Mia Sanchez waded across the border into Texas in 1972. She found work as a domestic to feed herself and pay for a place to live. She could speak some English, but perfected it working for an Anglo family in Austin. They were teachers and helped her in many ways, giving her a bedroom in their home. Mia was a beautiful girl. The Appleton's were James and Amy, and were college professors at UT. They helped her get her citizenship. Mia became very close to them. She grew very comfortable in their home. They were older than Mia. They would take her out for dinner with them. James and Amy had an open marriage. They each sometimes just did their own thing.
They would go dancing and even started taking her on vacation with them. They went to Mardi Gras and got pretty blitzed. They all ended up in the same bed and Mia had sex with James. Amy seemed to approve of it but it was never discussed openly between them. This went on for years. Mia became a part of their family. Some nights James would come to her bed and they would have sex. Amy knew James was having sex but never brought it up or tried to stop it.
Amy couldn't have children. Their life consisted of she and James having their academic life and both having sex with some of their colleges. Amy got serious with a younger professor and was spending a lot of time with him and staying with him days at a time. James gravitated toward Mia and they were together constantly. Amy's young protégé started pulling away from her. She came back home and became jealous of Mia and all the attention James was giving her.
A serious problem came up when Mia got pregnant, and it was obvious the father was James. When she began to show, there was a terrible fight between James, Amy and Mia. Amy was going to call the police to have her thrown out of the house, but James talked her down and they left to work out their problem in private. Mia was pretty sure that her job was over and knew James would never claim the baby.
They came back after being gone for most of the day and Amy wouldn't even look at Mia. She just went to her bedroom. James told her that he would give her $2500 to get her back home to Mexico if she didn't cause any trouble. She was hurt but now understood that James was just using her. She decided that was the best she could expect and took the money. James took her to the bus station and she got a bus to the border. She crossed the border and caught another bus for her home. Her mother wasn't pleased about her condition, but she took her in and took care of her. About six months later, a little Seria Sanchez came into the world. She was a pretty baby with blue eyes, black hair and dimples. Seria and Mia stayed with Seria's grandmother for about five years. Mia was teaching Seria English as she was teaching her Spanish.
Mia came back to the United States when Seria was five. She made her way to Dallas and the Police Department was desperately hiring people. She was a citizen, could speak fluent English and Spanish with no criminal record, so she was hired and went to the police academy.
Mia found an apartment and she and Seria moved in. She was welcomed by an older German lady, who lived in the building. She fell in love with Seria and while Mia was hunting a job, Mrs. Ercanbrack kept Seria. Mia kept Mrs. Ercanbrack as a babysitter for Seria after she got through the academy and went to a regular job as a police officer. She didn't go out on patrol, but they wanted her to work at the jail as she was fluent in Spanish and was an asset to them there.
Seria was crazy about Mrs. Ercanbrack. She gave her love in a way that her mother never had. Seria started to school, and Mrs. Ercanbrack would take her to school and pick her up in the evening. Seria heard Mrs. Ercanbrack talking in Dutch on the phone. When she terminated her call, Seria wanted to know what language she was speaking. Seria was in the first grade but already had an interest in languages because of the Spanish and English she already knew. Mrs. Ercanbrack started teaching her German. In about six months Seria could carry on a conversation in German. After a year, she was spouting it like she was born to it.
Mia Sanchez, for whatever reason, had started to dislike little Seria. She was a burden to Mia, and Mia resented that everyone seemed to just adore sweet little Seria. She had started to hate James Appleton for taking advantage of her and impregnating her. She started wanting to blame her mistake on Seria because she was James Appleton's daughter.
Mia met Jake Reynolds at one of his military surplus stores. She had gone there to find some Army BDUs to wear in an exercise her precinct was doing. He paid a lot of attention to her and she liked his appearance. A few days later she went back to the store not really looking for anything but just to test his interest in her. He asked her out, they started dating and in about six months she introduced him to Seria. He liked Seria and they married about six months later.
