Chapter summaries The Surrogate Mother Freida McFadden

The Surrogate Mother Chapter 24: Gertie’s Visit Raises New Suspicions

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

While Abby struggles with insomnia and mounting pressure at work, her former assistant Gertie stops by the office with a plate of chocolate chip cookies. Gertie, who broke her hip after falling down the office stairs, mentions in passing that the fall felt like a push—though she quickly dismisses it as an accident. Abby’s mind immediately connects this detail to Monica, the young woman who replaced Gertie almost overnight. The conversation shakes Abby, who already harbors unease about Monica’s growing closeness to her husband, Kevin. The chapter deepens Abby’s paranoia and plants the first concrete suggestion that Monica may be willing to harm others to get what she wants.

Key Events

  • Gertie limps into Abby’s office using a cane and offers homemade cookies.
  • Abby admits she misses Gertie and feels unsafe around her current assistant, Monica.
  • Gertie reveals that her fall down the stairs “felt like a push” from someone in the crowded stairwell.
  • Abby presses for details, but Gertie laughs off the possibility of an intentional attack.
  • Abby recalls that Monica appeared as a replacement immediately after Gertie’s accident.
  • The chapter ends with Abby eating a cookie that “tastes like cardboard,” reflecting her emotional numbness.

Character Development

Abby continues to fray under the weight of her double life: the failed adoption, the new surrogacy arrangement she keeps secret from Gertie, and the strain of working alongside Monica. Her sleep remains poor even with a prescription for sleeping pills. The idea that Monica might have pushed Gertie transforms Abby from a passive worrier into an active investigator. She now has a reason to suspect that Monica is not merely manipulative but physically dangerous.

Gertie remains a warm, maternal figure who gives no indication of malice. Her casual confession—treating the “push” as a joke—shows she has not dwelled on the incident, which contrasts sharply with Abby’s spiraling suspicion.

Monica does not appear in this chapter, but she looms over every word. Abby’s memory of how Monica stepped into Gertie’s role “almost immediately after the accident” paints Monica as calculating and opportunistic.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

  • Deception and hidden motives: The office stairwell is a symbol of the secrets lurking just beneath a mundane workplace. What seems like an accident may be deliberate, just as Monica’s friendly demeanor may conceal ruthless ambition.
  • Food and emotional state: Gertie’s cookies usually bring comfort, but Abby finds them tasteless—a symbol that even simple pleasures have been drained of meaning by her anxiety.
  • Physical vulnerability: Gertie’s cane and limp serve as a constant reminder of how quickly a person’s life can be disrupted by someone else’s malice, echoing Abby’s own fear that her pregnancy and marriage are similarly fragile.

Why This Chapter Matters

Chapter 24 is the first concrete piece of evidence that Monica may have harmed someone before. Until now, Abby’s worries were based on jealousy and vague feelings. Gertie’s statement—that the fall felt like a push—turns Abby’s suspicion into a real question: is Monica capable of violence? This chapter also deepens the theme of unreliable perspective. Abby is exhausted, medicated, and emotionally raw, so the reader must decide whether her leap to connect Gertie’s accident to Monica is intuition or paranoia.

Study Questions and Answers

  1. What does Gertie reveal about her fall that troubles Abby?
    Gertie says it “felt like a push” from someone in the stairwell, though she immediately dismisses it as an accident. Abby seizes on this because Monica appeared as Gertie’s replacement right after the incident.

  2. How does the author use food in this chapter to convey Abby’s state of mind?
    Gertie’s chocolate chip cookies are offered as a gesture of warmth and nostalgia, but Abby can only taste cardboard. The metaphor underscores her emotional numbness and inability to find comfort in once-pleasurable things.

  3. Why might the reader doubt Abby’s interpretation of Gertie’s story?
    Abby acknowledges she is sleeping poorly, taking prescription sleeping pills, and overwhelmed by work and the secret surrogacy. These factors compromise her judgment, making it possible that she is reading too much into an innocent remark.

Navigation