After nearly 25 years of marriage, Rebecca leaves her husband a cryptic note explaining why she has left him.

Her tweedy, English professor husband is equally surprised and amazed at the news. As his life cascades through one stormy episode after another, he begins to write letter after letter to his wife. Although he has nowhere to send the letters, he hopes that somehow she will know his thoughts. He writes his deepest true feelings to her, reporting on his anger, feelings of betrayal, his inability to regain a foothold on his life and his unceasing love for her.

Can he have been so wrong about one he loved so well?

 

            

 

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Comments from the first to read "Clues and Secrets"

 

-d.ennis keeps you wondering.  The clues are there, but you don't know the secret till the end. A "must read".

                                 Ginny Tinner

 

-Clues & Secrets is a fast-paced short story that draws the reader into the heartaches and challenges endured by the main character's vast range of emotions following the mysterious disappearnce of his wife of many years. 
I found myself pulling for the main character of  Clues & Secrets.  Author, Dennis Coleman, offers the reader just what the title implies - but I was unsuspecting of the final outcome! 
              - Anne Pennypacker, a friend who tolerates the author

-Probably the best story ever written, anywhere, by anyone. Brilliant work from a humble man

                                 -dennis

 

^{An excerpt}

September 22^nd

 

Dear Rebecca,

 

I believe that today is the first day of fall. Even if this is not true by the calendar, it is clearly true in nature.

 

The leaves of the elm tree are aflame; the grass is losing its green richness. I sat for quite a while on the larger, brown chair in the living room. Ostensibly, I sat there to read, but the book rested on my lap as I watched the leaves twist and turn their way down to their soft landing. I enjoyed the beauty in the colors and the dancing descent, while concurrently I wondered if each leaf knew that this descent was the ultimate proof that it was, although rich in beauty, undeniably dead.

 

I am not pleased that I am so comfortable with such morbid thoughts.

 

I am hoping that this deeper melancholia is brought on by the change in the weather, yet I fear it is not so.

 

After a while, I did manage to return to my reading. Oddly, it was Birches, by Frost.

 

I am certain that you recall these lines.

 

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
and life is too much like a pathless wood.

 

 

I am trying Rebecca, but I feel myself losing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 25^th                                

 

Dear Rebecca,

 

 

In other years, I would have been back to class by now. Not this year and perhaps not ever. Ever. That seems like quite a long time, doesn’t it?

 

Interesting words. There is ever. And also forever, and of course the sometimes get doubled, for surety. Forever and Ever.

 

We use those words in such a casual way, and we should not. I am stopping now to consider the power of them, the finality of them. They are sincere words, sometimes as in a promise or an oath.

 

We used them on our wedding day.

 

We promised to do this, that and the other, forever.

 

Forever.

 

And at the end of our lives, we use the familiar, forever and ever, Amen.

 

I am contemplating the deep meaning of those words Rebecca, and I am nearly crushed under the weight of what they should have meant and what they have come to mean.

 

Did you ever contemplate “forever”, Rebecca?

 

Do you now?

 

I am,

 

Forever Yours.                                           

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