I finally updated. It light of what is going on in the PLL series (which I do not own), I felt this scene was appropriate. As usual, this is probable not what you expected with this word.
Ella Montgomery stiffly sipped her tea and consciously adjusted her sweater. It was a beautiful fall day, a rare one where she didn't have to grade papers or cook dinner or drive Mike to doctor's sessions or lacrosse practice. She should have been sitting at home snuggling up with her favorite blanket and the novel she was reading. She should have been having coffee at the local coffee shop catching up with Ashley Marin. Instead, Ella had ended up in apartment 3B trying to mend her friendship with a man who, if he played his cards right, could end up as her future son-in-law. He sat across from her in the small living space running his fingers through his hair and talking about the merits of Harper Lee and her writing.
Ella shifted in her seat and looked at the small table nestled between Ezra and his far wall. The lamp was contemporary and generic, the clock looked battered and worn, and the table itself had been created out of aged and faded wood. But it was the picture in the black plastic frame that caught her attention. It was a little boy with curly brown hair smiling at the camera.
"Ella?" asked Ezra "Are you okay?"
Ella caught herself and nodded her head. "I'm fine," she returned putting down her tea.
"Is something the matter? You don't look like you came here to listen to me rave about the works of America's greatest writer's."
"To be honest," Ella started. "I'm not sure why I came. Curiosity I suppose."
"Curiosity?" Ezra echoed raising an eyebrow. "You've been here before."
"I have," she agreed. "But that was before I really understood what was going on with Aria. That's you isn't it?" she asked motioning with her head to the picture on the side table.
"Oh, that?" said Ezra turning around to look. "Yeah, that's me. It was on a summer trip my parents took me and my brother camping. I was eleven. It was right before they told us about the divorce," he added thoughtfully.
"Everybody was a child once," said Ella wistfully. "I remember when Aria was in the third grade. She came home from school one day and insisted she was she would never grow up. But she grew up anyway, didn't she?"
Ezra was silent for a moment, sure that her question hadn't required an answer. "She has grown up to be a beautiful woman."
"Her father thinks she is still a child," replied Ella, "and so does the law, and even, to an extent, society does as well."
"What do you think?" asked Ezra tentatively, almost afraid of hearing the answer aloud.
"She is not a little girl anymore," said Ella swiftly.
"Far from it," replied Ezra, sighing.
"But she is still a child," Ella finished. Ezra was silent. "She is still my child. But everyone is someone's child," she reasoned. She paused a moment. "We are all children," she finished with a breathless laugh. "Aren't we?" And as the conversation between the people in apartment 3B in Rosewood, Pennsylvania steered from literature to philosophy to childhood stories, Ella Montgomery talked about the lives of her children and her role as a mother and began to renew her friendship with a man that she realized she did not know at all.