# Voice Check — Chapters 06–10

Scope: `chapter_06.md`–`chapter_10.md` against `output/style_and_voice.md`, READING_GUIDE §2/§4/§6, `premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv`, the chapters 01–05 check and its clean round-2 verification (`voice_check_05.md` / `voice_check_05_round2.md` — note: both files currently contain the identical round-2 text; the round-1 order list survives only as quoted inside it), the running tics tracker, the mechanical gate report (open=0, allowlisted=0, WATCH=62, all ch10 rows), and the Chapter 10 repair trail (dialogue doctor round 2 CLEAN, comedy doctor round 3 CLEAR at Odile=5; both codex repair memos now present — the artifact gap the dialogue round-2 audit logged is closed). All five ch10 repair sites were verified unchanged in the current text before this check ran.

**Calibration sample (Chapter 07, lines 56–70, ~530 words — the memory-portrait pressure core, quoted before any comparison):**

> By eight-fifteen the painting had gone past retrieval. She tried to walk it back, repainting the near cheek with ochre and white to blur him toward the safe man she'd assigned herself, and the cheek went to mud. A putty-colored patch sat on an otherwise specific face. The lower edge was overworked to fuzz where she'd scrubbed, and gouache lifts when you scrub; she knew better and had done it anyway. The sweater had dried two values too dark, so the head floated. The shoulders were wrong in the right way: she'd set the whole torso a few degrees off plumb, drifting right, with the look of a man who would ease himself back by degrees rather than snap square, because snapping square would make it everyone's business.
>
> Quality was not the problem. The problem was that every failed repair had made him more himself.
>
> The eyes she left. She stood in front of the lens shapes with a loaded brush and discovered she did not know what color his eyes were. Five rooms she'd shared with this man: a gallery, this studio twice, a diner, a Thursday's worth of other galleries, and the file had no entry. Glare, glasses, never that close. The card said leave in what you did not know. She thinned a gray to almost nothing and washed it inside the frames. The clamp lamp over her easel put a shine on the wet black paint of the rims, two panes of glare, and the blank held.
>
> Below the chest she stopped. Raw gesso from the sternum down: she did not know his hands and was not going to invent them. The figure ended like a half-excavated fresco. She signed nothing, and at eight-forty Odile said, "Stop. Trade sides."
>
> June rounded the kraft paper with her own portrait at her back, which was the only way she could have done it.
>
> Theo's panel was small work, the whole figure of her at middle distance, and it was wrong in a dozen places she could have listed for him. The chin was a guess and a long one. One arm ran past plausible by a knuckle's worth.
>
> He had the scarf right. Not the scarf. Anyone could do a black scarf. The knot. The bulk shifted left of center, the short end tucked flat underneath so it would not flag around, the way she'd tied it every Tuesday since Mara handed it over. He'd painted the tuck. You could see where the paint had given him trouble, three tries at an edge that wanted to be one stroke, and he'd kept at it until the knot was hers.
>
> And the stance. He'd painted her at an easel, torso tipped toward the work the way she leaned at a painting and never at a room, and her feet were angled toward the door. Both were true. She was leaning in and leaving in the same body, and she recognized the posture the way you recognize your own voice played back: wrong, and more yours than the one in your head.

**Why this sample anchors (step 1, rhythm signature):** It is the direct heir of the Chapter 05 calibration passage — perception under instruction, escalation by verified craft fact — now at higher emotional load, which is exactly what the back half of the book must sustain. Sentences accrete paint-fact and stop when the looking stops ("the cheek went to mud"); self-indictment arrives mid-clause, never staged ("she knew better and had done it anyway"); verdicts are flat and short ("Quality was not the problem." / "Both were true."); the figure-language is trade-literal (values, plumb, gouache lifts, raw gesso) and abstraction is paid for in objects before it is admitted ("the file had no entry" cashes instantly as the five listed rooms). Self-correction is June's licensed tic doing peak work ("Not the scarf. Anyone could do a black scarf. The knot."). Stops are periods; pressure rises by patience. I considered the Chapter 09 value-run paragraph (line 43) as an alternate anchor — it is the span's purest June-alone writing — but the memory-portrait block is the better calibration standard because it carries both voices' evidence in one passage (her painting of him, his of her) and therefore tests the blind-POV boundary the next chapters most endanger. Note: this sample is protected; two constructions inside it ("which was the only way she could have done it," "the file had no entry") are adjudicated below and exempted here, per the round-1 precedent for "file under reasonable."

