Penny doesn't think it's much fun, being back in Boston again. Their boring brick house. Sidewalks. School's fun, now they're finally letting her go. Other kids to play with, and when there's a test they take it together. But she keeps bringing home report cards marked with Bs and Cs, so after a while it isn't.

"There must be something wrong with her," her father insists to the doctors. "She doesn't read, she doesn't remember. She spells her own name wrong. Don't tell me that's normal."

"I thought I'd have a child, not a-" her mother begins, and always stops there.

One of her nannies had told her once: "Children should be seen and not heard." In a moment of exasperation, and it hadn't pleased her parents. Next week she had a new one.

But young Penelope can see the logic of it; if she keeps quiet, she won't say anything stupid and disappointing. It's just she's never been able to take the advice to heart before. Words keep bubbling up inside her, and they have to go somewhere.

Now, though, she has somewhere. A secret place inside her, where people talk more slowly, and don't mind when she takes a while to explain herself.

It keeps her safe for the next few years, while she sees the therapists and plays with coloured blocks, and fills in circles with pencils. Some of it is what she remembers, some of it she imagines. Some is what she sees. Her Aunty Betty's great big house, full of friendly ghosts. A pine forest to get lost in, with a red covered bridge. A bakery with every kind of cake ever. A beautiful theatre (she knows Mission City doesn't have one really, but that means she can think up the nicest one she likes). She can wander about, talking about anything she wants to.

One summer morning, eight-year old Penelope wakes up with an idea.

It takes a while for anyone to notice, but they do eventually. Then there's all the same scolding and teasing and crying as always, but this time it's because she's doing it on purpose. That makes all the difference.

"What about a trip to the Science Museum? You love that," her mother says.

She does. There's a show about lightning there, and a man who explains electricity. The same speech over and over, twice a day. He never says it wrong. But then, he's clever too. He knows how to improvise when someone asks him a brand-new question. Improvisation was a very long word to memorise, but she wanted to know that one. It's about acting. She thinks she'd be very good at that, she's had lots of practice.

"Just tell us you want to go, and we'll go. Say it out loud, Penelope. Say anything."

She makes the words go out to her secret place, a pretty little coffee shop covered with white flowers, and keeps her mouth firmly shut.

After a week of silence, her parents try a spanking ("But it's so old-fashioned, Harry." "That's why you'd better do it; we don't want her to get the wrong ideas about permissible male violence.") That makes her cry, but crying doesn't count, and they know it.

By the end of the second week, her Aunt Betty arrives. (The only time in her life that she ever left Minnesota, Penny thinks.)

"I'm at my wit's end," her father says. "If she was just slow, or just impossible, but both at once?"

"Now then, Penny. You'll say something to your dear old Aunt Betty, won't you?"

"Chrysanthemums," Penelope announces. With her very best diction. Diction is another acting word.

For a little while she's made everyone else speechless, too.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I know it's the '70s, but it's- I'm- I'm just an unnatural mother, I know."

Her parents are crying. Penny feels sort of sad for them.

"You made a mistake," Aunt Betty says, as quietly as she ever does (which is still loud enough that the maid gasps.) "You and Harry weren't ever meant to be parents, you're supposed to work together in that laboratory of yours. Go find the next big atom that's going to blow us all up."

"That's not-" her father starts.

Aunt Betty waves him silent. "Count yourselves lucky! It isn't everyone who has an obliging old aunt to take in their stray child. Just don't do it again."

They're starting to look hopeful.

"If only she'd been- brighter," her mother says. "If I could have taught her anything..."

"And that is exactly what I was talking about. You don't put conditions on a child's love."

"Just for the summer, then. At least, at first."

"Write to us every week," her father says to Penny. "If you ever want to come home, we'll come fetch you right away."

"We do love you," her mother says. "Penelope, you know we do. We've worried about you so, we really have."

She says goodbye to them, eventually. At the airport.

(She knows she won't ever have to come back, by then.)

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I remember you," the barista says, at the Chrysanthemum Cafe. "Penny, wasn't it? Penny Parker?"

Penny nods; and starts to talk as though she'll never stop.