Penny loved her Nana. She tries explaining their relationship to Leonard, feeling something close to pity when she sees the bewildered expression on his face.

"It's just—she always knew how to make me smile," Penny tells him. "She wasn't maybe the smartest woman, but she always said that common sense beat out smarts any day of the week—no offense," she adds hastily when Leonard's eyebrows started to inch up, and he relaxes with a smile. "She was funny and she never judged me and I could always, you know, go to her if I had a problem, and I knew she would be there. Not even like with my mom and dad, because they always felt like they had to parent me, like my choices were somehow their choices or reflected on them…"

She takes a deep breath, sensing that Leonard isn't understanding her; wanting him to. "We were just close, you know?" she blurts out, unable to find the right words.

"Not really." He gives her a helpless half-shrug and takes her hand, rubbing little circles in her palm with the pad of his thumb. "You know my family isn't… like that," he says diplomatically.

Penny does know, but minutes before it had felt so urgent to share her Nana with him, one of her closest friends. She's disappointed, but nods gamely, not wanting him to feel bad.

"She sounds like she was amazing, though," Leonard adds encouragingly. "You saw her every day?"

Penny smiles and sighs, looking down at her hand in his. "Pretty much. She lived on our farm, on a little cottage about two acres from my house. Daddy fixed it up for her when she moved there, before I was born. She had a year-round vegetable garden and she would always let me help her harvest whatever was in season."

Leonard turns to Sheldon, who is typing furiously on his computer. With a start, Penny realizes that she'd forgotten he was there; he seemed so uninterested.

"You used to do that with your MeeMaw, didn't you?" Leonard points out. "You know, I never thought about it, but you guys actually have a lot in common."

Sheldon's hands still on his keyboard and he swivels in his chair to face them. "Indeed I used to help Meemaw in tending her gardens, but I would hardly compare my life with Penny's by claiming we 'have a lot in common,'" he says, with a vague haughtiness that manages to irritate the crap out of Penny. "I am, of course, a multi-published theoretical physicist of good standing with certain inroads to a future Nobel Prize and she is a waitress at a restaurant. The most we 'have in common' I would say, is the food she delivers to me every Tuesday night at six o'clock."

Halfway through his sneering speech, Penny finds herself on her feet, hands fisted and tears (of anger, it's important to remember that) in her eyes. She inhales and with all of the calm she can muster finally says, "We have nothing in common, right? Not growing up in small towns where football is the only religion besides actual church, and even then most churchgoers tend to stay home when there's a game on Sunday? I can't kick your ass at Halo, take you to the comic book store when you need a ride, sing you Soft Kitty when you're sick, give you advice when you've offended one of your friends so badly they never want to talk to you again? If I'm just some lowly waitress put here to serve you, why do you even put up with me? You think I didn't love my Nana just as much as you love your MeeMaw?

"You know what? Why do I put up with you?" Swiping an angry palm over her eyes, she turns to Leonard and says stiffly, "I'll talk to you later."

Leonard's face is wretched; he looks torn between murderous anger at Sheldon, and the urge to cry for her. Sheldon's expression hasn't changed—if anything, it's flattened out, become stone. Neither of them moves as Penny walks out of their apartment, closing the door quietly behind her.

#

The second time it really happened was two months after Penny's seventeenth birthday. There had been little instances, here and there through the previous three years

(getting in the truck with Daddy, leaning against his arm and seeing him lying crumpled in the middle of steaming, twisted metal. Saying, "Just a minute, Dad, gotta go to the bathroom," and spending ten minutes locked in there until the nausea subsides.

Or

Fidgeting against John Mitchell in the cafeteria, laughing at his jokes, and seeing him dip his head sweetly to kiss her goodnight on her porch, seeing his shake Daddy's hand and grinning at him suddenly, not understanding why when it never happens, what she did wrong

And even

stashing her little baggie of weed in her bottom drawer and seeing Momma find it as she puts her folded laundry away; moving it instead to her bookshelf and again seeing her mother lift it up and start to cry before Penny finally shoved it to the back of her desk drawer, underneath her make-up and feeling certain her momma would never know.)

but they were always brief, and sort of skittering. She wondered if she was crazy, if maybe it was the weed or the wine she was enjoying at Marcy's house (because Marcy's mom could never tell if there was one extra empty wine bottle in her trash), or even Tommy, dealing meth, could he maybe have given her something second hand—or would that be third hand? Penny was sure something like that was possible, but always reminded herself of the time it had happened before she'd ever tried any kind of booze or drugs and before Tommy had started showing up for Sunday dinner smelling like chemicals.

