Verification complete. All three round-9 repairs are in the current text and none introduces a new blocker.

**Order 1 — remove `"Better than I treat it."`: VERIFIED**

The quip is gone. The beat now runs (chapter_18.md:65-67):

> "And dried flat."
>
> She smoothed the fold once against her forearm and settled it into the tote between two dishes.

This is the audit's first prescribed option executed exactly — straight from "And dried flat" to the smoothing action, no politer substitute quip. New blocker check: nothing was added, only cut; the surviving material is the already-passed item 13/15 run. No funniness-1, portable, or workshopped item introduced.

**Order 2 — replace the `"has opinions about"` shell: VERIFIED**

Current line (chapter_18.md:75):

> "It's a dish I want back." She shifted the tote up her shoulder. "Bring it Tuesday. Sit by me. Ruth is bringing a ruler and I need another painter at the table."

The recruitment clause survives verbatim as ordered, and the prefab idiom is replaced with a concrete object beat. Blocker check on the replacement: mechanism is specificity/escalation — Ruth's proof-by-instrument literalism, the direct payoff of this chapter's crooked-flyer correction ("hers at the laundromat was crooked, with a photo proving it" / "*it's crooked*", line 9). Source is character on both ends: the ruler is Ruth's (copyeditor exactness, per her voice card), the reporting is Mara's warm logistics-recruitment register. Funniness 2 — it lands as a threat-shaped invitation rather than gestured wit. Non-portable: the ruler only reads against the line-9 flyer dispute and the showcase hang. Not workshopped: plain compound syntax, no punchline symmetry. Ruth's one-sharp-line cap is untouched since Ruth doesn't speak here; her one cap line ("*it's crooked*") was already inventoried as item 3.

**Order 3 — break the `"the whole ___"` shape: VERIFIED**

Current line (chapter_18.md:7):

> The plan fit in one line, and it required no one.

The retired "the whole ___" template shape is broken, and "it required no one" — the half carrying the grief — is preserved as ordered. Blocker check: deadpan understatement, character-sourced (June's compression; "fit in one line" is consistent with her ledger/measurement habit). It doesn't reopen the "That's the whole ___" confession template per the tic tracker (Ch11 entry), and it doesn't match any other capped family. Funniness 2 in context — the joke is the plan's smallness against what it's replacing. The shape is plain rather than quotation-symmetric; not workshopped. The sentence shell alone could exist elsewhere, but the comic content (eight catalogs, media mail, the post office at nine) is this book's; not portable as a comic item.

**NEW-BLOCKERS-FROM-REPAIR: NONE**

**OUT-OF-SCOPE WATCH**
- "The only new fact in the whole ledger was Theo's" (chapter_18.md:95) contains a "the whole ___" string, but it is pre-existing, mid-sentence adjectival use, not the retired confession-template shape, and not a comic item. Noting only because order 3 concerns that family; no action needed.

**OVERALL: ORDERS-VERIFIED**