---

## 1. Rhythm mismatches

CLEAN — with two drift-risks adjudicated on evidence rather than waved through:

- **Theo 06/08/10 logistics chassis: arc pressure in content, sameness at the template edge.** All three Theo chapters cold-open on solitary maintenance plus a self-audit coin: "At lunch Theo walked the gallery route and counted nine steps down to the basement on Orchard." → "He had not laminated it. He was prepared to call that restraint." (ch06, lines 3–9); "Theo rinsed the last water jar twice, because the first rinse left a gray ring and the second rinse gave him a reason to be standing at the sink" → "That was the idea." (ch08, lines 3–5); "The wing nut on the third easel had been chewing its own threads since October" → "Calling it early would have misunderstood the job." (ch10, lines 7–9). The *content* is arc, not repetition: the logistics escalate against him (route card surrendered to Ben; the panel he cannot bin; the assignment that exposes the empty subject), and Chapter 10's card detonates exactly this structure ("It did not say, what can you do correctly," line 141). What repeats is the chassis — maintenance open, coin stamp — three for three, plus a coin density that exceeds the 2-per-chapter cap the round-1 check set for Theo epigram stamps: ch06 runs four ("He was prepared to call that restraint," "Theo did not hate it fast enough," "Nobody checked what was not listed," "Both were his pockets"), ch10 runs four before repair. The coin overage converts to orders 5–6 under ask 3; the cold-open template goes to the watch list as spent (next Theo chapter must open differently). With the coins thinned, the chassis reads as character, not metronome.
- **June POV in 07 and 09 is audibly June, not Theo-with-paint-nouns.** Blind test passes within a paragraph in both: perception first, judgment second, self-rebuke third ("she did the thing she had specifically told herself on the subway she would not do," ch09 line 39; "So it was a structural correction, a matter of craft, when she loaded a small bristle and tipped the frames two degrees off true," ch07 line 26 — self-deception rendered in free indirect craft logic, her signature move). Her busy hands are her own card's stress tell (packs, sorts, scrapes, paints walls for pay) and crucially produce a mark *for nobody* — the ch09 value run is desire leaking, the inverse of Theo's service choreography. Strongest counter-candidate: the ch09 scope-of-work paragraph, "Crate pickup at two. Walk-through at four… Patch, prime, paint. One line on the invoice. Four hours of her life." (line 13) — listy, Theo-shaped on its face — survives because the list is a jobsite scope read optically (toggle holes, title height, the dolly kiss) and lands on a June self-aimed coin, where Theo's lists land on other people's needs.

Strongest rhythm counter-candidate overall: the ch06 opening's declarative run ("The handrail ran along the left side only… The back corner would overheat first. The front would stay drafty.") — eight same-shape sentences — survives as recon mode with a comic payoff built in ("At six-fifteen, he asked again."), matching the sample's escalation-by-patience.

## 2. Banned phrases

Verbatim sweep of all five chapters against `reading_guide_bans.tsv` and the §6 catalog:

- `\bload[ -]?bearing\b` — **0 hits** (grep + gate concur). (The phrase appears in `chapter_10.comedy_repair_memo.md`, a process artifact, not chapter text — no action.)
- Breath-catching, stomach/chest flips/flutters/pooling/electricity, "something shifted between them"/"the air changed," smirk/chuckle/"a beat," beauty-unawareness, makeover/jealousy/eavesdrop contrivances, postcard NYC/"city that never sleeps," mirror epiphany, weather-as-feeling, "golden hour" — **0 hits each**, all checked by pattern. The one standalone-"Oh." reservation remains unspent (ch06's "Oh." continues inside Ben's paragraph, logged legal in tics.md).
- **Dialogue diagnosis (§2/§6 zero tolerance) — 1 finding:**
  - "At Ruth's easel she paused over a small, exact Sam, every proportion audited, and moved on without a word, **which from Odile was a medal**." (ch07, line 88) — silence captioned as evaluative speech. This is the same construction the Chapter 10 repair deleted as a zero-tolerance violation ("did not comment on them, which from Odile was a comment," dialogue doctor round 1 order 4): communicative weight assigned to a character's non-comment, in narration. The in-run precedent is explicit that the action-rendered version is the compliant one. It is also a near-verbatim template twin of the deleted line ("which from Odile was a ___"). Converts to revision order 1.
- Chapter 10's five repaired sites verified intact at lines 17, 33, 41, 117–119, 135. Counter-candidates examined and surviving: "'Yes,' he said. 'I hear it.'" (ch06, line 111) — Theo acknowledges the *arrangement* Ruth has laid out fact by fact, not her phrasing; "He had four versions of the sentence ready and none of them survived contact" (ch08, line 21) — pre-speech inventory in Theo's card idiom, counting drafts, rating nothing's delivery; "She took that in without doing anything to her face about it" (ch10, line 59) — reads the face, cleared in the dialogue round and unchanged.

