Skip to content 
I believed hiring Megan to babysit our one-year-old son was the best decision my husband, Ryan, and I had ever made. She arrived early every day, remembered every detail of his routine, and sent constant pictures of him playing. The house was spotless when I returned from work, and the moment Megan stepped through the door, my son’s face would light up. He would lift his arms and kick his feet until she picked him up.
Watching them together made leaving for work bearable. Even Ryan liked her. “She’s a lifesaver,” I admitted one evening. “You finally stopped checking the baby monitor every ten minutes,” Ryan smiled. “I check it every 20 minutes now.”
Yet, minor things lingered in the back of my mind. Some afternoons, my son seemed unusually limp and sleepy when I came home. Megan always had an explanation: “He wore himself out playing outside.” I told myself I was just an anxious mother.
Then there was our delivery driver. For months, he had been bringing our packages. Every few weeks, he would set a box down, look directly into our Ring camera, and move his lips. Because the Ring microphone had been broken for months, I could never hear him. Ryan kept promising to fix it, but the task always got put off.
The Warning on the Camera
On a Thursday morning, Megan arrived early as usual. My son leaned toward her without hesitation, and I headed off to work.
Shortly before one o’clock, my phone vibrated with a Ring notification. The familiar delivery driver walked toward the porch carrying two boxes. He placed them down and started back toward his truck. Halfway down the path, he suddenly stopped and stared intently at the side of our house—toward where we kept our trash cans.
He looked back at the front door, hesitated, and then hurried back to the porch. Pulling a piece of loose cardboard from a box and finding a marker in his pocket, his hands began to shake as he bent over to write. He looked behind him once before holding the cardboard directly in front of the camera.
Four words filled the screen:
“CHECK YOUR TRASH CAN.”