Alex Stafford’s rejection of Sarah is the first defining rupture in her family life: he denies responsibility for his daughter and blames Mae for having her, while Sarah—overhearing the adults—comes to believe that her birth has made her mother unhappy. The rejection begins a pattern of abandonment that shapes her grief, self-understanding, and later distrust of attachment.

The rejection

Before Sarah understands what her parents are saying, she imagines being welcomed by her father. She hopes he might lift her onto his shoulders or take her riding, and waits quietly near the open parlor window so she can hear when he wants her to return. Instead, she hears Mae plead with Alex to acknowledge their daughter, describing Sarah as lively, charming, and unmistakably his. Alex answers that he already has legitimate children with his wife and did not want another. He says Sarah should never have been born and faults Mae for refusing his wishes.

The argument also reveals that Alex had urged Mae to end the pregnancy. Mae says she could not do so because she understood it as killing her unborn child and a mortal sin. Alex dismisses her religious conviction and argues that following his advice would have prevented their present difficulties. His rejection is therefore not simply an absence from Sarah’s life: it is a deliberate refusal of her existence, accompanied by blame directed at the mother who chose to have her.

What Sarah makes of it

Sarah hears enough to grasp that Alex does not want her. Her excitement collapses as the conversation continues, and the imagined welcome gives way to the conviction that her existence has caused harm. Later, when Mae is distressed after Alex leaves, Sarah concludes that it is all her fault. She stops calling him Papa and associates his departure with her mother’s sadness and inattention. Mae’s reported remark that love is a curse further darkens Sarah’s early understanding of attachment.

That self-blame persists beyond the immediate scene. When Mae dies, Sarah thinks that her mother would have been alive and happy if Sarah had never been born. The belief converts Alex’s rejection into a lasting explanation for loss: Sarah does not merely experience herself as unwanted by her father, but imagines herself as the cause of her mother’s suffering and death.

Long-term consequences

As a child, Sarah responds to mockery about her mother by concealing her hurt behind coldness and disdain. In adulthood, she describes the family history to Michael Hosea and repeats the conclusion that she should never have been born and that her life began as a mistake. Her account connects Alex’s rejection to a wider history of abandonment and exploitation, but the original wound remains visible in the way she interprets herself as unwanted and burdensome.

The rejection also echoes in Sarah’s later decisions about marriage and children. When she believes she cannot have children, she tells Miriam Altman that she does not belong with Michael and leaves, reasoning that he deserves a family. She asks Miriam to love him and give him the children she believes she cannot. This later choice is not the same event as Alex’s rejection, but it reverses its direction: Sarah, once made to feel that her birth was a mistake, tries to remove herself from a relationship for what she believes is another person’s good. The childhood scene thus anchors the novel’s continuing pattern of love entangled with rejection, sacrifice, and Sarah’s damaged sense of her own worth.