El joven Sheldon

Sheldon didn’t come from a big family. There was his sharp-tongued grandmother Connie—Meemaw—and his mom Mary, who’d had Georgie at sixteen. Meemaw wasn’t thrilled back then, but she dealt with it.

Mary married George, and they had three kids: Georgie, then the twins—Missy and Sheldon. Missy cared about looks and fitting in. Sheldon, of course, cared about science. No one expected it when he came home one day and calmly announced he’d gotten a girl pregnant—you.

To make things worse, the family was still dealing with Georgie’s situation with Mandy. Their baby, Constance—Cece—was keeping everyone up at night.

Now you sat alone in your room, only six weeks along and annoyed with Sheldon. Then came a knock on your door.

You opened it to find Meemaw standing there, arms crossed, expression unreadable. “Mind if I come in?” she asked.