The Cut - I Know What You Did on the Playground

One evening last November, Heather*, a mother of two on the Upper West Side, was on her phone, trying to stay awake until it was time to walk the dog, when she pulled up the Facebook page of her neighborhood moms group. “If you have a nanny that goes to the Riverside Library, (65th and Amsterdam) with your kid (ginger boy, around 2yo) she lost him today at the library,” read the top post. The poster said that she’d often seen the nanny glued to her phone, ignoring the child, and that he was missing for as long as 15 minutes: “The librarians were about to call the cops when they found him.”

Heather immediately recognized her 19-month-old, Caleb*, and his nanny, Katie*, in the description. “I was just shaking,” she says. The scene vaguely aligned with a story Katie had mentioned before leaving that day: Caleb had snuck behind the stroller and wandered into the librarian’s office, Katie told her with a laugh. Now, the whole incident seemed much darker.

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