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Like always, word gets around.Aria Montgomery and Ezra Fitz divorce. Alison DiLaurentis and Emily Fields split up two months before their wedding.Alison leaves town and this time, no one tries to stop her.Aria comes back home.Veronica Hastings watches from her kitchen window as Emily helps Aria unload magenta suitcases from a town car.“It’s just for the next month or so,” Aria tells Veronica when they run into each other in the driveway. “While I finish my novel.”“Okay,” Veronica replies. She knows it isn’t the truth. None of these girls has ever left when they said they would. “Did you have a good lawyer?”Aria offers a tight smile. “Yes. She was very good.”Veronica nods approvingly. “Wonderful. I hope you took him for every penny he’s worth.”--Pam Fields picks her granddaughters up from preschool every day and watches them at their house until Emily gets home from work. It’s been like this since Alison left. Pam is still trying to wrap her head around just what happened. She’s also still having to remind herself that the DiLaurentis house is her daughter’s. Emily got it in the breakup, and despite Pam’s offer she didn’t want to move back home. Pam understands it; Emily wants to keep some semblance of normalcy for the girls, and she deserves her own space.But it’s undeniably strange. When Pam walks up to the porch, part of her always expects Jessica DiLaurentis to answer the door.Today, though, Aria Montgomery opens it with a smile. Grace and Lily are ecstatic to see her, even though Aria has been here for a couple of weeks already. “Ari!” they squeal, and Aria, despite her small stature, manages to scoop the both of them up.“It’s a lovely way to be greeted, isn’t it?” Pam asks with a smile when Aria ushers her inside.Aria laughs as she lets the girls down. “It is,” she agrees. “There’s nothing like it.”Pam has observed the way Aria regards the girls with a mixture of longing and appreciation. She’s heard the rumors—everyone has, unfortunately—that Aria struggled to get pregnant, one reason among many why she and Ezra split up. Pam doesn’t know if it hurts Aria to be around the girls or helps her, but she suspects it’s the latter.“Why don’t you stay for dinner?” Aria suggests.
“I don’t want to impose—”“You won’t be. Em would love it, and I would too. She’s picking up takeout on her way home.”At dinner Emily smiles and laughs, which Pam has not seen her do in a long time. She lets Pam pour her a glass of wine and actually seems relaxed as Aria starts to clear the table.Before Pam leaves for the evening, Emily hugs her and says, “Thank you for all of your help. Aria offered to help with the girls’ pickup while she’s here, so you’re off the hook.”Pam nods slowly. She’s recognizing a shift. In the immediate aftermath of the breakup, she felt like she was in triage mode, trying to help Emily pick up the broken pieces of what was supposed to be a marriage. She rearranged her life so that she could be more available to Emily and the girls. She was in the inner circle—she and Emily were the circle.But now Aria is here. And Emily and her friends have always had a bond that no one else can touch. Pam wouldn’t even dream of it. She doesn’t feel displaced, exactly. It’s more that she understands what her new rightful place is to be.“Of course,” Pam replies. “I’m glad that she can help you.”--Ashley Marin is finishing up some work at the front desk of The Radley when she hears familiar laughter. She looks over at the lounge area, where Emily and Aria are having lunch together.She’s seen them around town, but almost always with Grace and Lily attached to them. It’s hard to miss them: the statuesque woman and the petite one, with two enigmatic little girls who look just like Emily. But it’s good to see them out on their own. Hanna visited Emily nearly a year ago, right after the breakup, and reported nothing but heartbreak back to Ashley.The Emily Ashley sees today could be sixteen. She and Aria are giggling together, sharing a memory so potent and hilarious that they aren’t even speaking in complete sentences. They don’t seem to have a care for anyone but each other. And, Ashley notes, their feet are tangled underneath the table.Ashley takes this information in with a smile. Decides she won’t tell Hanna. It’s their business, and they seem happy. Nothing else matters.--Ella Montgomery is shopping with her daughter. Aria arrives ten minutes late with something blue stuck in her hair.“Plaster?” Ella asks, fingering the strange substance.“Play-dough,” Aria sighs. “I was helping at Glow’s school today.”“Glow?”“That’s the shorthand we use for the girls,” Aria explains. “G for Grace, L for Lily, and I don’t remember how we got the rest.”Ella notes Aria’s liberal use of “we” silently, though it brings up a point she’s been wanting to discuss for a while.
“Honey, what’s the endgame of all of this?” she asks.“What do you mean?” Aria is frowning, and Ella knows she needs to tread carefully. There are times when Aria’s defensiveness is so much like Byron’s that Ella has to laugh.“I mean, you’re going back to Boston at the end of the summer, right?” Ella says. “How’re you going to deal with that? How are the girls going to deal with that?” And Emily, she thinks but doesn’t say.
