When Elizabeth found out that she was pregnant for the first time, she experienced an odd feeling as, pregnant women often do, of loneliness and isolation. Stefan went to work each day, and of course, was a kind and loving husband, but, as Elizabeth stayed at home, she found herself increasingly, and increasingly, longing for a female friend to talk to. Which was something Stefan greatly disapproved of, as he hated socializing of any kind, unless it was work-related, and felt that there was only room for themselves in their lives.

But Elizabeth disagreed at times, she felt that she needed someone to talk to, with an outside perspective. But the closest thing to a female friend that she had was Amy, a friend of hers who had worked with her at the bakery. But Elizabeth had not truly felt a strong connection with Amy, and even felt that Amy had thought of her as being a little weird, and not in a good way either, because of Elizabeth's years-long devotion to their boss, and Elizabeth's ex-boyfriend, Toby. But Amy had moved, out to a small suburb of Illinois, with her husband, in any case, and they had not really kept in touch all that much.

And now, there was only one man Elizabeth was devotedto, and in a much deeper, and more meaningful way than she had ever been to her previous and only boyfriend, in fact, she took a strong interest in Stefan's life, every aspect of it.

She enjoyed hearing about Blane, of course, his best friend in high school, who had, according to Stefan, stopped speaking to him after graduation.

She enjoyed hearing about other male friends of his, never ones as close as Blane, but who also usually faded in and out of his life.

But mostly, there were the girlfriends. Stefan, it seemed, had an anecdote for nearly every occasion, that involved some sort of past lover or girlfriend. And she was curious about them all.

There was Bennie Hansen, his high school girlfriend, who was a well-to-do young woman, who Stefan said resembled Kim Basinger, which she wasn't too keen to hear. Bennie had a sister, Cathy, who Stefan said he had cheated on her with, all throughout high school. Cathy, he said, was more like him than Bennie was, as her life's goal was to try to displease their father, which Cathy did by 'shoveling shit up her nose', as Stefan put it, but, as he pointed out to her, he himself had never done anything harder than marijuana in those days, and, in fact had tried to tell Cathy how stupid she was being by using cocaine, but she didn't listen. He had lost touch with Cathy, but Bennie had actually turned out to be far worse than Cathy, he had met her one day while she was in town visiting her parents. They had had a couple of dates, and had even, spent several nights together, but Bennie, as he later found out, had neglected to mention the fact that she was married, and was using Stefan to get back at her husband, for what turned out to be a minor quarrel. And Stefan was naturally, quite hurt and disappointed with this betrayal, and never spoke to her again.

There was Diana, a fellow law student, who he had dated briefly, but who had broken up with him for Peter, his roommate, citing that Peter was fun, and exciting, and insinuating that Stefan was dull, and boring.

There was Andie, of course. The girl in the pink dress, as Stefan referred to her.

There was a whole host of other women who Stefan had briefly dated before he met her, who just hadn't worked out very well, including, but certainly not limited to, his former secretary, Tricia. Tricia had taken a job at another firm, shortly after Elizabeth and Stefan had gotten married, and now their practice had a male administrative assistant, as they were called now, whose name was Clarence.

And then there was Cynthia. Stefan had indeed had quite a lot of females in his life, but, Cynthia was the only one with whom Stefan had had a serious relationship with. He had been engaged to Cynthia, for two years, perhaps the longest relationship of his life besides herself, in fact.

Of course, it had ended abruptly, and, in a very ugly fashion, when Stefan had found an earring of Cynthia's, in the upstairs bathroom of another attorney, John, who at that time had been a close friend of Stefan's. The two of them had been seeing each other for some time. Stefan, devastated had reacted quite angrily.

"What did you do?" said Elizabeth.

"I had her things shipped to his apartment…that is, what I didn't tear up. I…broke a few of her things. Since childhood, I've had a bad habit of…breaking things, when I got upset. When I was younger, I would break my toys, sometimes. Of course, my stepfather would always punish me for it, usually by locking me in my room for an extended period of time."
"Oh, Stefan." Elizabeth shook her head. "You shouldn't have broken her things. That lowered you to herlevel."
"Not really." Stefan shrugged. "I broke a few sculptures of hers, but she broke my heart. At that time, of course. Now, I couldn't care less."
"I'm glad." Said Elizabeth. "You broke her sculptures? You better hope you don't tear up anything of mine."
"You'd better be good, then." Stefan said. "And her boots. I cut those up with scissors." He shook his head, and looked thoughtful. "She loved those boots."
"I'm glad you got such enjoyment out of it." Elizabeth said.

"I did." Said Stefan. "But now I don't care about her, or her boots. I should be thanking her, in fact."He squeezed her hand.

"I guess…" said Elizabeth. "I should be, too." She smiled at him.

"You guess you should?"
"No…I should be." Said Elizabeth. "But I wonder…why she would do it? Cheat on you with some creep, when you would have loved her for the rest of her life?"
"I don't know, Elizabeth." Stefan said. "Nor do I care, for that matter."
But Elizabeth did, sometimes. Sometimes, it bothered her a great deal, especially during those hormone surges, in the last few months. Other things bothered her, too, and she wanted to know a great deal of things. She wanted to know how a person could so easily disown a person he'd known since kindergarten, who'd he'd known to be a deeply lonely, and unhappy individual. She wanted to know why a young woman thought she should so easily be rude to a person who had done nothing to her to upset her, and in addition, though she realized, it was slightly childish, she also wanted to know how the said young woman could reject such a handsome, and more than that, sexy, in her estimation, individual. And, of course, she wanted to know about Cynthia. How someone who had actually lived with Stefan, and known what a terrific person he was, if he was anything like what he was like as she'd known him, could possibly want to throw him over for a crude, and sleazy individual, not to mention a liar, as Stefan had described him to be.

Of course, she took a great deal of what Stefan had said with a grain of salt. Stefan called a lot of people liars, even if they were simply not the sort of person who would readily tell you that 'you could use the exercise' when she was seven months pregnant with twins. And even though she did believe that John and Cynthia were both very sleazy individuals indeed, just by their actions, it went without saying that someone one was being jilted for would seem like the devil incarnate.

So, out of boredom, and curiosity, and perhaps a little flash of insanity, she decided to contact these people. And, thanks to the wonders of Internet search engines, she found addresses for all three of them.