## 3. AI-sounding constructions

Findings — the round-1 templates are regressing in this span:

1. **Evaluative ", which" — the cleared template is back in narration.** Round 1 drove narration instances to zero across chapters 01–05 (survivors all in speech). This span runs raw counts 2/5/6/3/4, with roughly ten in narration: "The card said leave in what you did not know, **which suited her**." (ch07, 22); "Sonia's at nine-fifteen on a class Tuesday had become a known quantity, **which was itself the new problem**." (ch08, 31); "Mara needed the plan ratified, **which cost nothing to give**." (ch08, 63); "said nothing, **which he took for patience**" (ch10, 71); plus the §2 instance at ch07:88 already ordered. Each is competent; together they reinstate the verdict-clause template the sample never uses (the sample's verdicts are full-stop sentences: "That suited her" energy, not ", which suited her"). Adjudicated survivors: ch06 narration count is **0** (both hits are Mara's and Ben's speech); "which was panel-shaped because it was a panel" (ch08, 17) earns as escalating logic; "which was the highest review the wall could receive" (ch09, 115) cashes the chapter's thesis; "which meant she'd been in the building for an hour and had chosen not to be helped" (ch10, 11) is a reread-bearing Odile plant; ch07:64 is sample-protected. Orders 2–4 name the cuts.
2. **Hedged thesis — order 15's template returns verbatim.** "Wet paint, **it turned out**, was the kind of problem you could fall into." (ch10, line 63). Round 1 eliminated "it turned out" as a hedge scaffold; this is the only instance in the span and it also runs generic-you. The preceding clause already carries the beat ("he gave the shine ten minutes it possibly didn't deserve"). Order 2.
3. **Refusal-to-conclude family — one breach of the standing cap.** tics.md (ch05 row) bars new "left it alone / let it stand" variants in ch06+. "It was the second time tonight she had done that. **Theo let the count stand**." (ch08, line 99) is the family verbatim. Order 5. Adjudicated non-instances: "Priya saw that and let it stay there" (ch06, 49 — the clementine, literal object); "Odile's name came up and he set it down again" (ch06, 165) — survives because he immediately concludes with the stated reason ("Any message to Odile would pass through Theo before it became official"), which is the opposite of the banned move.
4. **Not-X-but-Y — re-opened per round-1 watch note 4 (one survivor allowed; this span adds two).** "There was **a saved seat, not a gap that happened to exist: a saved seat**, inside, next to June." (ch08, line 39) — the scaffold plus a rhetorical echo of its own subject; the distinction is real Theo perception but the doubled "a saved seat" is emphasis-by-repetition, the LLM default the round-1 order targeted. Order 6 trims the echo and closes the family back to cap. Cleared on reasoning: "Not the part he had gotten. The part he had not, and would have to know her better to get." (ch08, 109) — mirrored fragments, but the antithesis is the chapter's hinge (the blank as future) and it resolves into object action (glassine, the rack gap); "Nia had not written charity. She had written *run a job*, *fix the press*" (ch09, 69) — truth-status checking against the actual words of a text message, the licensed mode.
5. **Polished connective formula self-twinning.** "They **broke up the way the group broke up now, with logistics**." (ch08, line 101) and "The class **broke up the way it did now, slowly, with plans**." (ch10, line 103) — the same transition formula two chapters apart, the exact "polished but dead connective tissue" failure the prior window was repaired for, here as self-echo. Order 7 varies the second instance.

Theo coin overage (ch06 at four, ch10 at four) is itemized under ask 1 and converted at orders 5–6 below — "Nobody checked what was not listed." (ch06, 119) is the most detachable-maxim instance and the priority conversion.

