~4.34~

John considered.

Ginger had more children in her care than most people would likely know what to do with… if anything, she had a surplus. She didn’t have to go seeking out more.

It was possible, he thought, that she meant to take some of the children who were her unofficial charges and bring them in. He didn’t know enough about her to know how likely that was, but it struck him as somewhat implausible. There were so many children living in the mall that adopting one or two of them would not make much of a difference.

But then, perhaps she wasn’t the one who was to do the adopting… perhaps she was adopting some of her children out. Was this possible? Again, John didn’t know the lady. Most people affiliated with tribe had a natural or acquired distrust of “the system”, though, and if Jericho had been overflowing with conventional homes in the mundane world that were eager and desperate for these children, then they would not have ended up on the streets in such numbers in the first place.

And if Ginger had been consulting with “her mama”, that made it even less likely that she’d have been talking about placing her children with an adoption agency in the straight world.

“Could you tell me exactly what it was that Ginger said?” John asked, but the woman looked cagey.

“Hey, I wasn’t really listening that close,” she said. “Like I said, I wasn’t eavesdropping. If you’re so closed to Ginger you should probably just ask her.”

“I’m sorry,” John said. “I’m just trying to determine if it’s too early for congratulations… it’s such an arduous process, you know, and I would be but an ass if I went about expounding without knowing for certain.”

“Uh, yeah,” the woman said. “Well, I don’t have the inside scoop or anything. I just know what I heard, which wasn’t a lot.”

“Thank you all the same,” John said. “I think I’ll be off.”