text: Florida wouldn't exactly be the place you would think of for a Russian to live in the US. Washington D.C. Alaska, New York, perhaps California. Back in the late 1980's and into the early 1990's a group of Russians who came to the US decided to settle in Florida. As a group they were professional people who got out of Russian at the right time. The town that they settled into Tranquility was small (probably about 500 or so resident. ). I met Sergi in 1985 and we got married in 1986. I lived in Daytona Beach, so I moved to the town with him. We lived in a modest home. Tasha was born in 1988 and then in 1990 Dimitri was born. By the end of the 1990's, the part of town where we lived was known as Little Moscow as most of the Russians who had immigrated to the US came from Moscow. People of Russian ancestry consisted of about 50% of the town's population. Many in the Russian community wanted to have their own town, so in 1998 the town Little Moscow Florida was formed. In 1998 about 800 people lived in Little Moscow nearly all of them of Russian ancestry with the exception of me and 4 other people (Three were American men married to Russian women and I was an American woman married to a Russian man). Many people in the town of Tranquility didn't really know what to make of so many Russians living in one community. Many were very suspicious and basically kept their distance. Thankfully no acts of violence were committed against anyone. There were a couple of acts of vandalism though. One incident I remember is that someone knocked over the mailbox after hitting it with a baseball bat and yelled stuff. Sergi's mother Tanya was at home taking care of our daughter Tasha who was about a year old. I was sick with a stomach ache and was at home recovering. I was glad that she was caring for Tasha as I could sleep. She saw what happened. Tanya was the Russian grandmother or babushka. She saw the pick-up truck leaving. She ran outside with a rolling pin shaking it and yelling at them. They stopped the truck nearby. From a distance, they laughed and mocked her as she continued shaking the rolling pin and yelling at them. They had no idea what she was saying as it was in Russian. I knew what she was saying and basically she was telling them that they were rude and disrespectful to her and to our house. You ought to be ashamed of yourself was the only thing that she yelled to them in English. They laughed and taunted her, calling her stupid ugly old woman. This made her angrier and she continued yelling at them. I woke up and went outside to see what was going on. When they saw me, they took off but I had managed to get their license and she called the police. They were teen-agers who were bored. The parents of the teens apologized and the teens who did this as punishment had to put a new mailbox in. Sergi and I agreed this was the proper punishment for what they did. Putting them in jail would serve no purpose unless they did this again. When they came over with their probation officer, Tanya was sitting outside watching their every move. They basically ignored her as you didn't want to get into an argument or fight with Tanya. I remember it was a Saturday morning and Sergi and I started to laugh even though what happened really wasn't funny. Thankfully his mother didn't go up to the truck shaking her rolling pin. I know she was tempted to do so (she wouldn't have hit them with it) but seeing that there was a gun rack on the pick up truck, she decided not to. After a couple of years, I could speak the Russian language rather well and could read it but I already had to have a Russian/English book, even years later. I converted to the Eastern Orthodox religion and 10 years after we were married, we renewed our vows in the church. Beautiful ceremony. Sergi seemed to be a jack of all trade. He could do mechanical or construction work and could also play a musical instrument. He was book smart as well as mechanically inclined (something that is a rarity). He could fix just about anything and he loved a challenge. He did free lance work and I imagine some of it was under the table. He hinted at this but told me, 'There are some things that it's best you don't know about. I'm not doing anything illegal or immoral." he would say as I was concerned. We had a checking account and saving accounts, and then he had his own account and I had mine. He would not look at my account and I would not look at his. The joint checking and savings was a different story. After we had children, Tanya had quit smoking but Sergi didn't stop smoking. He was okay with me telling him to smoke on the car port but Tanya would come out and make such a fuss that he would smoke out in the yard. Finally he just smoked in the back yard. He didn't argue with his mother very often. 