Bride’s transformation into a version of her younger self continues as she gets closer to Booker. Bride identifies Booker’s departure as the cause of her bodily transformation, though the reason for that transformation is not as simple as a breakup. Instead, with Booker, Bride had the chance to acknowledge and embrace her most deeply held secrets—the source of her greatest shame—in the presence of another person. If she had been able to confide in Booker, and if he had reacted with empathy and love instead of judgment, the novel suggests that Bride might have become a different person without physically transforming. Since Bride shied away from that possibility when given the chance, though, once Booker left, her body took matters into its own hands, so to speak, and began to transform so that Bride would have no choice but to confront the pain of her past to move forward in the present.