Part 3
“This is what landlords do,” Laura said, though her voice did not sound as certain as she wanted it to. “People hear scratching, they call pest control. That’s normal.”
Mark stood beside the kitchen counter with the notice in his hand. He had not put on his work jacket yet, and his hair was still damp from the shower. “Laura, if they put treatment in the walls, Scout could get into it.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m the person doing it.”
He softened immediately. “I’m not.”
But the words had already found the sore place. Laura looked down the hallway toward the spare room, where Maple had barely left the fleece bed since the baby arrived. She could picture the cat curled around that wriggling little body, proud and settled in a way Laura had not seen before. Maple was not healed. Not completely. But she had stopped wandering the halls at night with Laura’s socks in her mouth.
That should have been enough to make the choice simple.
It was not.
Laura still saw a rat when she looked at Scout. She saw the naked tail, the tiny claws, the quick little mouth. Her body reacted before her mind could offer mercy. Every time Mark lifted him from the enclosure for feeding, Laura found herself stepping back, wiping her hands on her jeans, fighting the old childhood panic that rose before she could stop it.
“I don’t want him dead,” she said finally. “But I don’t know how to live with him either.”
Mark folded the notice slowly. “Then we figure out the first problem today and the second one later.”
That was how most things worked with Mark. He did not solve life all at once. He made a list, got the tools, and started where his hands could reach.
He called Dr. Ortiz from the driveway before leaving for work. She wrote a short note stating that Scout appeared to be a domestic rat in their care and should not be exposed to pest-control treatment. She also gave Mark the number of a humane wildlife exclusion service that could inspect the building without using bait in their unit.
Then Mark called Mr. Keller, the landlord.
Mr. Keller was not cruel. He was a tired man who owned three old duplexes and always sounded as if every repair request had personally betrayed him. When Mark explained, there was a pause so long Laura could hear the refrigerator hum between his words.
“You’re telling me the stray cat adopted a rat,” Mr. Keller said.
“That’s the short version.”
“And now you want me not to treat the walls.”
“I want you not to put anything dangerous near our unit until we figure out what’s going on.”
Another pause.
“That house is ninety years old,” Mr. Keller said. “If there are rodents in the walls, I have to deal with it.”
“I understand. We’re not asking you to ignore it. We’re asking you to handle it safely.”
Mr. Keller sighed. “I’ll talk to the company. No promises.”
By Friday, Scout had opened his eyes.
Laura wished he had stayed blind a little longer. It was harder to dismiss him as a horrible little thing when he blinked up at the world with glossy black eyes and lifted his head toward Maple’s whiskers. His fur came in soft and gray-brown, with a white mark under his chin that made him look as if he had been dipped in milk.
Maple treated him with unbearable seriousness. She washed him until his fur stood up in damp spikes. She nudged him back when he crawled too far. When Mark leaned in to check the bedding, she placed one orange paw over Scout’s body and gave him a look that required no translation.
“Your cat is judging me,” Mark said.
“She’s your cat when she does that,” Laura replied from the doorway.
“Funny. She was your cat when she needed three hundred dollars of bloodwork.”
Laura almost smiled.
Pest control came that afternoon, but Mr. Keller had kept his word enough to change the appointment. The technician inspected the basement, sealed two gaps near the utility line, and agreed not to place anything in the Bennetts’ unit. He did, however, look deeply confused when Mark introduced Scout through the side of the enclosure.
“That’s a rat,” the man said.
“Yes,” Mark said. “We’ve established that.”
Laura stayed behind him, arms folded, pretending she was not hiding.
The house did not become less strange after that. If anything, Scout grew into his name. Within weeks, he was climbing, sniffing, testing corners, dragging strips of fleece into his little sleeping box, and treating every object Mark gave him as a problem to be solved. He learned the sound of the treat jar. He learned Maple’s tail was not a toy after one firm swat that contained no claws but plenty of dignity. He learned Laura’s slippers meant “move quickly in the opposite direction.”
Mark built him a proper enclosure from a large rat cage Dr. Ortiz approved, with shelves, hammocks, chew toys, and a little cardboard house that Scout redesigned every night by tearing a new doorway somewhere Mark had not put one.
“You know,” Mark said one evening, watching Scout drag a piece of paper towel twice his size, “I respect his commitment to home improvement.”
Laura stood on the other side of the room with a laundry basket against her hip. “I respect him more when he stays in there.”
“Progress.”
“That is not progress. That is containment.”
Still, something changed in the house.
Maple gained weight. She began sleeping in sun patches again, but always with Scout nearby. Sometimes, when Mark let Scout out under supervision, Maple would stretch on her side and let him climb over her paws. She looked ridiculous and regal at the same time, like a queen tolerating a very small, badly behaved prince.
Scout bonded with Mark next.
It started with feedings and cage cleanings, then became a ritual. After dinner, Mark would sit on the enclosed back porch with a small glass of bourbon he pretended Laura did not know about, a dish of unsalted peas or blueberries for Scout, and the kind of tired expression men got when they had spent the day helping customers find the right screws while thinking about unpaid bills.
Scout would sit on an old towel beside him, holding a pea in both paws, nibbling with intense concentration.
“You’re a good listener,” Mark told him one evening. “You never interrupt. You don’t ask me why I didn’t fix the garage shelf yet.”
From the kitchen, Laura called, “Because you said you’d do it in April.”
Mark looked at Scout. “See? This is why we meet privately.”
Scout squeaked.
Laura did not want to laugh, so she coughed instead.
By early summer, Scout was not tiny anymore. He was sleek, bright-eyed, and far too confident. Laura still refused to touch him, but she had stopped shrieking every time his tail appeared. She had rules instead. No kitchen counters. No laundry basket. No bathroom. Absolutely no bed.
Mark accepted these rules with the solemn expression of a man who knew he could lose both his wife and his rat privileges in one careless evening.
He set Scout’s nighttime cage beside his side of the bed, far enough from Laura that she could pretend it was furniture. Scout seemed to understand the arrangement. Most nights he settled into his hammock, Maple slept on the quilt near Laura’s feet, and peace held.
Then, on the night before Mr. Keller’s follow-up inspection, Mark forgot to latch the cage properly.
At 5:40 the next morning, Laura woke to Maple pacing in frantic circles near the spare room.
Scout’s cage was open. The rat was gone. And from behind the loose heating vent where the whole impossible story had begun, a small, frightened squeak came from inside the wall…
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