2001 was a terrible year. In January of 2001 (a week into the new year), Sergi collapsed outside while walking to get the mail. Tanya screamed and I went running outside. The fire station was right down the street and they were there less than 2 minutes but Sergi was gone. He had been sick since December and refused to go to the doctor thinking it was just a bad cold. He had downplayed how sick he was. He always did. Massive heart attack due to very clogged arteries. Sergi had smoked since he was 12 years old. He died at the age of 43. The next morning I went into Tanya's room when I woke up. She had died in her sleep. The stress of his death was too much for her. Usually she was the first one up and I noticed that she wasn't up and about. She was 66 years old. At age 39 I was a widow with two children. Thankfully Sergi had insurance policies, so we were okay financially. There was another grandmother who lived next door who looked in on my two children. I felt better about it. This grandmother had a granddaughter named Sabrina who was younger than my daughters. As she got older, the granddaughter would confide in me about school, her grades, etc. Some stuff she told me she couldn't tell her grandmother who wouldn't really understand. 2016 Sabrina went to Hollywood to try to make it as an actress. By this time her grandmother had passed. She had met and was now dating actor Markus Wellson (well it was supposed to be secret, both denied it but I knew). I wasn't too thrilled about it. This guy had been married 4 times and had 8 children with 3 different women. This man was in his early 60's. A lot older than she. I wasn't judging him on this but there were things that I heard about this guy that I didn't like. I carefully expressed my concerns to her but she thought that all these things were lies that the tabloids said about him. I wasn't so sure. The day before Thanksgiving, I had come home from a party very late (almost midnight). I knew that Sabrina was there (she told me). She didn't say that Markus Wellson was going to be there but I knew he would be. I didn't see him but knew he was there. A couple of hours later I woke up not being able to sleep. The window was open and there was a breeze. The moon was also full. Sabrina was out in her back yard with Markus kissing him. He looked around and she said that I wasn't home as I had gone to Lakeland to be with my children for Thanksgiving. This was true but I was waiting till morning. A friend would be picking me up and then bringing me home. I left my car. There were only 3 homes on the cul de sac. One of them was unoccupied as the house had been put up for sale. I kept a eye on the Sabrina's house (she kept the house after her grandmother died and came around a couple of times a year). I had to go into another room to sleep as the lovebirds couldn't keep their hands off of each other. When I woke up early the next morning, the two lovebirds were sleeping in a hammock in the back yard. At 8:00 am I saw them leave. Shortly thereafter, I left to go to Lakeland to have thanksgiving dinner with my son and daughter, their spouses and my new grandchild. I don't know why but I felt compelled to leave at that time and called my friend who came immediately. When I came back the following Sunday afternoon, I saw Sabrina. She was very upset and told me what was upsetting her. All I knew is that this Markus Wellson wasn't going to be happy with her news. She told me that she thought he was going to kill her when she told him the news. I told her she could wait on the news. I went back to my house and then retired early as I would have to go to work the next morning. Around 2 in the morning. I awoke to see a figure walking around in Sabrina's back yard. I could see Sabrina lying there not moving. It looked like a tall man with a large hat and a trench coat. This man walked around my property and banged on the door. He tried the lock and then I heard glass break. I managed to get out the back door and ran outside into a wooded area. I knew Sabrina was dead. I still had the key to the unoccupied house and slipped in the back way. He was in my house for a long time. Thankfully my luggage was still with my friend. I had taken my purse and phone I was so tired when I got home that I didn't feel like getting it out of her vehicle. Probably saved my life. I heard the man on the phone. "Looks like none's here. That lady is on vacation, so we don't have to worry about witnesses. I ransacked her home. She wasn't there. I tore the place apart. Wanted to be sure she wasn't hiding in the closet or something. No purse or phone around. Okay, I'll burned the house down then. No evidence. Don't need to burn the 3rd house down as no one is there. I already checked. I watched in horror as this man set Sabrina's home on fire and then attempted to set mine on fire. He didn't succeed. Out of nowhere a old woman with a rolling pin hit this man in the back of the head and his head hid the trunk of my car. He didn't move. I knew he was dead. I also knew who killed him. Sergi's mother who was in ghost form killed the man and preventing him from setting my house on fire. I then woke up at the home of my friend. It was about 6 am and she had woken me up to tell me that a body had been found in Sabrina's back yard and that a man was dead in my car port. When I saw my friend watching the news reports, I know it had actually happened. She told me I had been at her house Sunday afternoon and evening and had gone to bed early. I wondered how I could be in two places. Had I dreamed this or had I actually witnessed this? My friend said she never took me to my house. Her neighbor said the same thing. What had happened to me. I had dreamed all of this. What a weird experience.