She broke finally on the tale-end of the John Mitchell thing (he hadn't called and it was getting obvious that he was never going to), one afternoon a few weeks after her birthday while trimming green beans on Nana's porch. Penny sat on the porch swing with the bowl on her lap and worked automatically—snap twist drop pickup snap twist drop—as she watched the warm sunlight slowly inch off her legs and spread farther away from her like warm honey. After several minutes, Nana came out from the kitchen with another bowl and sat down next to her, taking a long, silent measure of Penny's face.

"Do you want to talk 'bout it?" she asked gently.

That willing ear, that gentleness she always associated with her grandmother, those few words, were all she needed. Penny heard herself start to talk. She told Nana about John Mitchell, and Daddy's truck (she left out the baggie of weed and a few other things), talked about how scary it was, that big first time, and how Mikey went on to a football scholarship the following year and how Sandy got so nervous that people started calling her "the basket case," right to her face, until she dropped out and moved in with her cousin over in Lincoln.

Nana listened to Penny as she tried to explain how sometimes it felt like she could make things different or better and sometimes, no matter what she did, the bad always came and the good never showed up.

Nana listened until Penny was out of words and almost out of breath, until all of the beans were trimmed (and had been for a while) and the crickets were starting to chirp and finally, when Penny fell quiet, Nana asked, "Do you want to know what I think?"

"Yes. Please."

Nana scooted closer until their arms were rubbing and hips touching. "I think most people don't have a sense for the way things could turn out. I think some people do, and of those that do, you probably got a few who can sense it real well. I think you can't always explain the magic that happens to you, but that doesn't mean you should ignore it if you got the chance. I think some things can be changed and some things can't, and sometimes they change on their own and there's nothin' any of us can do about it.

"Mostly, I think you're my sweet girl," she said firmly, "and I most certainly don't think you're any kind of crazy. You got a good head on your shoulders a lot of the time and when you don't, it's usually 'cause you've got a good heart. So I don't want you worrying too much, you hear?"

Penny nodded, slouched down, and rested her head against Nana's shoulder. The porch swing swayed gently underneath them as Nana started talking about the crickets, and the sunlight, and the green bean casserole she was going to make for Sunday dinner, and Penny listened and started feeling better.

A few weeks later, Penny was walking after school, furious that Derek and Georgia had flaked again on giving her a ride, to the point where she'd missed the bus. It was over three miles home, and she was wearing her new boots and in the muddy dustiness after the late spring storm, it was just a disaster.

She used the irritation to march at a fast clip, cutting through fields to get home faster (the dirt roads were packed better, but her shoes were practically ruined anyway and the moist heat from the storm of the previous day had burned off and now it was just—hot.) and was closer to Nana's than her own house when she saw flickering lights in the distance.

Penny put a hand to the stitch in her side and had a

(Nana's cheeks are wrinkled and soft as she grins in the mirror, leaning down behind Penny, fixing her veil just so. The photographer catches the shot and exclaims, "Perfect," not knowing that Penny doesn't care about the picture, only the moment where she can smell her Nana's powdery scent and feel her soft, fleshy hand adjust a curl of hair at Penny's temple.

"Something old," Nana murmurs with a sort of sneaky smile. She holds out her diamond earbobs, given to her as a wedding gift from her groom when she was a young woman. Penny gasps quietly and looks at her Nana with searching eyes—Nana knows how much she's always loved these.

Penny silently removes the rhinestones from her ears and replaces them with the diamond clusters. "Thank you! I'll give them back to you right after, I promise—"

"Now, I didn't say 'something borrowed,' did I? I said, 'something old.'"

Penny bites her lip. "Nana, you don't have to; it's too much."

"Please, they're yours. They were always gonna be in the long run. I'm just happy my girl is happy and I want you to stay—")

moment where she could. Not. Move.

And then, with a jerk out of her reverie, Penny started to run. She was out of breath and covered in a fine sweat by the time she reached the ambulance and the stretcher they were wheeling out had someone on it, but the bag covered the person's face.

