Maybe so, but if Penny was secretly recruited by Penny's father to get Desmond into the sailboat race, as has been posited by many on this site, why would she be upfront about her husband's death or any other personal information? Her husband might not even be dead! She might never have been married at all! But it makes a pretty compelling story to say "My dead husband named his boat after me, and was a great sailor who always wanted to do this race--take my oboat, he would have wanted you to do the race for him!" Right? It pretty much seals the deal, so to speak. You've got your greedy people who would have taken her up on the offer because it's a gorgeous sailboat. And the rest? Well, they wouldn't have had the heart to turn down that guilt-laden offer. And anyway, if Penny had been stalking Hurley at Santa Rosa Medical Facility she would have already been in the habit of lying and being cagey.

Lost is a show where you can't believe a fact just because it's presented to you as fact. Turned out Henry Gale wasn't Ben's real name at all and he wasn't a crashed hot air balloon pilot. He said he was, but he wasn't. The Nigerian men on the plane proved NOT to be priests in the end, remember? There are so many examples.

I have no idea if I'm right or not, but it's fun to think about.