# Chapter 21 — Thought-Development Audit (Round 3 — current-text verification)

audit: thought_development | owner: claude | tier: risk | trigger: flag:reflective-chapter (via flag:emotional-peak / flag:protagonist-heavy on CHAPTER CARD - 21)
chapter: output/chapters/chapter_21.md
round: 3 — full re-run on the current text after the Characters-Wrong round-1 repairs, the §8 followability tag tidy, Dialogue Doctor round 3 (CLEAN), Comedy Doctor round 3 (CLEAR), and Plain Translation round 3 (REGISTER-HOLDS)
stance: skeptical editor per audit spec; passes shown with counter-candidates; findings convert to revision orders.

## Input notes

- Watch counts were again not supplied; no watch-count adjudication performed (consistent with rounds 1–2).
- **Text-state verification:** the current chapter is byte-identical to snapshot `0032...after_followability_tidy` (diff empty). The only change since the `0029...after_characters_wrong_round1_repairs` state that Characters-Wrong round 2 verified is the ordered tag at ln 45 ("She sent the books back clean," **Odile said.**) — attribution only, no interiority added or removed. No drift entered between the sibling round-3 audits and this one; the line numbers cited below match the citations in `chapter_21.characters_wrong.md`, `chapter_21.dialogue_doctor.md`, `chapter_21.plain_translation.md`, and `chapter_21.comedy_doctor.md`.
- **Stale-citation discharge:** the round-2 Thought-Development audit (`chapter_21.thought_development.md`, OVERALL: DEVELOPED) cited two exemption lines the Characters-Wrong Order 5 repair later deleted ("he was not going to spend them building anything"; "Okay"). Characters-Wrong round 2 flagged that staleness and asked that the DEVELOPED verdict be re-dated against the current text before being cited as covering the ending. This audit is that re-dating: every changed site is re-adjudicated below on current wording, and the ending is re-run in full.
- **Residue sweep:** grep zero on current text for "Sunday", "Okay", "building anything", "perimeter", "he was not going to spend" — the pre-solving material Round 1/Characters-Wrong ordered out has not leaked back.

## Reflective-passage inventory (current text)

Sustained interiority (≈3+ sentences) at: ln 3 (route paragraph), lns 7–11 (shelf gap / loan sheet), lns 69–71 (wire and drill), ln 73 (ekphrasis), ln 75 (fear-canvas misread — focus a), ln 81 (study origin), lns 85–87 (the two errors), lns 89–91 (repainting), lns 95–97 (offering temptation and settlement — focus b), lns 101–113 (text-message scene and shutdown — focus c). Sub-threshold interiority at lns 5, 13 noted and swept but not passage-audited. The Odile confrontation (lns 15–65) is a dialogue pressure scene, adjudicated under criterion 4.

## Criterion 1 — Pre-solved reflection

VERDICT: DEVELOPED

**Focus (a) — the fear-canvas misread (ln 75), highest-risk site this round.** Current text:

> "Fear of what, had been the assignment. He had spent three weeks telling himself she'd painted his helpfulness, a fond portrait of a man who did things. Now the blank twelve-by-sixteen looked like the part she had left him: a clean square waiting until he finished the jars and keys and came to it. It was a kinder reading than he trusted, which did not stop him from wanting it to be true. He had hung it above the flat files and walked under it forty times."

Straight-line test: could "He had hung it above the flat files and walked under it forty times." follow "Fear of what, had been the assignment." with nothing lost? No. The middle contains the dated first wrong guess, quoted at the size it deserved ("a fond portrait of a man who did things"); the second reading, manufactured on the page out of the preceding paragraph's inventory (the jars and keys are the same nouns the ekphrasis at ln 73 just itemized); and a genuine doubling-back — "a kinder reading than he trusted" registers the distrust, and "which did not stop him from wanting it to be true" overrides it. Strip the middle and the closing count indicts nothing.

The round-3 adjudication this site demands: the passage now lands on a **wrong** answer, by Characters-Wrong order. A wrong landing is not a pre-solved one — criterion 1 governs the shape of thinking, not the correctness of the destination, and the shape here is the rule's own prescription made structural: a wrong first guess, a replacement guess gathered from noticed detail, a distrust registered and overridden by want. The thought develops *into* the misread; it does not announce it.

Both failure directions the round-3 order names were tested:
- *Pre-solving:* the deleted perimeter thesis ("She had painted a man maintaining the perimeter of a room...") has not returned in any costume — grep zero on "perimeter"; no sentence in the passage or after it decodes the canvas correctly over Theo's head. The true reading survives only as uncaptioned image one paragraph up ("a small clean rectangle of nothing that the hands in the foreground were too busy to walk toward," ln 73), which is where it belongs until June prices it in Ch 22.
- *Underdevelopment/confusion:* a cold reader can price the misread without narration, because (i) ln 73 has already put the accurate ekphrasis on the page, so the reader holds the image Theo is misreading; (ii) "a kinder reading than he trusted" flags the wishfulness in his own register; (iii) the misread leaves object residue — he arrived with "the drill and a new D-ring in his jacket pocket to prove it" (ln 71) and afterward "He put the canvas back on its hooks. He left the wire a half-inch low on the left." (ln 77) — the unfixed wire tells the reader the viewing changed something even while the reading stays wrong. Legible wrongness, not confusion.

