Obviously, Adelaide doesn't have any pre-apocalyptic mothering experience to go by, but she doesn't think it's much of a stretch to realize that the way Isaac looks at her son, the way so many people have looked at the child since he entered this fluctuating world, would not have been near so common back before the end, before so many people lost so much, and those small and innocent and defenseless lives were some of the first ones to go. She is only speculating, projecting, but she’s a perceptive sort, and it isn’t all that hard to miss the way Isaac’s eyes linger and hold on the baby, how he looks deep in thoughts for a time that he doesn’t share. Adelaide couldn’t imagine ever having a child, before, and now she can’t imagine losing him.
But imagining is for other times and other people, who don’t have quite so much on their plate that is real and pressing. She nods along with Isaac’s question, and she’s thought about what she should tell him here - the truth is incriminating, because when she found her brother it was entirely accidental - she was looking for the Dog King. Which is something to reflect on… Maybe there’s more of that Hawkins trouble in her soul than she admits to.
Her answer is delivered in the same tone as her others, forthright and without any sense that she might be in the wrong. Everyone hopes to reunite with family in these times. “He’d been looking for me, the entire time we were both in Austin - he probably should have known to look for me here, but of course with his record how could he? He had a snapshot, old but I haven’t changed all that much. Someone recognized me, pointed him in the right direction. I started finding messages, whenever I left the building. I answered his messages, and then arranged to meet him... At the old flea market, way out on _____. He didn’t wear his cut, it was just him and our Sarge. I think he thought what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me.” She shifts, frowns, and lets Charlie grip her finger in his fist. “Isaac, I haven’t heard from Rob since they sent him to the hospital, since before I was brought in. Do you know anything?”