together, went out for ice cream, and her grandkids loved me. When I died of old age, I couldn't adjust to Dog Heaven. So I sneaked back to Earth with the same door you put that pup through."

Ziggy and I moved slowly across the park. She kept her eyes on the pathway, not allowing her gaze to venture far beyond her paws. Her head hung as she walked, ignoring the other dogs around us. I wondered when the last time she had left the Earth Observatory was.

"So you've been to Earth twice?" I asked, my voice and eyes filled with amazement.

"I have, and I paid the price. Geronimo warned me against it, but I was too stubborn to listen. Once I was there, there was no getting me back. I found my human and she was beyond thrilled, thinking she had stumbled upon another dog exactly like me. She called me a reincarnation. Even used the same name, that uncreative old bat. She never knew that I was really me."

"I don't see what's so bad about getting to live two lives with your human. Seems like a wish come true."

"That's what I thought, too, until she started to forget things. It started off small. Little things here and there, like forgetting to take off my collar at night or missing outside breaks. Then she would go days without feeding me. No matter how often I begged, it was like she didn't even realize I was there. Then one day, her family took her away and I never saw her again. None of them wanted to take care of me, so they sent me to a shelter. Of course, no one wants to adopt an elder like me, so I died waiting.

"When I got back here, Geronimo was waiting for me. She wasn't angry, though. She understood, but she said that rules were rules."

"What did she do?"

"Have you never wondered why I'm like this? Why I'm not young again like the rest of you?"

I tilted my head at her. Of course, I had wondered, but I figured it was because she liked being old. Ziggy was the resident grump. Everyone knew not to bother her if they wanted to keep both their ears.

"My punishment for going back to Earth and jeopardizing the integrity of the afterlife is that, until Coretta comes for me, I have to live in the body I died in.

"Watching her every day isn't part of my punishment, but sometimes it feels like it is. I get tired so often that there's not much else I can do. You know, the worst part isn't even the old age. It's the forgetfulness and having to watch her become a different person. At the end, she wasn't the Coretta I knew in my first lifetime."

Upon stating her exhaustion, Ziggy slowed to a stop.

"I think we'd better head back," she said, craning her neck towards the Earth Observatory in the distance. She turned around and began to saunter the same direction we came from without waiting for my acknowledgment.

We walked in silence as I processed what she told me.

"Why hasn't Geronimo's human come for her yet?" I asked.

"Because he's still alive. Geronimo was a family dog for a long time until her humans had their own baby. Once the baby grew into a child, Geronimo wasn't the family dog anymore; she was his. She loves kids, but she died when he was still young. So she's been here his whole life, waiting for him to finish living before she can go to Human Heaven with him."

We paused outside the Earth Observatory. Our walk had not taken us far, but Ziggy moved so slowly that it took even longer to get back. The old schnauzer held her head low.

"I guess we'd better get back to our televisions," I said. The reality of my words weighed in the air between us.

Ziggy turned to me. The sun, which sat higher in the sky than when we first embarked on our walk, reflected a sliver of light in her black eyes.

"I know you wanted to help Bay, and you did. You made her wish come true, or whatever it is you're always rambling about. Just don't get so wrapped up in her happiness that you forget about yours."

Ziggy took a few more steps and the automatic doors opened for her. She trudged into the Earth Observatory like a shelter dog back to her cage.

I wanted to follow to check in on how Bay and Stormy's first day together was playing out, but my paws were frozen to the warm pavement.

While Ziggy was not technically a prisoner, her punishment made it seem that way. She paid the price for wanting extra time with her human. Her punishment left her with no other option but to watch her human slowly deteriorate. They were both suffering.

I did my best to push the thought to the back of my mind, then entered through the sliding door. I settled on the opposite side of the room as Ziggy, who had returned to her regular television. The screen blinked on.

To my surprise, Stormy's destructive antics had ceased.

Bay sat on the floor with Stormy curled in her lap, his flank rising and falling through shallow sleepy breaths. Bay's attention was focused on a movie, but her hand stroked the fur along his back. She looked at the snoozing puppy in her lap and smiled a real, genuine smile.

I made her happy again.

Ziggy was right. I had fulfilled my promise to grant Bay's wish. I brought joy to her life again. I only wished that in doing so, I hadn't made her forget about me.

I needed to make a change. Bay didn't need me watching her every move anymore. If I had trained Stormy well, he would know what to do. He was already doing it. Even if I didn't watch, there wouldn't be any use in watching Bay's life fall apart. There was nothing I could do anymore, even if I wanted to. I loved Bay, but I also did not want to end up like Ziggy.

So I did something I never thought I'd do: I left the Earth Observatory.