And then I turned the laptop around so that both of them could see the screen.

What appeared on the monitor was a high-definition video feed.

And it took them both a moment to understand what they were looking at, because the image was of a place they knew very well, a place they had been certain no one else could see: the interior of the basement.

The rusted cot.

The furnace.

My mother, still and small beneath her winter coat.

And sitting on the folding chair beside her, among the bottles, a small, unremarkable black device that looked, to anyone who glanced at it, like an ordinary air purifier.