And a Diamond in the Middle

A cute hat, a shamrock, a lovely pool...and an Irish nympho?

This story is written for blackrandl1958's "Surfing with the Alien" challenge, inspired by guitarist Joe Satriani's great musical number of the same title. Thanks, Randi, for the invitation, and thanks to everyone who reads it.

Special thanks go to my friend JoshFrom53 for his efforts in beta reading this story and making suggestion to help me improve it. Any errors that you may notice are mine and mine alone. If you're looking for a new story after this one, I invite you to consider one of Josh's works.

© SouthernCrossfire - 2023. All rights reserved.

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A slight, seemingly hesitant tap on the open door of our bedroom intruded upon our lingering throes of connubial bliss. Of course, it wasn't Matt's fault; I was the one who'd unlocked and opened the door clearing the way after we'd cleaned up and Kathy was dressed in her nightgown. Sitting side by side in the bed snuggled together but holding books we weren't yet reading, she pulled the comforter up a bit to cover her still prominent pokies and any other potential signs of our recently completed activity.

"Come in," I called to him as I closed the book and set it on my nightstand. "What's up, son?"

Matt, age thirteen and a half and our only child due to problems during Kathy's pregnancy, stood on my side at the foot of our bed and looked at me with that same hesitation I'd sensed with the knock. "Dad, uhm, where do we come from?"

I looked at him for a moment, knowing we'd had the discussion about the birds and the bees and human sexuality just a few weeks earlier, so I figured he needed to clarify something, but I was curious why he'd have directed the question specifically to me. Probably, I figured, because he'd timed asking the original question while Mom was making a trip to the grocery store.

"Matt, we discussed this a few weeks ago, son. What can we help you with? Do you need more information on something we—"

"Dad! Not that," he pleaded with his voice and his eyes. "No, I know where Mom comes from and I know I get part of my DNA from her, but the part from you, I don't know anything about. Where do you come from?"

Suddenly, birds, bees, and human sexuality seemed easy compared to answering that question.

My usual explanation when people asked about my parents was that they'd been killed when I was young—in an alley outside a theater, in a mysterious plane crash, or when their planet exploded (though that last one was a little too transparent so I only used it when people were being really nosy). My comic-book inspired explanations covered up the fact that my mother apparently got knocked up when she was nineteen and married a guy who may—or may not?—have been my father. That was based on my birth certificate and the marriage license that I found in the paperwork my adopted parents gave me when I was in high school. At the time, even I was bright enough to understand that preemies born at seven months generally don't weigh over seven pounds as I had.

"Well, son, my adopted parents, your late grandparents were descendants primarily of immigrants from England—"

"Dad, I remember talking to grandma and grandpa about that. No, I'm asking about you. Where did you come from?"

I sighed. "I don't know, son. And at this point, I never will."

He pulled a paper out of his back pocket and stepped around the side of the bed to hand it to me.

"Hmm, DNA testing?" I mused, glancing at the high points.

"Yeah, you can get tested and we can find out where your ancestors came from. We were talking about it in science class and I'm doing a paper so I looked it up on the computer and printed this for you."

Yes, DNA testing for ancestry purposes had been around for a while, but I'd always been reluctant to look into it. Let the sleeping dog lie, as my adopted mom always said. Testing and finding out that my real grandfather or great grandfather had been a mass murderer, a horse thief, or some type of war criminal was something I'd rather not discover.

"Well, son, you know the police use these things to solve cold cases, crimes from long ago that are still on the books that haven't been solved to this point. There's no telling what they might come get me for if I took that test."

Matt's eyes got big, realizing what I was saying before Kathy swatted me. "Sam, don't tease him like that! Matt, fortunately, there's a statute of limitations on speeding so you don't have to worry about your dad getting hauled away." She turned to me. "You'll see about doing this, right?"

Seeing that I didn't have much choice, I mumbled, "Ahh, I'll check on it tomorrow, okay?"

Matt grinned, thanked me, and gave Kathy an odd but barely imperceptible look before telling us goodnight and fleeing.

Turning to her, I grumbled, "You knew about this. He talked to you beforehand, right?"