Strongest counter-candidate for a flag: "Now the blank twelve-by-sixteen looked like the part she had left him" — the new reading adopted in a single sentence; announce-and-adopt shape. It survives, work shown: the gathering happened one paragraph earlier and is re-invoked by its own nouns, so the sentence is a landing, not a launch; the colon expansion ("a clean square waiting until he finished the jars and keys and came to it") is in-sentence cumulative movement per the rule's second paragraph — claim plus the schedule that belongs with it; and lengthening the adoption is the one revision this site cannot absorb — more deliberation would either re-argue the deleted thesis territory or convert ordered wishfulness into earned insight, failing Characters-Wrong Order 1 by another road. Cleared.

**Focus (b) — the offering temptation (lns 95–97).** Current text, unchanged since the round-2 verification (diff-confirmed):

> "The glassine lay open beside the easel. He started to fold it back over the panel and stopped. The delivery box was still by the freight door, silver tape split down its top seam. He could wrap the panel flat, slide it into that box, carry it to Sonia's, and not have to start with his own sentence. He put the glassine down."

Straight-line test re-run: "He cleaned his palette knife instead." (ln 97) cannot follow "He started to fold it back over the panel and stopped." without losing the live temptation — "instead" grammatically requires the alternative that precedes it, and the settlement's three terms (pencil label legible, painted side to the wall, "He did not put it in a crate") read as answers to a trial only if the trial happened. The temptation remains complete (object, method, destination, and its named payoff — "not have to start with his own sentence," gift as substitute for speech, the chapter card's staked risk) and remains refused in an object action, the chapter's established machine (ln 13 phone left in coat; ln 71 drill kept pocketed). The Ch 22 dependency ("the portrait is offered after the apology in Ch 22, not as the apology") still stands on this beat. Live and refused; cleared.

**Focus (c) — the text-message scene (lns 101–113).** The pre-solve that Rounds 1–2 of the sibling audits removed stays removed: June's reply and the declarative cure are absent (residue sweep zero), so two weeks of silence are no longer resolved inside one brush-washing. What reflection remains, current ln 109:

> "The wait was terrible in an ordinary way: he wanted to move something and had nothing in reach worth moving. His head kept reaching for preparation: the study against the brick, what he'd say first, contingencies for each of her possible openings. Each time he set it down like the drill."

The reflex is refused as practiced motion (the drill callback), not narrated as victory — no sentence countersigns a cure, and the want recurs ("kept reaching") rather than being settled. Straight-line test on the scene as a unit: the closing image ("both hands empty," ln 113) could not follow the sent messages (lns 105–107) with nothing lost — the middle carries the itemized want, the recurrence-and-catch, the litany with its ledger closure ("every column full for the first time in two weeks, *O.M.* beside his own writing," ln 111), and the look-back at the study. The underdevelopment check the round-3 order requires: the dark ending is witnessed, not truncated — a cold reader leaves knowing the ask was sent, the hedge was sent and cannot be recalled, no answer came by close, and the study stays labeled and faced to the wall. Not abrupt, not confusing.

Counter-candidate: the hedge beat itself (ln 107) — "He read it over once. Then his thumbs started the next part on their own... He sent it too. The second bubble appeared under the first before he could take it back." — zero deliberation, and a reader could call that a thought not allowed to develop. Adjudicated under criterion 4 below: the absence of deliberation is the ordered content (a reflex loss, not a choice), and development here would change what the beat is. Named as an exemption, not silently passed.

**Standing passes re-confirmed on unchanged text** (diff-verified untouched since the last clean Thought-Development audit; full workings incorporated by reference): the route paragraph (ln 3 — scarf memory before the landing "none of the route was him"); the ledger reflection (lns 9–11 — gap arithmetic, the unlogged first return, and the visible doubling-back "That was accurate. It was accurate on purpose, from her end, and he made himself write it accurately from his."); the wire/drill alibi (lns 69–71 — self-deception enacted, "he had the drill and a new D-ring in his jacket pocket to prove it," collapsing into "the drill stayed in his pocket"); the study origin (ln 81 — circumstance gathered before the verdict: "a woman he was pretending to date, from memory, without telling her"); the two errors (lns 85–87 — wrong first version quoted, "a generous welcoming angle," corrected to "It had been a maybe"); the repainting (lns 89–91 — constraint-solving with a refused wrong option: "he was not going to invent a cheekbone he'd never witnessed just to close a shape... What he had was the light... So he painted the light doing that.").

## Criterion 2 — Missing concrete development

VERDICT: DEVELOPED

Every changed site develops through objects, not abstraction. Ln 75: jars, keys, flat files, the forty-times count — the misread is built from inventory, not adjectives. Ln 95: box, silver tape, split seam, Sonia's. Ln 107: thumbs, second bubble, screen. Ln 109: the study against the brick, the drill. Ln 111: strip lights, humidity log, thermostat, loan sheet, initials. No restated stakes, no artificial asides; the one simile in the ending ("like the drill") is bound to an object the chapter set down on the page at ln 77.

