14

When he woke in the morning, Penny allowed Leonard to use his bathroom and he joined her downstairs for breakfast afterward. Out of school, Jimmy's nephews and nieces in the house were eager to see movie stars or revisit their old vacation spots. Gwen and her husband, Peter, discussed taking the kids on a drive to the zoo, then she and Sara talked about their plans to take everyone to the beach. Penny sat eating pancakes at the table Sara had made as two of Jimmy's nephews grinned to her with their adolescent toothless grins. They seemed to have crushes on her.

"Leonard, pancakes?" Sara offered him a plate.

"Thanks," He looked around. "Where's Jimmy?"

"He went to the store for me." Gwen was trying to deal with her six-year-old daughter, Angelique, tugging at her shirt as she tried feeding her one-year old daughter Samantha in a high chair. "He'll be back in a few minutes."

"Oh," Leonard sat at the table and moved a baby bag to get some syrup. "Well…" He paused and looked to Sara's boys grinning and mooning over Penny from their breakfast. "I just had a weird experience last night, that's all…"

"You too?" Penny looked up as Sara took her boys' empty plates and sent them to play in the game room. "I also had a weird experience." She continued. "I could have sworn there was a lady on Leonard's balcony."

"You saw her too." Leonard ate his pancakes as Gwen set the last of the sausage in a plate down for him. "I saw her in the hall."

"Oh, her…." Sara and Gwen looked at each other. "That was probably just the ghost."

"What?" Penny was first to react.

"Didn't Jimmy tell you the history of this house?" Gwen spoke first. "During Prohibition, a guy named Brunner ran the house as a speakeasy and bordello. He had several ladies of the night here." She paused to feed her baby girl. "One of them was the mistress of a local judge who was married, and when he refused to divorce his wife to marry her, she threatened to expose the affair."

"Long story short…" Sara sat down to eat her breakfast. "She vanished under very mysterious circumstances. Allegedly, Brunner and the judge had conspired to do her in, but no one could prove anything. Anyway, her ghost is said to wander the property screaming for justice."

"Is this true?" Leonard only ate three pieces of the link sausages.

"We saw her several times as kids going down that back stairway and wandering the grounds." Gwen took her daughter to burp her. "Why do you think Jimmy is the only one among us still living here? He's not bothered by her!"

"But there's no such thing as ghosts." Leonard commented.

"Ever hear of a writer named Walter Birschott?" Sara looked up. "He was a friend of our dad. One night he woke us up screaming and yelling before he ran out in to the middle of the night. He never stayed here again." She looked to Penny. "Family rumor has it that the ghost climbed in bed with him." She lifted a forkful of pancakes to her lips.

"That's my room." Leonard looked at Penny.

"That's where I'm sleeping." Penny looked at Leonard.

Leonard and Penny looked at each other from across the table. He was going to drive her to work, but now, they had a side trip to make that took them back to Los Robles Avenue. At their old apartment building, Sheldon was ready to leave promptly at 8:45 and ran into Leonard.

"Leonard, you're here?"

"I found you a roommate."

"Who?"

"Me." He walked in carrying his overnight bag and a suitcase. He looked back to Penny entering her old apartment. She had her suitcase and her travel kit. They were moving back in the building.

"I don't understand." Sheldon paused and watched as Penny entered her old apartment with Bernadette still in it and Leonard entered to drop off his bags. "What happened?" Sheldon asked. "Did Jimmy throw you out?"

"No…" Leonard scoffed at that idea. "It just got a bit crowded."

"But he's got sixteen bedrooms in his house."

"Yeah…" Leonard sounded as if it wasn't enough.

"Why did you move out?"

"It got crowded."

"With sixteen bedrooms?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I don't care." Sheldon was grinning ear-to-ear. "I'm so happy, I won't even make you sign a new roommate agreement. I saved the old one knowing you'd return to your sanity."

"Yippee…" Leonard sarcastically responded very much depressed.

"Well, we better get going." Sheldon animatedly waited on Leonard. "You're driving me to work!" He raced out to take his usual spot in Leonard's car. Leonard just sighed and dropped his head. He had exchanged cutting Sheldon out of his life for moving back into the apartment with him.

"Ghost…" He tried to weigh the two using his hands. "Sheldon… Ghost… Sheldon…" He paused stuck in the tie. "Maybe I can reason with the ghost…"

Back on Ocean Grove, Jimmy sat in his study and pretended to work at his computer. He had not made it back in time to talk Leonard out of moving out of the house. He was halfway through the side hallway and was dropping off the groceries when Sara appeared in her top and shorts ready to go out and announced the Leonard had departed and Penny had gone with him. The short quirky scientist was the closest thing to a brother he had ever had. He liked his company and the camaraderie, and toward the end, he was even starting to like having Penny in the house. He was depressed and deflated. Unable to work on his recent fiction, he photo-shopped blue eyes on to Britney Spears and moved the head of Demi Lovato from her photo to the body of Christina Aguilera in another, but even that couldn't pick up his spirits. Midway through an image of a fifty-foot tall Selena Gomez attacking Chicago, he sighed, erased his effort and turned off his photo-shop software. He wondered why Leonard couldn't have waited to tell him he was moving out of the house. His self-esteem falling lower and his life in this house dulled by loneliness, he supported his sullen face in his hands on the top of his desk. Looking up, he saw his nephew Carter standing in the front hall outside his study. The bare-chested bare-footed miscreant was on his way to the swimming pool.

"Uncle Jimmy…" The boy looked up with a mischievous face. "Are you a doo-doo head?"

"What?"

"Mommy said you were!"

Jimmy's finger hit a button on his computer and the gears and weights in the house sounded off around him, slamming his wood sliding doors shut a few feet from the boy and dropping the gate, sealing up his office against the reality that was his sisters. He dropped his head into his arms in front of him. He was like that for a few minutes until the intercom buzzed. It was either Gwen or Sara wondering if he was all right. Barely looking up, his finger hit the switch.

"Yes…." He sighed defeatedly. It was the front door.

"Hi, this is Alan Harper… Uhhh, Charlie's brother. Uh, is that room still available?"

END