## 4. Anachronistic language

CLEAN — contemporary register holds with no off-period or off-card drift. Date anchors in the span (2019 museum-prep job, March 1 sublet, Jan 1 start date, W-2, timekeeping app) are consistent with the 2026 class calendar and materially literal. Therapy-speak, corporate idiom, romance-novel abstraction: nothing — June's never-list (destiny, muse, perfect) and Theo's (fate, grand gesture) stay clean; "It's perfect, thank you" belongs to Marisol, outside both lists. Strongest counter-candidate: "the kind of likeness you could show a jury without perjuring yourself" (ch07, line 22) — arch legalism in June's narration — survives as her established dry-legal register operating inside the chapter's licensed clerical spine (see ask 5), same ruling as ch05's "on its own recognizance."

## 5. Repetitive metaphors

Counts across the span, against the ownership map the round-1 check established:

- **Filing/ledger — ownership held with one licensed exception.** Theo keeps the domain and uses it correctly (literal flat files throughout ch08/10; "He saw it, filed it, and had no right to ask what it meant," ch08:75). June runs three clerical figures in ch07 ("It was simply in the account, filed under week two, available on demand," line 40; "the file had no entry," line 60 — inside the calibration sample). **Adjudication:** these are absorbed by the Comedy Doctor's standing ruling that ch07's legal-clerical register (~10–11 instances: jury, evidence, audited, ruling, countersigning) is the chapter's spine, spent there and not inherited — and the spine is the chapter's conceit (memory as an unauthorized record she keeps prosecuting herself for). Verified not inherited: ch09 and ch10 contain zero June filing figures. This stands as licensed-once; a June filing figure in ch11+ is a finding (watch note 6).
- **Arithmetic/math — owner correct, density up.** Theo runs the metaphorical refrain three times in ch08 ("did the math on whether a panel slid under coffee grounds… would still be a secret," 29; "the math stopped helping," 77; "The math still worked," 111) — accepted as the audited fiscal/debt chapter spine, and the refrain tracks the bin decision rather than decorating it. June's two "math" uses are dialogue about actual money (ch09, 87). Watch: "the math" must not become Theo's default decision idiom outside ch08.
- **"The way you/people …" recognitional simile — approaching tic.** Seven generic-you/person instances: "the way you recognize your own voice played back" (ch07:70, in-sample, peak work), "the way you carry soup" (ch07:112), "the way people sit when they have announced they are only staying for one coffee and are on their second" (ch08:31), "the way other people checked their phones" (ch08:63), "the wave you give someone you will see Tuesday" (ch08:101), "the way you hear traffic" (ch10:65), "the way you hold borrowed things" (ch10:89). Every one is individually good; the scaffold is becoming the book's default tenderness move. No order — none is weak enough to cut on merit — but capped forward at one per chapter (watch note 3).
- **Hands in Chapter 10 — sanctioned showcase holds; not flattened, not romance-generic.** 36 hand-family tokens (hands 27, finger(s) 5, knuckles 3, palm 0) in ~2,900 words, the motif table's licensed week-4 maximum exposure. It avoids the genre default on three checkable grounds: zero almost-touching or skin-warmth instances anywhere in the chapter; the noun keeps resolving into working parts under load (ferrule, knuckles, tendons, heel of the hand, little finger braced "like a man steadying a saw cut"); and every foregrounded hand is mid-task, so the tenderness arrives as accuracy ("She'd spent her best paint on the knuckles") exactly per the heat-level spec. Nearest flattening risk: "the panel in front of him had June's two hands on it and nothing else" (line 65) — survives because it cashes as the grip critique at line 115. Editor may rotate two or three bare "hands" to parts; nothing blocks.
- **Secret-object personification — ch08 actually ran five, not the logged four.** "The white wedge sat in the upper right **where his ignorance lived, primed and patient**" (ch08, line 109) is a panel personification beyond the four instances tics.md lists at cap. The binding half of that ruling (zero in ch09) was obeyed, and ch10 is clean; this is a tracker count correction, not an order — but the family is now over-spent and stays at zero until the rupture.
- Occupational/person similes run ~10–12 across five chapters, below the ch03/ch05 density of ~15 flagged in watch note 2 — improving, domains still correctly split (June optical/trade, Theo crate/service). Clementine care-beat appears in adjacent chapters 06/07 then correctly retires. Scarf, route card, Winter Kitchen (still 1/5), light (one deliberate image per chapter; ch09's raking light is a literal tool), and coffee all inside caps.