Strongest counter-candidate: "contingencies for each of her possible openings" (ln 109) — genus terms one clause after a concrete anchor. Carried adjudication from the round-2 audit, re-confirmed on current text: the list caps at one concrete instance by design; the paragraph's event is the setting-down, and fully concretizing the preparation catalog would develop the management more richly than its renunciation, inverting the beat. The residue staying blurry is what "kept reaching" costs him staying blurry. Second candidate: "in a state he had refused at the time to name" (ln 81) — survives as before; the refusal-to-name is the datum, and the sentence grounds itself in concrete circumstance immediately. Third: "The wait was terrible in an ordinary way" (ln 109) — plain self-report whose colon delivers the itemization on the spot. Cleared.

## Criterion 3 — Split cumulative movement

VERDICT: DEVELOPED

Changed-site candidates tested, strongest first, with the merged sentence each was refusing to be:

- "He sent it too. The second bubble appeared under the first before he could take it back." (ln 107) — merged candidate: *"He sent it too, and the second bubble appeared under the first before he could take it back."* Survives as written: the full stop severs act from consequence, and the severance enacts the too-late — merged, the irreversibility becomes an amiable continuation of the sending. The break does the work.
- "It was a kinder reading than he trusted, which did not stop him from wanting it to be true. He had hung it above the flat files and walked under it forty times." (ln 75) — merged candidate: *"...wanting it to be true, and he had hung it above the flat files and walked under it forty times."* Survives: the count sentence is evidence against the sentence before it, and its referent is the three weeks of the *old* misread — the merge would both soften the self-indictment into flow and misattach the forty walks to the new reading. The break preserves the conviction as a separate beat.
- "The phone stayed dark while he seated the last brush in the jar, bristles up." (ln 111) — already a cumulative sentence; the shutdown litany that follows is a single long cumulative build (colon-less but additive through its list to the *O.M.* closure). Nothing to merge.
- The round-2 ordered merge is intact character for character: "The wait was terrible in an ordinary way: he wanted to move something and had nothing in reach worth moving." (ln 109).

Surviving candidates on unchanged text re-confirmed: ln 11 ("That was accurate. It was accurate on purpose...") — visible doubling-back; ln 93 ("The door stayed half open. The cheek stayed bare ground.") — parallel breaks keep two decisions two decisions; ln 7 ("He knew what the acknowledgments page said. June knew. Odile knew.") — per-person enumeration; ln 95's temptation/refusal pair — the full stop before "He put the glassine down." isolates the refusal as an act, per the round-2 adjudication.

## Criterion 4 — Allowable efficiency (exemptions honored, named)

VERDICT: DEVELOPED (exemptions applied as follows; nothing flagged falls under an allowance)

- **The Odile confrontation (lns 15–65):** pressure scene carried in dialogue; the card's prose dials mandate "Theo direct, Odile few lines," and Odile's clipped cognition is voice-card law ("one sentence, sometimes two; no speechifying"). The new speed-mispricing exchange (lns 45–49) adds three turns of positions with no narration — reflex-checked and cleared: Theo's reaction is dramatized in his next utterance (the wrong ask at ln 51), not owed to interiority. Not flagged.
- **The hedge beat (ln 107):** exempt as ordered content — Characters-Wrong Order 2 requires a reflex *loss*, and "his thumbs started the next part on their own" places the act below the level of decision; inserting deliberation would convert the loss into a choice and change what the sibling audit verified. Voice-card cover: "qualifies when guilty" is the reflex itself. Named, not silently passed.
- **The dark ending (lns 111–113):** plot-required non-resolution — the card's scene-four setback is "he must wait without managing," and June's reply is owned by Ch 22. The shutdown litany is procedural efficiency in a low-interiority close, licensed by the chapter's established shutdown register. Not flagged.
- **The misread's non-arrival at truth (ln 75):** the *non-resolution* is plot-required (outcome rules: fake-couple origin not disclosed; the canvas's true reading reserved for June in Ch 22, where the card returns it "as object memory, not lecture"). Noted for precision: the passage was not passed on this exemption — it was tested under criterion 1 and passes on its own development; the exemption covers only why the thought is allowed to land wrong and stay wrong.
- **The repainting (lns 89–91):** part craft procedure, but not exempted — tested under criterion 1 and passed on constraint-solving development. Recorded so the pass is not a silent skip.

## REVISION ORDERS

None. The three round-3 focus sites verify on the current text: the fear-canvas thought develops into its ordered misread through a quoted first wrong guess, inventory-built second guess, and a doubling-back that flags the wishfulness without decoding it; the offering temptation is live, complete, and refused in object action, unchanged since its ordered installation; the text-message scene sends the hedge without deliberation (exempt by design), ends dark without a cure sentence, and carries its wait through developed object inventory rather than truncation. No new pre-solving entered, and the removals did not underdevelop the chapter — every deleted conclusion left its development standing.

OVERALL: DEVELOPED