She grinned at me and said, quite sweetly, "I'll never tell," and reopened her book.

***

Not wanting to do it, I succeeded in putting off ordering the test for a couple of days, but Matt needed the results for his paper sooner rather than later so I gave in, ordering one for him and one for me. He wanted the results, of course, but he also wanted to compare the results of his test to Kathy's and mine to check their accuracy. We submitted and the results came back just a few weeks later along with several offers for them to continue taking our money on a regular basis. With the exception of the results, I threw all of it in the trash.

My ancestors were, for the most part, from Ireland, with much smaller percentages from England, Scotland, Scandinavia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Other. Being a classicist, I was disappointed to see no Greek or Italian in the mix.

On the good side, Matt's results echoed those from his mother and me and there were no readily identified mass murderers, horse thieves, or war criminals listed. Despite Kathy's teasing, no police showed up at my door either (yes, I'd long ago paid the ticket for going 92 in a 70 and a few others over the years. As for all of the others where I hadn't been caught? Well, there's that statute of limitations that Kathy mentioned).

Matt was excited at the congruency of the results and was even more excited that the testing firm found several of my third (or more distant) cousins that might someday shed more light on my heretofore unknown family. While he had several cousins on his mother's side, he'd had none on my side before since I'd been an only child. Now, he suddenly had real blood relatives beyond me in my side of his family tree, however distant.

He also got an A on his paper on what we'd discovered and I got a conundrum about whether I should try to contact any of my newly discovered cousins. While Matt was pushing for it, Kathy recommended that I not rush into anything, to make sure I was comfortable with it before making a decision. Therefore, I thought about it longer and harder than I probably should before she asked me about it as we cleaned up after supper a few weeks later.

"So? Have you decided about trying to contact some of your relatives?"

"Nope."

"Nope, you're not, or nope you haven't decided?"

"The decided one. I don't want to contact one or more of them and suddenly be seen as their new sugar daddy."

She snickered. "Hmm, a college classics professor and a high school teacher. Sam, you never know but they might be a lot better off than we are; in fact, they probably are a lot better off than we are. You know, they might even see you as the one hoping for a payout."

"You and I know that's not true, so we wouldn't have to worry about that."

"Just like they'd probably say if given the chance." Having made her point, she smiled sweetly at me and went back to reading her book.

I sent a few notes out the next day and my until-recently-unknown third-cousin Brenda responded. We swapped notes and our families and those of a couple more of our cousins eventually met. No one tried to scam anyone, with Matt and his new cousins Josh, Lindy, and Elijah, all being roughly the same age, being the main beneficiaries as they established online presences over the next few years.

The big thing for Kathy and me was that we learned about my old ancestral county and hometown in Ireland. We added that area to our travel list after our next research trip to Greece and Italy. The summer after that Mediterranean trip, we made our first trip to Ireland and loved it, both the land and the people.

Kathy enjoyed the shopping too. Irish weavers are well known for their high-quality wool products such as coats, skirts and sweaters, and scarves, gloves, and hats. Having done some clandestine research in advance, she picked out exactly what she wanted, including a cute 8-panel newsboy hat and matching scarf. I'm not sure how, but she convinced me to get one too (though my flat cap was decidedly more masculine and didn't have the little flower-thingy on the side) and a matching winter scarf. Matt wasn't interested in a hat or cap but we got him a sweater that he wore frequently and scarf that he may have worn once or twice in the years that followed.

Back home, a couple of antiques that Kathy had come across were delivered to the house and it wasn't long before we were planning a second trip the following year. She started her shopping list early and in the open this time.

Wanting to limit the damage, I suggested that we spend part of our time beginning on that second trip doing some hiking through the Irish countryside. To be such a small island, Ireland has numerous dedicated hiking trails crisscrossing the land to give tourists so many opportunities to see the sights. Since we'd been avid hikers and fairly skilled backpackers for years, she readily agreed to my idea of getting away from the relative hustle and bustle of the Irish cities. I think she knew that she'd still have plenty of shopping opportunities, and truth-be-told, I knew that she never went overboard with her purchases and that she usually got a decent deal.