Penny moaned, wrapping both arms around her waist. Her father, his face cast gray and eyes rimmed, walked down the front porch, pulling her to him just as her legs started to crumple and gray mist started forming in her vision. He clutched at her and she sagged and thought, "some things can be changed and some things can't, and sometimes they change on their own and there's nothin' any of us can do about it" and hated herself for not being able to change just this one thing.

#

Penny barely has time to sag against the inside of her front door when there are three quick knocks on it followed by her name. She opens the door when he's done; she doesn't bother to hide her tears.

Sheldon looks at her. "I was out of line."

"I'm surprised Leonard managed to explain it to you so quickly," she shoots back with a watery glare.

"Actually, he didn't need to," Sheldon admits, looking at her uneasily. "Although I'm not generally adept at social interactions and am often lectured by Leonard, or you, or—embarrassingly enough, even Wolowitz—on how one is supposed to behave in any sort of common social gathering, I was aware even as I was making that unfortunate statement that it perhaps should not be voiced at all."

"Perhaps?"

"All right. I shouldn't have said that. You are my friend, Penny, and it was inconsiderate of me not only to speak to you in that manner but also to imply that you don't matter to me," he said seriously, and Penny stopped for a moment, impressed with the magnitude of his apology, unable to remember an instance where he'd been so willing to accept responsibility, and unable as well to just let it go.

"Then why did you?" she asks, firming her voice and lifting her chin.

"I found the… incidental similarities between our childhoods, in particular our relationships to our grandmothers to be… uncomfortable," he explains awkwardly, moving his hands in front of his torso in a helpless gesture before letting them fall at his sides.

"Because I'm so much less than you?" she snaps, surprised that she let herself believe, even for a second, that he could really be sorry.

Sheldon's eyes flicker to hers, away, and then back and he holds her gaze. She feels jolted by him, rooted to the spot, and it's only for that reason that she can make out what he's saying so clearly, even though he says it barely above a whisper.

"I am uncomfortable with the concept of death in relation to people I care about," he says, his eyes unwavering. "My PopPop died when I was young and I… did not care for the effect that it had on me. I was older when my father died, but certain things have to—be taken into account upon the death of a family member, and I don't, I can't think about—MeeMaw—" his voice cracks and something inside Penny cracks with it.

"Sheldon—"

"You were speaking about a close relationship that you had with your grandmother in the past tense. I am usually not very good at reading subtext, but I felt it was obvious by the way you spoke of her that she had passed away, and that you missed her. I didn't like it that I understood your relationship with her and therefore tried to distance myself from you when Leonard pointed out our similarities. We are very different people, Penny, but I shouldn't have said what I said." Sheldon falls silent and waits.

Penny cocks her head and feels her heart soften. It's probably the most honest and self-aware she's seen him be and she feels oddly vulnerable to have witnessed him laid so bare. "Thank you. I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable."

"It was not your intention," he acknowledges soberly, "and that was no excuse for my behavior."

She nods, her mouth sad but upturned, and starts to close the door. Sheldon's hand blocks it lightly and she regards him again in surprise.

"Penny?"

"Yes?"

"You miss her a great deal, don't you?" Sheldon asks.

Her throat feels tight. "Yes, I do."

"When did she die?"

"Seven years ago tonight. I was seventeen," Penny says on a heavy exhale, her breath trembling.

"Penny?"

"Yes, Sheldon."

"I probably would have liked her," he says softly. "She sounds a lot like my Meemaw."

Penny tries to resist it then, but her tears finally spill over and she lets out a groan that sounds like something she heard a long time ago, standing outside a cottage, watching an ambulance drive away. She feels hesitant arms slip around her shoulders to hold her loosely, not very much contact but enough and she nestles closer, just as close as she thinks he'll allow, to cry into the chest of his Superman T-Shirt. He doesn't complain.

After a few minutes, when it seems as though her tears are slowing down, he murmurs, "Penny?" right above her ear and she realizes just how close she's pressed against him, just how much of his personal space he's let her invade without saying a word and she moves away a little before glancing up.

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry your grandmother died," he tells her simply. His face, usually only admired (secretly, silently) at a distance, strikes her suddenly as beautiful in his compassion—she's never seen that expression on him before—and she loves him so much in that moment and knows with certainty that she was always meant to be his friend.

"Sheldon?"

"Yes?"

She closes her eyes for a moment, takes a breath, finds his hand and squeezes.

"Thank you."

#