No Road Back for You Either

For my fiancé's mother's fiftieth birthday party, my parents and I picked out our gifts with care and traveled hundreds of miles to his family's home out in the country.

The moment my parents stepped through the courtyard gate, a huge string of firecrackers went off right over their heads.

In the crackle and the roar and the sparks, my mother's silk qipao caught fire, and she went down hard from the shock.

My father's face was struck by the blast, blood welling up out of the scorched skin, his tailored suit torn open in several places.

Then Russ Abbott's little childhood sweetheart came at them with a basin of cold water, crying out,

"Sir, ma'am, you've come at such a bad time. How did you have to walk right into the lucky-hour firecrackers?"

"Let me splash a little water on you, wash off the bad luck."

Sitting in the mud, my parents scrambled into a tangled heap, the whole crowd of villagers around them laughing and egging it on.

I was shaking with fury, ready to storm over and have it out with them.

Russ stepped forward, seized my arm in a death grip, and said with a light laugh,

"Rosalie Galloway's the quick one. If not for her, your parents would've been badly burned today. Aren't you going to thank her?"

I looked at Rosalie, holding the firecracker pole up in triumph, smirking at me, and thought that yes, a bitch and a dog really did suit each other.

I wrenched my arm out of his grip and struck him across the face, a loud, ringing slap.

"Russ, how should I thank her?"

"Should I light a string of firecrackers off in your face too, to thank you properly?"

...

The lively little courtyard fell dead silent in an instant, and before anyone could react, Rosalie was the first to throw herself at Russ, cradling his face, stroking it in distress.

"Russ, does it hurt? It's already swelling up."

Then she whipped around and shoved her palm hard into my chest.

"Philippa Gilbert, is this how you treat your own husband? Slapping your man in the face in front of all these relatives and friends?"

"Just because you people couldn't watch where you were going and got hit by firecrackers, you're going to take it out on Russ?"

The disapproving murmurs rose up around us.

"City girls really are savages. Whoever heard of a woman slapping her own man in public? Does she even know how a wife's supposed to behave?"

"A girl like that just wasn't raised right. If it were my boy, three beatings a day would set her straight."

My heel twisted, and a stabbing pain shot up through my foot. I stumbled, and my father caught me from behind.

Listening to them go on in that sneering, needling tone, I was shaking with rage. I turned to face Rosalie.

"Rosalie, who do you think you are—"

Before I could finish, Russ had already planted himself between us, tucking her behind him, and said in a low voice,

"Enough, Philippa. Stop making a scene. All these relatives are watching. Don't embarrass us."

I stared at him.

Embarrass?

My parents were sitting on the ground, hurt, faces smeared with mud, made a joke of by his family, and he couldn't see that?

Now he was worried about him and Rosalie being embarrassed.

That was when Deborah Abbott came forward and took hold of my parents.

"Oh dear, in-laws, I'm so sorry. The young ones are just careless. The firecrackers gave you a fright, didn't they?"

"Come, sit down, have a cup of tea to settle your nerves."

My father patted the back of my hand, shook his head, and turned to Deborah.

"It's our fault for not paying attention on the way in. It was all a misunderstanding. Congratulations, and happy birthday to you..."

Watching my father walk into the main house side by side with Deborah, I took a deep breath and followed them in.

I knew what my father meant. A lifetime in business had given him a manner nothing could ruffle.

Angry as he was today, he would never lose his composure in front of everyone.

My mother trailed behind too, apologizing, saying all the sorry things.

And everyone else filed into the main house along with them, as if what had just happened really had been nothing but an accident.