Our first major excursion was a hike around portions of the Ring of Kerry through the Killarney National Park in County Kerry in southwestern Ireland. With an experienced guide leading us and Kathy wearing her favorite little hat, we traveled with another couple for several days, hiking by day and staying in what was usually a quaint little bed and breakfast at night. A week later after more touring around the south and southeastern parts of the island, we took a couple of day hikes on our own in the Wicklow Mountains National Park south of Dublin, emerging each evening to more comfortable lodgings.

Seeing so much beauty and experiencing the land up close, we planned more such excursions during our third trip to the island.

By that trip, Matt was then seventeen and had seen more than enough so he stayed home with a friend. That allowed Kathy and me more flexibility and freedom to do as we pleased, so we spent more time hiking, particularly in the relative wilds of Counties Galway and Mayo in western Ireland. It was sometime on that trip that I saw rain advancing across a field toward us.

"Hurry! Ponchos!" I exclaimed. "Or we're going to get soaked!"

We made it just in time, the rain hitting as I helped make sure her poncho covered her backpack. It was just moments later as she was checking mine that she said, "Look, Sam! A rainbow!"

I smiled as I nodded. "A leprechaun is flashing the location of his pot of gold at us," I laughed.

"It looks like it's in the next field. Let's go catch it! Hurry!" she said, taking my hand and pulling me along. "We have to get there before the rain ends."

There are fields practically everywhere in Ireland, divided one from another by rock walls built by farmers over the centuries, with some eventually becoming covered by dense vines that hide the walls within. We ran, stumbling along until we found a spot where we could see the next field through the hedge grown up over the fence before us. The clouds, always moving, pulled the rainbow into the next field...or perhaps the one beyond that.

"Oh, that was fun," she gasped, getting her breath. Laughing, she added, "Perhaps we'll catch that little leprechaun some other day."

I laughed too, remembering the animated cereal commercials of our youth where the kids chased Lucky the Leprechaun, always trying to get his Lucky Charms. We had two more opportunities to chase rainbows and their supposed pots-of-gold on our hikes in the days that followed, but never got closer than that first time. After one that caught us by surprise, Kathy, soaking wet and laughing as hard as I'd ever seen, pulled me down in a small soft patch at the edge of a hayfield.

Rolling over on top of me, her soft breasts pressed against me, she whispered, "Sam, we missed out on that one, but I know where you can find another pot of treasure...if you're willing?" She kissed my cheek and neck as her hand ran up and down the front of my pants. Feeling my response, she was undoing my buckle as our lips met and I reached under her sweater to pull her closer.

When we took a break from the kiss, we rose to our knees and I pulled her sweater over her head and she helped me out of mine moments later. We spread them on the ground and stripped out of the rest of our wet clothes before I laid her down and caressed her soft mounds with my hands and my lips. Trailing kisses down, I reached that wonderful treasure she'd mentioned and gave it a good loving, bringing her to a sweet O as her fingertips ran through my hair. With her hole being even wetter than the rest of us, I lined my rod up and gently pushed inside.

Holding me close as I slowly pistoned in and out of her, she moaned and kissed me, sharing the moment and that little corner of the farmer's hayfield as the sun started drying us. When we closed on our climax, I drove harder and faster and she hooked her legs around me, holding me tight.

"Almost, almost there, Sam. Just a little more," she breathed. "Keep go--ahh!"

I filled her then, surge after surge pumping into her as that feeling of rapture swept over me.

"I love you, Kathy," I said, and with an absolutely terrible Irish accent, I added, "and that was much better treasure than every damn leprechaun has on the whole fookin' island."

She laughed and said, "I love you, too, Sam. But, please, no more Irish accents!"

We lay there for a bit enjoying our afterglow before we realized how chilly we were. Once Kathy's teeth started chattering, we dug a towel and dry clothes out of our packs and dressed, making sure our rain ponchos were within easy access in case it started raining again. Taking a last look out across the fields in the distance, Kathy's fingers entwined with mine and we continued our hike.