Seria was thrilled to have a father, but she hated leaving Mrs. Ercanbrack. She cried when she had to say goodbye. Seria became the apple of Jake Reynolds's eye, much to the dismay of her mother. Seria had to go to a different school when they moved into Jake's house. She loved the new school in the suburbs. He had a large home in a gated community. There were some Vietnamese kids in her school and she became friends with them to learn their language. This was the first language she tried to learn that wasn't a Romantic language. It was harder, but she was in the 5th grade now and learning was easier for her. Before the school year was over, she could speak passable Vietnamese. Jake heard her one night practicing it in her room and amazed Seria by knocking on her door. When she invited him in he spoke GI slang Vietnamese to her. This pissed off Mia when they started speaking Vietnamese to each other and she couldn't understand what they were saying. Jake had spent two tours in Vietnam and knew a lot of Vietnamese. Seria and Jake drew closer and he asked her if she wanted him to adopt her. She liked the idea, they went to a lawyer and in a few months she was Seria Reynolds.
This was the start of Seria's love affair with languages and she took every language class she could in high school, at immigrant workshops and she learned from anyone she ran into that spoke another language. She would befriend them to learn about the language they spoke.
She enjoyed her time with Jake and being part of a family. She and her mother just got further apart. She couldn't understand why her mother resented her bonding with anybody. Her mother was jealous of her relationship with Jake. As Seria got older it became worse. When Seria turned 17 she was about at her wits end. She had an argument with Mia and it was awful. She accused her of getting too close to Jake and screamed that she was just like her father, James Appleton. He was promiscuous, also, and couldn't keep his penis in his pants. Seria was shocked to learn her father's name. She asked Mia where James Appleton was and she was told that he was probably still in Austin, teaching college. She wouldn't tell her anything else about him. Before then, Mia had told Seria that she was raped and didn't know who the father was.
Seria went to Jake, her step-father, and told him she was going to have to leave. Jake tried to talk her out of it, but to no avail. She told him she was going to emancipate from her mother. She had finished high school and was ready for college. Jake sent her to his lawyer to get emancipated, gave her $5000 to get started in college and said he would pay his lawyer for her legal expenses. Mia found out about the money and threw a fit. They almost divorced over it. Seria tried to keep in touch with Jake, but her mother made that impossible.
She went to North Texas State University. She took her prerequisites and worked to support herself and pay for her college. She got through three years without getting any student loans, but was at her wits end when she ran into her step-father's nephew. She had known Jake, the nephew, when she was growing up. She had liked him and he liked her, but when she had been in the family for a little over a year the bad things happened to Jake's family and she never saw Jake again until she saw him at UNT.
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Seria Reynolds got settled in her and Jake's new apartment. All their furniture had been lost in the fire. They had put all their personal and valuable things at Arthur's before they went to Mexico. Jake had renter's insurance so they were reimbursed for their loss. Actually, it was Jake's loss, as she had no furniture. They put that money in the Bank and rented a furnished apartment on a monthly basis.
Seria decided to see if an employment agency could help her get a job. She was a linguist as she had been interested in languages since she was a little girl. She was now fluent in Spanish, English, German, Italian, Portuguese, French and Romanian. She was still working on her Vietnamese and she was trying to learn Chinese. It was a very hard language to learn. She signed up with the employment agency and decided to see what she could find out about her biological father.
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Jake had always wanted a Ranch. He wanted to put down roots and have a home that he could always come back to, no matter what. It would be a place that was self-sufficient, and be the center around which he could form a family. He discussed it with Seria and she liked the idea. He started looking in newspapers and online for land for sale around Gainesville. He wanted to find a place this summer as college started for him again, in the fall.
He found one that was 500 acres with a nice older brick home with barns and out buildings. An older couple owned it but couldn't keep it up. They wanted to move into town close to doctors and the convenience of everything being nearby. He looked it over and fell in love with the place. It was like a place he had dreamed about when he was on the boy's ranch. He bought it for under a million.
