Mama was always going on about how gossip was a bad thing, but she wasn't averse to doing it herself. I guess gossip was only bad for other people, not for her. Mama swore that she never gossiped with the living; they never got the facts right. She claimed she spent hours gossiping with her friends from the great beyond, wherever that was.

Mama always used Miss Colby's story to prove how wrong living humans could get things. I always said that the story her friends from the great beyond told didn't sound any more believable. Then mama would swear that her version of the story was true. The other version was nothing but vicious lies. Whatever. Miss Colby was before my time. She had already left town when I was born, though I did know her brother, Old Man Colby, who owned the town's only drugstore.

According to mama, Miss Mary Lynn Colby, who was the local librarian, had been madly in love with Joseph Forsythe. When he came home from the Navy with his new bride, it broke Mary Lynn's heart with a crack heard all over town. She took to walking at nights, and sitting on the hill outside of town, (where the factory is now), staring at the skies. She would come home in the early hours of the morning, swearing that she saw strange lights and heard voices talking to her. Well, needless to say, no one but mama believed her. My mother was strange even back then. The town's folk just shook their heads and felt sorry for poor Mary Lynn, who was going crazy with grief and a broken heart.

Mary Lynn kept going out at night but she stopped telling people what she saw and heard up there on that hill, though sometimes she would come and talk to mama. She knew that everyone else thought she was crazy but she didn't care.

Well, one morning Mary Lynn, who, according to mama, was no beauty, came down the hill with a handsome young man in tow. Shocked all those upstanding town folks right down to their underpants, mama said. Especially when he moved right in and lived with Mary Lynn. The man looked to be a good ten years younger than Mary Lynn's thirty-five, and mama swore that most of the talk was from women who wished they had seen him first. Mama said that young man worked around the old Colby house, fixing things what needed it, and leaving them as didn't, alone, (according to mama it is a rare talent to know the difference). He never talked to anyone, but he was polite in moving away from all those jealous women that found reason to stop at Mary Lynn's house. Sometimes, mama said, she would see him watching everybody with a sad look on his face, like he knew something that they didn't and wasn't allowed to share it. (Did I mention that my mama had a great imagination?)

Anyway, mama said, Mary Lynn brought her young man around to our house one day and introduced him to mama.
"I'm going to leave this town, soon as I get my affairs in order Ma'am Sistella, and since you were the only one who ever understood, I thought I would let you know." Mary Lynn said to mama.

Mama said she looked really hard at that young man, then she smiled at the other woman. "You will be going a long way from home, Mary Lynn, I hope you know what you're doing."

Mary Lynn smiled and nodded. "There's nothing here in this town for me except old age and loneliness. You know who my friend is don't you?"

Mama said she just smiled and nodded, "I have seen his kind before." She told Mary Lynn.

"Yes, I thought you might have, that's why I brought him to meet you." Mary Lynn smiled a sweet, soft smile that Mama said made her look almost beautiful, "Wish me happy in my new life Ma'am Sistella"

Mama said she looked hard at the two of them, then she gave Mary Lynn a hug, "You are going to be happy girl, you don't need my wish, but for what it's worth, I give it to you." Then mama said she turned to the young man and told him, "Listen, you take good care of her. She has never been away from home before."

Well, that man who, mama said, all of a sudden didn't look so young, turned and smiled at mama. Mama said she tingled clear down to her toes, and she knew darned well why Mary Lynn was leaving everything she knew to follow him.

Mary Lynn went about her business for the next three months, really quite like, and mama said when the neighbors got wind of what she was doing, it was all the sheriff could do to stop the men from going out and lynching her young man. Mary Lynn sold all the stocks and bonds her daddy had left her. She sold the house that had been so lovingly repaired by her young man, and she even sold all her jewelry. Everyone was sure that she was going to give all that money to that strange young man she had picked up on the hill, and ruin her life.

Well, one morning about six months later, Mary Lynn and her young man disappeared. The police, the FBI and everybody got to searching for them, but no trace was ever found.

Mama said Mary Lynn followed her young man to his home, and she added the search for Mary Lynn and the stranger lost a lot of momentum when it was discovered that all Mary Lynn's money had been put in an envelope and left for her brother, along with a letter.

Old Man Colby never revealed what the letter said, but it seemed that he was satisfied Mary Lynn was fine, and in the end he called off the search. Of course, there are still people in our town who swear that the stranger murdered Mary Lynn when he discovered she was leaving all that money to her brother. There are also those in our town who believed that Old Man Colby murdered his sister when he discovered that she was going to give all that money to the stranger.

Mama swears neither story is true. She has it on good authority that Mary Lynn isn't dead, even though she is no longer on this world. I believe mama when she says Mary Lynn isn't dead 'cause mama would know about things like that.

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