Aria is quiet for a few seconds, flipping through a rack of velvet crop tops one-handed. Finally she says softly, “Maybe I won’t go back.”“Oh.” Ella rocks back on her heels. “Okay.”“Okay?” Aria echoes, looking incredulous. “No follow-up questions?”“Well, what’s your reasoning?”Aria’s face is pensive. She seems to consider multiple answers before settling on, “I feel like I have a family here.”Ella wants to ask more—something is going on between Aria and Emily, she knows it—but now isn’t the time.
“I can’t think of a better reason than that.”--Principal Hackett is used to seeing Emily Fields every day, but it’s quite another thing to see Aria Montgomery back in the halls of Rosewood High. Today, Emily has invited Aria to share a reading with her English class. The very class Emily took over from Alison DiLaurentis last year.Sometimes Hackett thinks he’ll never be free of these girls.Aria is apparently a total hit. As Hackett is walking through the hallway he hears multiple students praising the reading. He plans to head
by Emily’s classroom and give her the feedback, but he stops short at the door.Aria and Emily are standing alone in the classroom, kissing.Hackett has to stifle a groan of despair.Ten years later, Aria Montgomery is dating another Rosewood High English teacher.--Anne Sullivan comes to give her annual talk on bullying to the Rosewood High students. Afterward, she asks Emily Fields to lunch.“You seem good,” Anne observes.“Are you surprised?” Emily asks.Anne shakes her head.“But you’ve heard things,” Emily posits.“It doesn’t really matter what I’ve heard,” Anne tells her. “What I see is that you’re doing well.”“Nothing went how I expected it,” Emily says.Anne nods. “Nothing ever does.”Emily seems thoughtful. “I don’t hate Alison. But I don’t love her anymore, either. And I think that’s okay. I never really understood that until recently.”“What changed?”Emily sighs. “We could never really make it real, I think. And now I have something that is real, and I can see the difference. Does that make sense?”Anne smiles. “It makes all the sense in the world.”--Jason DiLaurentis comes to visit his nieces. He knows that it’s more complicated than that, that technically he doesn’t share blood with the two little girls who look like Emily, but he doesn’t care. He’s lost enough family already. He’s not looking to lose any more.“Is this weird?” Emily asks a few minutes after he’s arrived. Aria is out right now, but Emily has filled him in on the details.“Why would it be weird?” Jason asks with a grin.“Well, for one thing I know about you and Aria,” Emily replies. “And then there’s—”“Ali?”Emily’s eyes widen in confirmation.“Do you guys keep in touch?” Jason asks. “Does she ever visit?”“We talk, sometimes,” Emily tells him. “She talks about visiting, but it never really happens. I think she’s afraid that if she comes back to Rosewood, she’ll never leave. Besides, I’m the one who pushed her into having the girls.”“She does love them.”“I know. None of it makes her a bad person.”“Does she know?” He doesn’t have to say what about.“I haven’t told her,” Emily says. “I guess it’s possible that she’s figured it out.”At dinner Jason watches the two of them, fascinated. They have a rhythm with one another. Emily teases Aria gently, but always with a twinkle in her eye. Aria is playful and warm in a way that Jason’s only seen in bits before. And the girls clearly adore them both.“Did you ever think you’d end up back here?” Jason asks Aria as they put away dishes.“In Rosewood, or this house?”“Either.” He shrugs. “Both.”She shakes her head. “I didn’t. I thought being in this town meant being trapped. But I think I was the one trapping myself. And now I can’t imagine leaving.” Her eyes follow Emily, who’s helping the girls pick out bedtime stories. They share
Jason’s old room, while Aria and Emily have the master. Alison’s old bedroom has been converted into an office for Aria, a project which was Emily’s birthday present to her last year.
"You've made a life here," Jason observes."Yeah," Aria agrees.
“I’m home.”--Barry Maple is dressed as Santa Claus, taking pictures with local kids at The Radley. Grace and Lily DiLaurentis-Fields are up next. When Emily walks them up to Barry, they cry for her to stay.“Sweeties, we talked about this,” Emily says gently. “Santa Claus is a nice adult who we can trust.”“Stay, Mommy!” one of them—Barry isn’t sure which one—shouts.“It’s okay,” Barry tells Emily. “The more the merrier.”“And Ari!” the other girl demands. “We want Ari!”Aria Montgomery has been standing off to the side with her camera, but Pam urges her forward.
“I can take the picture,” Pam promises, winking at Barry. Emily just recently confirmed to them what
Pam has suspected for a while.“Are you sure?” Aria asks. “I don’t want to—”“You’re part of the family,” Pam says. “Go, be with them.”Aria crouches on the arm of the chair and one of the girls makes a beeline for her lap. “That’s better,” the girl sighs happily.Emily squeezes Aria’s shoulder as Pam takes the picture. “It always is when we’re together.”