# Chapter 21 Editor-Not-Satisfied-Customer Scored Check

goal clarity: 9/10
  evidence: "confront Odile" is on page in "You sent me for those," then "I'm done being the route"; the making goal emerges at "reached behind them" and the diner goal at "Can we talk? Sonia's."
  revision note: none needed.

conflict escalation: 8/10
  evidence: open pressure is returned catalogs "none of the route was him"; mid-chapter pressure becomes Odile's refusal of absolution, "It was partly your fault"; close pressure becomes Theo's sent ask plus the hedge he cannot take back while the phone stays dark.
  revision note: none needed.

revelation landing: 8/10
  evidence: Odile's true partial lands as "I put that page where you would find it. On purpose." and then as initials `O.M.`; the portrait payoff lands as label-out/faced-to-wall object.
  revision note: none needed; strongest burial risk was the O.M. confession arriving in a long paragraph, but the initials are visibly isolated by action.

character consistency: 9/10
  evidence: Theo performs competence under stress (headcap checking, utility-knife folding, "The keys stay with me. The freight, the condition reports, the loan sheet") and Odile uses logistics/food instead of comfort ("There is soup upstairs. Barley.").
  revision note: none needed.

pacing: 8/10
  evidence: longest low-stake stretch is the painting-process block from "He got the palette out" through the scarf knot, but it changes the portrait's consent status by narrowing the door and refusing invented cheekbone.
  revision note: none needed.

chapter close: 8/10
  evidence: the final lines keep live pressure: "The phone stayed dark" with the ask unresolved; "both hands empty" refuses the delivery/grand gesture.
  revision note: none needed.

prose quality: 8/10
  evidence: strongest paragraph is the fear-canvas description with the filled nail hole and blank twelve-by-sixteen; weakest risk is "The wait was terrible in an ordinary way," which survives because the next sentence concretizes waiting as Theo's urge to move objects and prepare contingencies.
  revision note: none needed locally; Positive Prose, Plain Translation, Thought Development, and Narrator-Publicist all re-cleared the current text.

Chapter verdict: `FOUNDATION-SOUND`.
