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Cochran summoned Vivian to DC. Vivian’s CO had grounded her for her unauthorized flight to Otis Field, so she arrived as a passenger in someone else’s plane.

She could no longer button her uniform pants, so she’d purchased an enormous pair of slacks and attempted to take them in everywhere but the waist. The housemother took pity on Vivian’s negligible sewing skills and stepped in to help.

“Well, we’ve done our best,” said the housemother, frowning at the crooked seams. “Press them and hope.”

But Vivian knew better than to hope. Her only consolation for the discharge that she would surely receive was that the WASP was disbanding. Because Cochran would never have taken her into it, not now.

The housemother’s frown was nothing compared to Cochran’s when Vivian was ushered into her office.

“I don’t know why I bothered to have them bring you up, Shaw,” said Cochran. “When I could have just sent a telegram demobbing you.”

Vivian, remembering when Cochran had let her north Florida accent slip in their first meeting, thought she might know why.

“I apologize for letting you down, ma’am. There were ... extenuating circumstances.”

“You’re here, so you may as well explain yourself.”

“There was nothing about this,” she said, gesturing at her belly, “that I wanted or encouraged. Nothing.”

Cochran tilted her head as if asking a question, and Vivian used every ounce of her willpower to keep from hanging her own head in answer to it.

“And did you somehow think that just because you are in the service of your country, the laws of your country no longer applied? Did you not avail yourself of the law, Miss Shaw?”

“It would have been my word against his.”

“You haven’t answered me. Did you not avail yourself of the law?”

“The same law that didn’t apply to Susan Patterson? That law?”

They sat regarding each other for a long moment, and then Cochran said, “There will be a ceremony on December seventh. General Arnold will speak. The WASP will march together one final time. You will not be present. You will not be within fifty miles of Avenger Field. Do you understand?”

Vivian nodded.

“Until that day, you will serve on desk duty only in whatever capacity they can find for you at Liberty Field.”

Vivian said nothing.

“Or, if you prefer, I could discharge you immediately.”

“I’ll take the desk duty,” she whispered. Even if she couldn’t fly, she needed to eat. She needed the paycheck.

“Speak up, Shaw.”

“I’ll take the desk duty, ma’am.”

Cochran closed her file. “Dismissed.”

In Manhattan, Quigley’s cousin found them an apartment.

George bought Vivian a brass ring. Now they looked like two war wives waiting for their husbands to return.

The brass ring was just the beginning. George traipsed all over the city, her ankles as slender as ever, buying diapers, cotton blankets, glass bottles, a sterilizer, a double pram.

Every purchase displayed for Vivian’s approval and appreciation.

She forced herself to smile, to say how sweet, how perfect.

But all she could think was, how long until it was over. How long until it was out of her and in George’s arms, swaddled in George’s blankets. How long until she could go.

She was grateful to George. She loved George.

But she couldn’t wait to put miles of distance between them.

She felt trapped by the lack of sky in New York.

And by her lumbering slowness, the constant kicking and turning of the child inside her.

By the doctor who put his cold stethoscope to her heart and then to her stomach and cheerily told her she was shipshape.

She hated the liquid that gushed from her, puddling around her shoes. The cabbie who said, “Hang on, sweetheart, almost there.” George squeezing her hand and whispering that everything would be just fine.

Her cheerful doctor put her under for the birth—a mercy that made Vivian hate him less. When she woke, the nurse wheeled the baby in and offered it to her. Vivian reluctantly accepted it. Its eyes were closed. She closed hers too. Then she handed it back to the nurse.

“Don’t worry,” said the nurse. “Once you get to know each other, you’ll be just fine.”

“I’ll take her.” George entered the room, her step graceful and easy, despite her enormous belly. “Oh, hello, sweetheart.” She sniffed the baby’s head, opened the blanket and inspected its tiny fingers and toes. “Vivian. She’s beautiful. What’s her name?”

Vivian pled fatigue to stay in the hospital as long as possible.

The nurses tended to the baby. She lay in her bed, ignoring her aching breasts.

Her fingers flicked Louis’s lighter open and closed while her mind flicked through potential destinations.

She couldn’t stay in New York. She didn’t want to be around other WASPs, who would wonder why she hadn’t attended the final ceremony in Sweetwater.

If she’d washed out like Fontana back in training, she could have been spared so much.

Hmm. She wondered if Fontana still lived outside Philadelphia.

Philadelphia wasn’t far from New York. But it was far enough away that she wouldn’t be tempted to return. Vivian wrote Fontana that she’d be passing through, that she hoped to see her. Fontana wrote back: “We’ve got tons of room. Come and stay as long as you’d like.”