It was definitely a rat. They couldn’t actually see it, only heard it scrabbling and scratching in the bathroom ceiling. The mother heard it first. She said nothing, hoping it would go away. She lay awake for an hour, praying for it to stop. She could see the rat clearly in her mind’s eye. It looked like the one she saw most workday mornings at the downtown garage, skittering past her feet into the storm drain. The children heard it next. They wandered into the bathroom, one at a time, wondering if it was about to jump out at them. They could see the rat clearly in their mind’s eye. It looked like the dead one that had lain under the stairs in the courtyard for weeks before someone, a maintenance person probably, had picked it up with a shovel and put it in the dumpster. The boyfriend heard it last, when the mother roused him from his sleep. The scrabbling and scratching had stopped for a moment then, so he told the children to …