## 6. Sentence length problems

CLEAN — distribution is varied and pressure-true; the residual issue in this span is the coin-stamp density already converted to orders under asks 1/3, not shape monotony:

- Long/short alternation matches scene pressure throughout: ch09 runs long procedural sentences against flat verdicts ("One thing. The wall dried toward being one thing." — and note that doubled opener is earned incantation at the chapter's only moment of finished work); ch07's repair spiral accelerates by clause-stacking and stops dead ("She didn't need it. That was worse.").
- Strongest counter-candidates, each paired against the sample and surviving: the ch08 needs-anaphora — "Mara needed the plan ratified… Ben needed… Priya needed… June needed the night to stay exactly this size." (line 63) — four balanced same-subject clauses, the most LLM-shaped paragraph in the span; survives because Theo's card licenses the inventory *if varied*, and it is: ch06 runs channel-elimination ("Sonia's was a diner, not a channel," line 165), ch10 runs a schedule list ("Sundays produced laundry, the walk, the gallery's intake paperwork, the good coffee place that had closed," line 139), and each item here is specific and comic rather than rhetorical. The ch06 recon run is adjudicated under ask 1. Trailing-participle counts stay in gate-WATCH range (ch09's 11 are work-procedure clauses, licensed spine) with no chapter approaching the pre-repair ch05 shape problem.
- Paragraph closers re-sampled across all five chapters: lengths 2–50+ words, with dialogue closers, object closers ("She put it in her tote, against the cardboard tube with the rolled drawings, under the scarf."), and long-sentence closers interleaving the coins. The ch06 route-card refrain (six paragraph-end touches) reads as deliberate object rhythm that the ending pays off, not stamp monotony — but it only stays that way if orders 5–6 thin the adjacent aphorism coins, which are what tip refrain into metronome.

---

**VOICE SCORE: 7/10** — The span contains the book's two best-sustained chapters (07 and 09; the calibration sample needed no manufacturing) and the blind-POV test passes everywhere, including the two June chapters the brief flagged. What costs it: one zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis construction (ch07:88) that is a near-verbatim twin of a line this same pipeline already deleted from ch10; the return of three round-1 templates the prior check had verified cleared or at cap (narration-evaluative ", which" at ~10, "it turned out," refusal-to-conclude breach); Theo coin density at double its cap in ch06 and ch10; and a polished transition formula duplicating itself across ch08/ch10. All of it is surgical — no finding requires re-staging a scene — but a verified-clear template family reverting within five chapters is drift by definition, and the score must say so.

**POLISHED-BUT-DEAD ZONES: NONE.** Nearest call: "The cohort dissolved at the corner as Mara issued reminders about the weekend cold and Priya steered Ben toward the better entrance over his objections." (ch06, line 155) — a dispersal sentence that could end any ensemble chapter in shape, but both clauses are owned care moves (Mara's over-forecast hosting, Priya steering Ben *over his objections*), so it survives on content the way the sample's connective tissue does. Second-nearest: "The class broke up the way it did now, slowly, with plans." (ch10, line 103) — individually alive, dead only as a twin; handled at order 7.

