Through the Open Door || Change My Mind Sequel || SP

Thanksgiving

Continued

Thursday Nov. 27 2025

8:00 AM

Sam, Gene, and Peg stood in the kitchen making both thanksgiving breakfast and dinner. The Six girls and their families were coming over for dinner, so they had to start early, but the current family was hungry now. "Sam, can you pass me the sausage?" Gene asked, heating up her pan. The eldest pauly agreed as her mother slid past her standing before the bottle sterilizer.

"How often do you sterilize Ezra's bottles?" Peg asked, ready to reload the machine with freshly cleaned bottles. Sam looked away from the fridge, handing off the food to her sister.

"Umm everyday. I have two sets of bottles. So I can sterilize the ones for the next day, the night before. So those bottles will be tomorrow's," she said, gesturing to the sterilizer in front of her mom.

"Mommy! Daddy said Baby Ezra is hungry!" Elora called between the entrance of the open floor plan and the hallway. Sam rolled her eyes.

"Well you can tell daddy to bring his lazy ass here and get his son a bottle," she muttered, making her family members laugh. "Okay! I'm coming!" Sam called, before her daughter ran away. Sam quickly made a bottle and shook on her way to his room. "I'll be right back," she muttered, walking into the nursery to see her son lying in his crib shaking, red, and crying. "I know, worm. Daddy is an asshole who is just watching you cry!" Sam said, knowing Matt had the baby monitor and could see and hear her. She pulled her son out of his crib and placed him on her shoulder and took him to the rocking chair.

-

While feeding him, Matt came in and sat the monitor on his dresser leaning against the wall. "What do you want?" She muttered, glancing up from watching her son eat.

"Why do you talk to and about me in front of the kids?" Matt asked. Sam narrowed her eyes at him.

"Don't talk to me about the way I speak in front of my kids, when you wanna have your daughter come get me instead of coming to your son yourself. You had to call her, tell her what you wanted me to know, and then send her, instead of getting up. That doesn't make any fucking sense!" Sam yelled. Matt shut the baby's door.

"Samantha-,"

"Don't fucking Samantha me! You're lazy! You watched our son cry to the point where he was shaking and did nothing about it! And if you didn't hear him until that point, for whatever reason, then you're incompetent. So which is it?" She griped. Matt's jaw dropped. She hadn't been this short with him in years.

"You were already in the kitchen. You could make him a bottle faster-,"

"You could have made him a bottle, period! But instead, here I am, doing it again! And I get it you are working, you work all the time and so hard. I know! But, does it not bother you that I do everything for our children. Our... children! Even now, I do bedtime. I don't understand! The kids don't see you! You hide away in the bedroom when you're here ever since the thing at the school. I was the one that watched a man get shot, but I have to be the one to keep it together, because my husband wants to be absent. Never speak to me about how I speak to the children I raise about a man they barely know. Ever." She finished, looking back down at her son, getting ready to transfer him to his mid feed burping position. Matt fell back out of the room and left Sam alone. He couldn't really say she was in a mood, because it seemed like she had been holding that in for a while. He knew he wasn't doing what he was supposed to, but he hadn't realized how badly he was using Sam as a crutch.

Matt had fallen off in all aspects of his family. He hadn't played with his kids in weeks, he had changed all of seven of Ezra's diapers, and after the first time, he hadn't looked at or touched Sam in days since she and the baby got home. And while Sam was not ready to venture back into the realm of penetration she did miss the sexual interaction between she and her husband.