When she felt more composed, Meredith went out of the office to help her employees serve their customers. Snape stayed in the office to do some paperwork to order more supplies. Saturday morning always saw them with a lot of students, eyes glued to their laptops as they sipped their morning tea. Some had a lot of papers on the tables. It seemed as it if was a trend for them to use the scones they ordered to pin the paper down to the table. Meredith smiled as she put on her waitress apron and her nametag. Must be the wifi, she chuckled to herself. She was grateful that all three of her employees were university students, because they certainly brought in their friends. Good publicity and great business, she thought. Everyone had already been served. The café was full for breakfast this morning, save for one table with four chairs in front of the payment counter. Lunchtime would see a lot of parents and children. She was glad she expanded her menus. Everyone had already been served. She looked at the door, there was an elderly lady, her hair tied up in a neat bun, with a young woman and two young men whom she thought must be a granny spending some quality time with her grandchildren. Meredith took the order pad and greeted them, then led them to the vacant table and put the breakfast menus in front of them.
"Good morning. My name is Meredith. What can I get you?" Meredith asked, her eyes shimmering with a genuine welcome and her lips carved into a sweet smile. Her customers greeted her in return and turned their eyes back on the menus in their hands. Only one remained looking at her, as if mesmerized by her. Meredith felt it was quite amusing that a young man, perhaps less than a decade younger than her was gawking at her.
"You have a beautiful name. Meredith. It's hard to find such name now," the red-head boy commented, with an obvious infatuation on his face.
"Behave, Ron! She's way older than you," the bushy-haired girl next to him warned as she beat him hard on his arm. As if realizing her other statement had offended Meredith, the girl looked at Meredith, offered her an I'm-Sorry smile and said in a rather defensive tone, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. I didn't mean you were old. Or that a younger boy couldn't date an older girl, or..."
"It's alright, no offence taken," Meredith replied smilingly.
"You're nice," the boy said again, his eyes still looking at her, "and beautiful. Nice and beautiful. I'm Ron and you're beautiful."
"Thanks, Ron," she replied, almost laughing at the pick-up line. "What would you like to have?" Meredith tried to change the topic. She felt amused again seeing the girl shooting the Ron boy an angry stare. The elderly lady and the spectacled boy chuckled silently at their antiques. Meredith wanted to laugh. She wondered how her husband would react seeing this right now. There was one time when three male customers, about her husband's age, were flirting with her when she was taking their order, her husband had come and told her she was needed in the kitchen and took her place to serve them. She had never seen the three men since and she knew they worked on the same street. She wondered what her Severus would do seeing this young man's flirtation now. As if he could hear the thoughts playing in her head, the office door next to the counter opened and out came her other half.
"Severus?" Meredith heard the elderly lady ask in a tone of disbelief. Was that a tear she saw in this lady's eyes? The lady's companions turned to look at the man her eyes were glued to.
The trio, surprised and happy at the same time, but seemingly unable to talk upon seeing him, abruptly sprang to their feet and dashed towards him. The spectacled boy hugged him first followed by the other two. Meredith shot a confused look at her husband who equally seemed surprised by what had just transpired. The elderly lady stood up and left her seat, leaving Meredith standing there still. The lady walked towards Snape and her three companions who were still hugging him. Once face-to-face with him, she slapped him across the face. Everyone in the café suddenly became quiet, the sound of cutleries and chatters died instantly. Meredith closed her mouth with her hands, shocked. Then, anger flooded her which showed in her eyes. Just as she wanted to storm towards the lady to ask for an explanation for the brief abuse she had inflicted on her man publicly in front of her employees and the customers, some of whom were personal friends, she stood still as she watched the lady joined in the hugging. Meredith saw a solemn look on her husband's face. He was looking at her as if wanting to tell her something. She knew that he knew she wanted an explanation. She gave him a loving smile and mouthed "later". To others, he seemed expressionless but Meredith knew her husband well enough to see how much he appreciated her patience.
"My office," Snape said to the people who had finally released him off their embrace. "Could you bring us some tea, please?" he requested to Meredith who still had not moved from her original position. She nodded.
"What was that?" Soledad, her employee, a second-year university student, asked in her heavy Spanish accent.
