September 3, 1946

There was a letter from Cassie Gideon--Cassie O'Reilly, now--waiting for me at the War Department, a few weeks later. I've no doubt that Mrs. Gideon had a hand in it. Private Williams handed it to me with a smile when I arrived at work that day and I sat at my desk, coffee and morning meetings completely forgotten as I tore into the envelope. Cassie hadn't heard from Diana in years, the note said. The last she'd heard, Diana had been engaged to an Air Force engineer named Dan White, and was that helpful?

Dan White was an engineer who'd been transferred to Venezuela back in the winter of '42. In fact, he'd arrived there the same week my Angel had brought me back to Civilization, or so my hospital records say. I called the embassy in Caracas, trying to track him down. I still had some contacts, and it wasn't too hard to finally locate him. He and his wife had been relocated since the War ended. According to the Air Force, Daniel and Diana White were now living right in my own back yard. They had rented a house in Baltimore two months ago.

I drove out there that week-end, the snapshot Etta had taken of us tucked into my overcoat pocket. It was a wooden frame house, just the sort of house I imagine a couple moves into when they're thinking of starting a family, actually. I have that on good authority. When I rang the bell, a tall, sandy-haired man answered the door with a smile.

I told him I'd been brought into the Armed Forces Hospital back in '42, when his wife had been assigned there, and I was hoping she might be able to help me out. I can't really blame the guy for looking skeptical, then. Heck, if I'd been in his shoes, and some strange Joe showed up at my door asking after my wife with some three year old sob story, I'd have slammed the door right in my face.

But he didn't slam the door. He held open the screen door for me, and offered me a seat on the sofa. White walked back through the narrow corridor to the kitchen. I heard muffled voices then; his and a woman's voice in hushed tones. I couldn't help it. My heart was in my throat when I heard a woman's footstep on the hardwood floor.

Of course I knew it wasn't her. I knew that before I even rang the bell. It was only for a second that I imagined her walking through that door like she'd never gone. It was only a second, though. One of those foolish daydreams you have that you can't help, and your heart breaks all over again when you're brought back to reality.

Diana White was almost as tall, and she wore her dark hair curled so that it just brushed the shoulders of her dress. She didn't wear glasses. I think she saw the uniform first. It was something that changed in her bearing. She may not have been in the Navy long, but even three years out she stood at attention. I suddenly wished that I'd come in civilian attire. She asked how she could help me, her husband standing beside her with that classic "you hurt her; I kill you" look that I understand all too well, having worn it a time or two myself. I told her I'd been brought in May 1942 to the hospital. She looked puzzled--after all, there had been dozens of men and women in the Ward. How could she pick out just one? Then I told her I'd been brought in by Wonder Woman.

She turned white as a sheet at that. "Oh my God," she'd said. "Oh my God, you're him," and Dan White just looked from his wife to me and back again, confused. But she understood. I could see it in her eyes. I knew, then. Somehow, all the pieces started sliding into place and all the things I'd known before but never said all clicked. But what I didn't understand was how it had all happened. I think--I mean, I didn't dare to dream the why. But this was all about the how.

I tried to ask her if she could tell me something--anything, but she shook her head, spooked, saying she was very sorry. But she couldn't talk to me about it. "I think it's time for you to go," Dan White said then, his face dark as a thundercloud, and what could I do? I thanked them and picked up my hat. But before I walked through the door, I looked back over my shoulder and met Mrs. White's eyes.

"She's gone, you know," I said. "She left. She left me."

September 7, 1946

Just spent the last hour with Carol and her mother. Mrs. Nelson has this crazy idea we should name the baby Alphonse, after her late husband, if it's a boy. Carol and I talked about it, and pretty much agreed no kid should have to go through life with a name like Alphonse, for Pete's sake, and even her dad had gone by "Jack" his whole life, on account of he hated the name. But we couldn't think of a way to let her mom down easy. I think her mom is still sore that we eloped, thus cheating her out of the huge white wedding, so she's just gone to town on the whole grand-child thing. She's been over to the apartment every other night since she got into town, fixing dinners and taking Carol out to go shopping.

Alphonse. So help me, if this keeps up, we're just gonna name the kid Steve Jr. just to get people off our backs. If it's a girl, Carol likes Anne, and Etta says she wishes her folks had gone with something like Anne. Was it any wonder, with a name like "Etta Candy" that she'd gone and joined the Army? Poor kid. She and Charlie moved out to Arlington last month, into a brand new house. She said me and Carol should look into it--there's a real building boom out there, and they're practically handing houses to GIs. I told her we'd think about it. The apartment isn't any place to raise a kid anyway.

Carol's gotten to the point where she's just ready to pop, even though she still has another two months to go. It's funny--while writing all this down, living it all over again, somehow I feel closer to Carol than ever. I know that sounds nuts, but she understands. At least, I'm pretty sure she does.

When I got back from the White's place in Maryland, there was a message from Carol waiting for me. I called her back, and boy did she lit into me. She wasn't the type of girl to sit by a phone and wait for a man to call, she said, so she'd taken the initiative. She hoped that wasn't too forward of her, but I just laughed and said I liked forward girls just fine. I don't know why I said it--but it felt true, too. We made a lunch date for the next day, and I was surprised when I realized I was actually looking forward to it. I guess that it just goes to show that the capacity of the human heart is infinite.

