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Penelope is driven by two motives: the desire to inherit Harris’s money and her need to protect her daughter Cadence. These desires are both contradictory and complementary. Winning Harris’s fortune ensures Cadence a comfortable life, a solid education, and the potential for a lucrative career. However, the constant strain of having to win her father’s affection drives Penny further into her own addictive behavior. To that end, she plays the game of pleasing Harris while disparaging her sisters and their families even as she drinks away the pain. Penny’s given name is Penelope, an allusion to Odysseus’ wife in The Odyssey. In that work, Penelope waits many years for her husband to return while lying to her suitors to avoid having to marry one of them and give away her husband’s inheritance. She symbolizes Cadence’s long voyage to health, Harris’s long voyage toward death, the family’s history of lying, and the troubles attendant to a tightly held fortune.
Penny is caught between ushering her teenage daughter through an unexplained health crisis and managing her father’s decline in mental health. Associated with these tasks is the emotional pain her father delights in inflicting upon her and her sisters. It is tempting to see Penny the way Cadence often does, as a bitter, drunken daughter who relies upon her wealth and status to claim a privileged place in society. It is likely a better interpretation to understand that Penny relies upon her wealth and possessions, as well as her ability to remain stoic in the face of disaster, to carve out a safe space for herself in a frightening and disappointing world. This is the Penny that Cadence finally glimpses—the one who demands no atonement, who doesn’t even ask for an apology, but who simply accepts her daughter as she is, in all her imperfections.