"Sev didn't seem happy," Bruce added, "Do you know those people, Mer?"
"I've worked here for almost three years and I thought I knew you and Sev enough, Mer. Was that his family?" her other employee, Katalina from Slovakia, another university student doing her final year, added.
The three employees had gathered around her as the door to the office closed and their customers went back to what they were doing before the deafening silence caused by the slapping incident involving their boss. Having worked together before Snape and Meredith became the owners of the café, all of them became a small family of their own; they treated each other as friends rather than dwelling in the employee-employer status gap.
Meredith shook her head as a response to Katalina's question. "What?" she asked when she saw Soledad's eyes grow big, as if she had figured something out.
"I'm sorry, Mer, but I think Katalina is right. They could be his family. There was a Spanish telenovela with a story like that. The old senora could be his madre. That was why she dared to slap him in public. And los dos chicos y la chica could be his children. That was why they hugged Sev. I swear I saw that boy with the glasses cry. Maybe he had missed his padre so much. Ay, Mer... I'm sorry you had to meet your stepchildren this way. But it's very possible that he had a family before. After all, he is like more than 10 years older than you. You're 26. How old is he? 40? Even the chicos and the chica just now look like they are 20. Maybe his previous esposa died or ran away, leaving the children with his madre. Ay, Mer... I can't believe mi amiga's life is like a telenovela," Soledad presented her theory dramatically, which everyone responded to with stifled laughter so as not to draw their customers' attention. They had always enjoyed listening to her rants on telenovelas. Above all, they loved the way she spoke English in her heavy Spanish accent. Judging by the look on her face, they knew she was not offended.
However, Meredith could not help thinking if what Katalina and Soledad had said was true. Could it be his family? Could the Ron boy who flirted with her earlier be one of her husband's sons from a previous marriage he never told her about? She remembered him telling her that he was an orphan and that he had lived the life a spy, and that he decided to start a new life, away from his past, after accomplishing a very big mission which almost took his life. He told her it was a bitter life and that he wished to forget about it at all and start anew. Meredith did not feel the same bitterness growing up because the nuns at the convent made sure she did not by showering her and her fellow orphans with unending love and care, but she understood the bitterness of being lonely, of being without a real family. The day he proposed and she said yes, they had promised to never talk about their lonely pasts because they would start a life together, no longer dwelling in their own solitary life, with no one to come home to. If Katalina and Soledad were proven true, Meredith would find herself coming home to a husband, a mother-in-law, and a trio of stepchildren who were young enough to be her siblings. She would not mind that at all, but what disturbed her was, if Katalina and Soledad were correct in their assumption, she would feel betrayed, for her significant other had deemed her unworthy of knowing his past, perhaps a previous marriage or a family which she had the right to know about.
"I'd feel really offended by Sev if that was the truth," Bruce said, breaking Meredith's thought.
"Why?" Katalina inquired.
"Because I'm his best friend... though I'm young enough to be his son, or little brother. And guys never keep secrets from each other! And I was his best man! I believed so much in the solidity of our friendship that I believed if he didn't come to Mer when he had problems, he would come to me to talk about it," Bruce let his sudden frustration out.
"Easy there, tiger," Meredith told Bruce as she patted his back soothingly. "We don't know anything yet, so I suggest that we leave this matter here. I'm going in to send them some tea and scones, and see if... I don't know. I'll cross the bridge when I get there," she added as she left the trio to go into the kitchen to prepare her guests' refreshments.
"Hey, Bruce, suppose it's true, do you think Meredith is going to ask for divorce?" Katalina asked.
"Nope. She's Catholic. She doesn't believe in divorce," Bruce replied as if he knew Meredith more than his two friends did.
"Ay, my parents are Catholic too, and they had a messy divorce," Soledad offered her opinion.
"Nope. Not Meredith. Even if it's not her religious belief, she still won't go down the divorce path. Severus is her world. And I know Severus values and loves her so much he would never let her go," Bruce defended his opinion.
The trio dispersed from their gossiping as their friend-cum-boss appeared from the kitchen holding a tray of refreshments. Meredith knew her steps were accompanied by their looks of sympathy for her, for they know how fragile she could be despite her excellent ability in concealing her worries and sadness.