September 9, 1946

It was about a week later that she came to the Pentagon. I'd been in a meeting with General Blankenship all afternoon and when I got back to my office, and Private Williams told me that there was a woman waiting in my office for me. I asked how long she'd been waiting, and Williams told me she'd been here about an hour. She'd asked if she'd wanted some coffee, or maybe to wait in the commissary, but she said she'd wanted to wait. I stepped through the door, and Diana White turned to face me. I told Williams to cancel my afternoon meetings, and I closed the door. I even pulled down the wooden blinds before I sat down behind my desk.

She'd been crying, she told me. She'd missed all the excitement because she'd been outside in the alley between the hospital and the coffee shop next door. It was the craziest thing, she'd said, but she'd heard a girl's voice had asked her what was wrong and she looked up and saw a woman in a red white and blue bathing suit in the alley with her. She'd never seen anything so bizarre, but something about the girl's kindness made her just spill the whole story right there.

She'd only been in the Navy for a year--since her brother had died. She'd been a nurse in Ohio and volunteered. She and Dan met when she'd been transferred to Washington. It had been love at first sight, and they'd become engaged on a few weeks before he'd gotten the news that his company was transferring him to Venezuela. She didn't make enough at the hospital for the trip, and he wouldn't have been able to buy her passage for weeks and weeks. He had left the night before, and she hadn't been able to concentrate on her work at all. She kept turning into waterworks. So she'd escaped outside.

I was riveted. She told me that Wonder Woman had asked her her name, and told her that she understood how she felt. That she'd traveled a very long way for love. I tried not to move, not to breathe when she said that, but she must have seen my face. But she went right on with her story. There, in that alley, they'd struck a deal. Wonder Woman would find a way to get the money so Diana could go to South America to be with her fiancé, and then she could assume her identity in Washington and work at the hospital as a nurse. It had been crazy-- insane. But it seemed like a dream come true. An impossible dream come true.

She'd given her her spare uniform to wear, and she took her back to her barracks at the base, which was empty because all the girls were working. They'd spent hours over cups of tea made on her hotplate, as Diana Prince had told Wonder Woman every detail of her job at the hospital, everything she could think she'd need to know, to pass herself off as a Lieutenant in the Navy Nurse's corps. She'd been terrified--but excited too. It had seemed like a game, then. Never mind that impersonating an officer was a crime--heck, they both could have ended up in jail. But all she'd cared about was seeing Dan again, and all Wonder Woman cared about, she said, was sticking close to her wounded Major. She'd gone in the morning and swapped shifts with another girl, and when Lt. Prince arrived that afternoon, well-- all that mattered was that a Lt. Prince arrived that afternoon. No one would know it wasn't the same one who'd worked swing and graveyard for the last three months, now would they?

The next night, Wonder Woman had met Lt. Prince with a bag full of money. Literally. She'd told her all about how she'd met a man named Ashley Norman, and she'd gone up on stage and done her "bullets and bracelets" trick, and would this be enough? She laughed then, as she remembered. Enough? Heck, she said, she could have gone around the world on all the money in that bag. Where did this girl come from, that they didn't have money?

An island, I said--only I didn't know how I knew that, then. Just that I did. An island far away.

So she'd taken out just enough to cover the air ticket to South America, and given the rest back. She told Wonder Woman she'd have to get some clothes besides the nurse's uniform, and she should take a flat because all the girls in the barracks would know straight away that she wasn't Military, but she'd be able to fool everybody in no time. After all, girls were joining up all over--there were WAVE recruiting posters all over the hospital.

That was the last she'd ever seen of her, she said. She'd packed her bags and gotten on a plane that night. Dan had never known. She'd told him it was an inheritance from some uncle, and he'd never known any different. That was why she hadn't been able to tell him at the house. Because she'd never even told Dan. She was driven, now, to tell me, because if she was gone--then it was safe. Because if I'd felt the same way about her that she'd felt about me, well . . . It was safe to tell me, wasn't it?

I didn't know what to say. I guess I didn't have to say anything-- Diana White had had this secret bottled up inside her for over three years, and this was the first time she'd ever told a living soul.

I told her it was safe. I thanked her--for everything. If it hadn't been for her, I didn't know how things would have been different. She smiled then, and looked so relieved. She's said it was so thrilling, the first time she'd ever seen Wonder Woman's picture in the paper. That somehow, it made her feel good. If she'd helped in even the tiniest part, then it made her feel like she'd done something important with her life. And I understood just what she meant.

It was crazy to think, but if Wonder Woman really had stayed here because of me, then I guess maybe somehow I'd been a part of something bigger than myself. That whatever had passed between us, even the missed opportunities and broken hearts on both sides might have been somehow worth it. That we'd helped win the War despite ourselves, if that makes sense. Of course, I couldn't help but wonder that, if the war had gone on for another year, I might have married Diana instead of Carol. I can't imagine it. I mean, I know we've only been married since April, but when I wake up next to my wife and see her sleeping next to me, her hair spread across the pillow, I can't imagine waking up next to any other woman. Yet at the same time, I think a part of me will always wonder what it would have been like to wake up with Diana in my arms.

Author's Note: Please, if there's anything that doesn't work for you, or is factually or grammatically incorrect, don't hesitate to tell me! Constructive criticism is the greatest gift you can give an author. I'm not a delicate flower who will curl up and die at the first sign of criticism. I want to make this story the very best I can, so please let me know what works for you, and more importantly, what doesn't.