***

Having freed ourselves of most of our inhibitions, we made love two more times on our hikes on that trip, though those times we were careful to choose times when we were warm and dry (lesson learned!). Unfortunately, our trip wound down all too soon.

We stayed in a nice hotel in Limerick on our last night before flying out of Shannon the next morning. On the way to an early dinner that evening, I spotted a little jewelry store that was still open so I pulled her inside just as the shopkeeper came up to flip the sign for the evening; I was hoping to buy another nice Irish charm for her bracelet. The jeweler smiled and showed us his wares.

She didn't find anything that tickled her fancy but the man, never one to willingly give up a sale, said, "Your hat is lovely, ma'am." He mentioned the weavers' name and Kathy nodded with a smile. She loved her hat.

"It's a beautiful Irish work; have you considered a hat pin for it?" he asked. "I have some lovely pins over here that you might find suitable."

He pulled out a tray and picked up an enameled four-leaf clover that he held up for her inspection.

It was a beautiful little work, but she smiled and waved her hand. "Sir, we're visitors but we've been here enough times now and stayed long enough that Ireland feels like a second home to us. And we know that real shamrocks have three leaves, not four."

He chuckled as he put the four-leaf pin back in the tray. "You might be surprised but tourists usually associate the 'luck of the Irish' with the four-leaf clover, not the Holy Trinity with the shamrock, so I keep plenty of the four-leaf ones in stock for those who want them. However, I also have real shamrock pins if you're interested. They're really appropriate since cloisonné and enamel processes have been used in Ireland for over 15 centuries, such as in—"

"The Ardagh Chalice," I suggested, mentioning the famous work we'd seen in the National Museum in Dublin. "A beautiful piece, reminiscent in ways of ancient Greek works."

"Exactly. You appear to have studied it closely?"

We talked about my profession and my increasing interest in showing the influences of the ancient Greeks in Ierne, their name for Ireland, sometime before the Romans made some inroads into the land they called Hibernia without ever conquering it.

"What do you think, Sam?" asked Kathy, completely ignoring our discussion. She'd picked a small shamrock from the tray and pinned it through her hat. A brilliant green over a gold background, it shown like a jewel. I saw the little diamond in the middle as making it somewhat prettier, but I hesitated.

Seeing my hesitation in endorsing it, the jeweler, like any good salesperson, decided to sweeten the pot to make it more desirable. "And the diamond in the middle, where the three leaves meet, symbolizes the perfection of the whole," he explained.

Yeah, I thought, as well as making it a whole lot more expensive and more profitable for our jeweler friend.

"Sam? This one? Or perhaps the Celtic knot?"

I could tell which she wanted so I swallowed hard as I paid full price for the pretty shamrock with the diamond (and extra for the screw-on back so it wouldn't get lost) and thanked the shopkeeper for staying open for us.

***

My mind was in a fury as we flew home the next day, the discussion with the jeweler being the focus of my thoughts.

As a professor of the classics, teaching several history courses plus ancient philosophies and mythologies for upperclassmen and graduate students, I'd written a scholarly book on Greek and Roman mythology some years earlier thanks in part to the start I had with my dissertation. It sold fairly well for a book of its type and the publisher had expressed interest in another. This sounded like a good idea so I played with it and developed the idea of a book showing the connections between the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans with Irish folktales and mythology. I tapped furiously on my laptop with the ideas and strategies I could use to pitch the idea to my publisher.

Several weeks later, I gave my pitch by videoconference and got the go-ahead to move beyond the rough outline I'd presented. I'd never retire on the money I'd earn but she suggested that I consider the idea of a related mythology-based novel which might be more lucrative for me and for one of her fellow publishing divisions in the future.

***

In addition to my plans with the book, we'd barely returned to the States before we started planning our next trip to Ireland for the following June.

"It'll be our fourth trip, so four weeks this time," Kathy said. "Matt graduates at the end of May so he can come with us."

Matt was a hard "No" on that; he'd just started dating a young lady and her parents wouldn't consider allowing her to join us, even for a short period, so I tailored our trip around Kathy's and my capabilities and our mutual interests, including catching a number of out-of-the-way castles and attractions.