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George hadn’t flown in almost a month. Her CO never let his gaze fall below her neck, but he wouldn’t let her anywhere near a plane. He cooked up desk work for her. Which, seeing as she couldn’t type, meant sorting and filing the endless forms and memoranda the military spawned.

“He’s a nice man,” George wrote to Vivian.

“I just wish he’d let me fly again. Maybe when the situation changes .

..” She didn’t specify what the situation was.

The censors read everything, and she didn’t want anyone confirming what her CO must have already suspected.

The longer she could stay a WASP, the stronger the possibility of a commission, of being able to fly once women were integrated into the USAAF.

It was a short-lived hope. When she learned that the WASP would be dissolved, that piloting jobs would be reserved for the men coming home from overseas, she wished she and Vivian were hearing it together.

Months earlier, she’d felt relief when they parted ways.

Vivian barely spoke to her anymore, barely even looked at her.

Some friend, George had thought, turning on her just because she’d gotten married.

After a few weeks of silence between Otis and Liberty, George decided to be the bigger person and send the first letter.

Vivian hadn’t responded. Not to that letter or any of the others that followed.

Serves me right, thought George after another fruitless mail call, thinking of Helen’s letters piling up in her footlocker. She pulled out a fresh piece of stationery. “Dear Helen,” she wrote. “I hope you and Frank Jr. are well. He might have a new little friend soon.”

She filled a page with innocuous details about Otis Field, sealed it in an envelope, and walked across base to the mail room.

She slowed as she passed the airfield. She couldn’t fly, but she could still look at the planes.

A tall woman in Santiago Blues—unmistakably a WASP—strode toward her.

George hurried forward. It couldn’t be. It was!

Her mirror image. Still mirroring her in every way. George put a hand to her own belly. Vivian did the same and then began to cry. Helen’s letter fell to the ground. George wrapped her arms around her friend and did not let go for a long time.

After Vivian’s renegade visit, George phoned her at Liberty at least twice a week. They didn’t talk about the disbandment. Instead, they discussed the problem of Vivian’s pregnancy.

“I can’t bring it to Hahira,” Vivian said. “They don’t want me there as it is. Not that I even intend to go home.”

“Not,” she whispered so softly that George could barely hear her, “that I want to bring it anywhere.”

George’s eyes filled with tears as Vivian continued. “I don’t think I can touch it. I don’t think I can look at it. What am I going to do?”

She wouldn’t hear of adoption. “A stranger? Would they love it? Could they?”

“Of course they could,” said George. “I could.”

“Could you? Really?”

“Yes,” said George, the germ of a solution sprouting as she said it. “Vivian, I know I could. Yes! ”

Another call, two weeks later: “Quigley has a cousin,” Vivian whispered. “In New York. He’s 4-F and works in the records office. It wouldn’t be cheap, though.”

“I’ve always wanted to go to New York,” George said to Vivian.

“I’ve always wanted to go to New York,” George said in her weekly call to Adele.

“I assumed you’d come home to have the baby, with Tom overseas and all.” Every phone call with her mother devolved into the same conversation. George needed to come home. The sooner, the better. Why, now that the WASP had disbanded, was she still at Otis?

“Because they could change their minds,” said George. “And you didn’t raise me to be a quitter.”

George needed the best possible care. She needed rest. Her mother’s voice quavered with worry.

“The hospitals in New York are excellent, Mother. And I’ll have Vivian with me. To help out.”