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.