A thought. May not be remembering correctly. When “Ann” visited the friend in Seattle with infant son, did she not say that she was staying with a friend of her mother’s and that she’d borrowed the car to drive to see her friend? Could mother’s friend have actually been paternal half-aunt Eleanor Berkebile, who lived in Canada with her husband Ralph, who was at the time in the US military?
I think that’s what Fred Nerks has suggested. And it seems like a reasonable guess.