**REVISION ORDERS:**

1. **"At Ruth's easel she paused over a small, exact Sam, every proportion audited, and moved on without a word, which from Odile was a medal." (ch07, line 88) — dialogue diagnosis, zero tolerance (§2/§6): silence captioned as evaluative comment, same template deleted from ch10.** Cut the caption; render the medal as action per the ch10 repair precedent — the pause length and the move-on are already the beat (e.g., keep "…paused over a small, exact Sam, every proportion audited, and moved on." and let Ruth's stillness or June's registering carry the weight). Do not assign communicative value to the silence in narration.
2. **"Wet paint, it turned out, was the kind of problem you could fall into." (ch10, line 63) — hedged thesis ("it turned out," order-15 template) plus generic-you.** Cut the sentence or replace with one more observed fact about the grey; the previous clause ("he gave the shine ten minutes it possibly didn't deserve") already lands the beat in the sample's stop pattern.
3. **Narration-evaluative ", which" thinning — re-cut to full-stop verdicts per the sample:** "which suited her" (ch07, 22) → separate sentence ("That suited her."); "which was itself the new problem" (ch08, 31) → two sentences; "which cost nothing to give" (ch08, 63) → fold into the clause or cut; "which he took for patience" (ch10, 71) → standalone sentence or render her stillness as action. Target state: no chapter carries more than two narration instances and none performs the verdict-stamp function. Survivors named in ask 3 (ch08:17, ch09:115, ch10:11, sample-protected ch07:64) stand.
4. **"Theo let the count stand." (ch08, line 99) — refusal-to-conclude family over the standing cap (tics.md, ch05 row).** Replace with Theo-card task displacement or end the paragraph on the count itself ("It was the second time tonight she had done that." full stop, or an object action — the folder, the mug). No "let/left it" variant.
5. **Theo coin density, ch06 (four against cap two).** Convert "Nobody checked what was not listed." (line 119) from maxim to concrete fact in the same inferential run (e.g., the contact sheet's actual lines: form accurate, page absent — say what was checked, not the aphorism about checking). Then fold one of "He was prepared to call that restraint." (line 7) or "Theo did not hate it fast enough." (line 17) into its host sentence so it stops landing as a standalone stamp. "Both were his pockets." (line 121) stays — it is the Ruth-scene payoff.
6. **Theo coin density, ch10: re-cut "Calling it early would have misunderstood the job." (line 9)** — twice flagged by the Comedy Doctor as the chapter's weakest item and the third coin in two paragraphs; replace with the procedural fact (he was early for the part of class nobody else attended — the next sentence already says it better). With order 2 this brings ch10 to cap; "The story had been easy when it only had to hold up in front of strangers." (line 45) and "It did not say, what can you do correctly." (line 141) are the two keepers.
7. **"There was a saved seat, not a gap that happened to exist: a saved seat, inside, next to June." (ch08, line 39) — not-X-but-Y plus emphasis-echo, re-opening the round-1 finding.** Keep the distinction, cut the doubled subject: "There was a saved seat, not a gap that happened to exist — inside, next to June." or the full-stop equivalent. This returns the scaffold family to its one allowed survivor.
8. **"The class broke up the way it did now, slowly, with plans." (ch10, line 103) — transition-formula twin of ch08:101.** Vary the ch10 instance: open the paragraph on the concrete departure beats that already follow (Mara's order announcement, Priya capping Ben's pen) and delete the formula sentence. The ch08 instance stays; it owns the construction's one use.

**Watch notes for `output/tics.md` (non-blocking):**
1. **Odile quotability:** ch10 confirmed at exactly 5 (recounted independently: lines 17, 37, 79, 99, 137; "Folded hands are rest" and the surviving coffee conditional adjudicated non-detachable, concurring with comedy round 3). But ch07 also ran 5, against the post-ch03 instruction to trend toward 3 — two consecutive class chapters at ceiling. No stricter cap is needed *if* the next class chapter actually runs ~3; record ch10's 5 in the missing tics.md row (the comedy round-3 orchestrator note about that row is still outstanding).
2. **Hands, ch10:** 36 hand-family tokens, sanctioned showcase, holds (zero almost-touch, parts under load, task-anchored). Outside the week-4 sanction, hands return to at-most-once-foregrounded per chapter; editor may rotate 2–3 bare "hands" to parts in ch10 at assembly.
3. **"the way you/people …" recognitional simile:** 7 instances across the span; cap at one per chapter from ch11. This is the sibling of the occupational-simile family (itself improved, ~10–12 vs. 15).
4. **"heard himself" self-speech family:** 2 instances (ch06:19, ch08:95). Both clear (action-noticing, not delivery-rating), but a third — or any instance that rates how the words came out — converts to a §2 finding per round-1 watch note 3.
5. **Theo cold-open template** (solitary maintenance + self-audit coin) is 3-for-3 across 06/08/10 and spent; the next Theo chapter must open in company, mid-dialogue, or off-task.
6. **June filing figures:** ch07's three are licensed once under the clerical-spine ruling and sample protection; ownership reverts to Theo from ch08 (verified clean in 09/10). Any June filing/ledger figure in ch11+ is a finding, not a watch.
7. **"The math" refrain:** 3 metaphorical uses in ch08 on the correct owner, licensed as the fiscal spine; do not let it become Theo's default decision idiom in ch11+. June's uses stay literal-money, dialogue-only.
8. **ch08 secret-object personification count correction:** actual count 5 (add line 109 "where his ignorance lived, primed and patient" to the logged 4). Family at zero until the rupture.
9. **Evaluative ", which" and refusal-to-conclude** return to monitored-at-cap status once orders 3–4 execute; both families have now regressed once and should be on the per-chapter gate radar, not just the 5-chapter check.

**OVERALL: VOICE-DRIFT (8 findings)**
