All inputs reviewed. No `checks/audits/` file exists, so I verified against the prior audit's own criteria as instructed. The chapter has no git history to diff, so each replacement was judged directly. Grep confirms zero hits chapter-wide for every ordered cut (`ratify`, `fleeing`, `underlayer`, `required no one`, `part that cost`, `true question`, `competent one`, `provisional`, `did nothing`, `arrange itself`, `copied into`, `finally`, `arithmetic`, `ledger`) and zero `the way` connectives.

# Chapter 18 Positive Prose — Repair Batch Verification

**1. Monday-night autonomy syllogism — VERIFIED.** The passage is now material action with the decision left open: "She opened the floor-plan draft, put the cursor after *Ceiling height matters to me,* and watched it blink until the screen dimmed. She touched the trackpad, read the sentence again, and closed the draft. Friday noon was four days off. Asha had until the fifteenth to reshuffle Kessler." (line 95). The ledger facts stay ("$49,500, the bay, the ninety days, Friday noon"); `ratify`, `fleeing on his schedule`, and the "answering Theo, not Nia" doctrine are gone. The contamination is carried by "before the acknowledgments page, before Eileen Brennan's name, before the back stair" — material, unresolved, not a syllogism. No fiscal-register re-import (the Ch08 watch words `arithmetic`/`ledger` are absent). No new blocker.

**2. Closing because-clause — VERIFIED.** The chapter now ends: "she stood in front of it for a minute with the spackle knife from the open box. She filled the first nail hole. Wet spackle sat white beside the brighter paint." (line 97). No because-clause, no decoded symbol, and `finally` is gone (qscan-07 cleared as the order anticipated). No new blocker.

**3. `Underlayer` thesis sentence — VERIFIED.** The sentence is gone. The replacement beat is "Theo had painted that wall without ever seeing it — boxes, keys, the emptied rectangle — and he'd been wrong about her, she'd decided in Week 6, a wrong first pass. Standing in it Wednesday morning with wet palms, she could see the first pass differently." (line 5), followed by the colander action. This stays short of a thesis stamp by the audit's terms — it doesn't resolve ("differently," not a conclusion) and the physical beat follows — so no new blocker, but note the beat is interpretive where the order suggested physical, and "first pass" is painting-process metaphor; see watch below.

**4. `and it required no one` — VERIFIED.** The catalog paragraph now ends on the material isolation marker the audit itself proposed: "She folded the box flaps shut without taping them and slid it under the table where she wouldn't have to see gray while she ate." (line 7). No new blocker.

**5. Mara emoji beat — VERIFIED.** "Mara sent back a turkey and a heart and asked nothing else." (line 13) — full stop. The cost is collected exactly where the audit said it should be: Thursday's "ate eggs at noon and taped a sheet of paper to her drawing board" (line 21). No new blocker.

**6. Nia email rating sentence — VERIFIED.** The draft action now stands alone: "She added *Also, is there decent ventilation?* under it, selected the second question, and deleted it. She left the first one in drafts and closed the laptop." (line 31). No grading sentence. No new blocker.

**7. Studies paragraph connective — VERIFIED.** The clause is now "Left face up, they were studies. Pinned up, they could become another thing in a window." (line 91). No `the way` connective anywhere in the chapter (Ch17 cap respected), no `copied into windows and laundromats` essay. The replacement is epigram-shaped but passes by the audit's own counter-candidate standard ("no more next Tuesdays"): it's a material consequence (Sonia's window with the crooked flyer is on the record at line 85), in June's compression register, and it forces the turn-over action that follows. No new blocker.

**8. Pie handoff de-polished — VERIFIED.** `It's a dish I want back.` is gone. Mara now overexplains per her voice card ("warm, socially fluent, a little too explanatory"): "Luis made too much. There's pie under the turkey. Don't tilt it." and "The blue dish is mine... Not the foil. The dish under it. Bring it Tuesday. Sit by me. Ruth is bringing a ruler and I need another painter at the table." (lines 71–75). Exactly one confessed stratagem remains in the chapter — "and it worked." in the scarf text volley (line 57), the one the audit ordered kept. The hosting chatter is warmth, not a pre-resolved comeback. No new blocker.

**9. Fourth study painter-literal — VERIFIED.** "the studio's track lights off, the room lit only from the hall, the far wall gone raw-umber gray, the front edge of the table lost in the dark" (line 89) — named pigment value (the audit's own suggestion), edges dropping out, no `provisional`, no `long flat fact`. No new blocker.

**10. `The chair did nothing` — VERIFIED.** Now: "She kept it dry and exact. It was wood at an angle, viewed from the door." (line 89). Technique terms, no negated-figure construction; the retired family is not rebuilt. No new blocker.

**11. `help it arrange itself` literalized — VERIFIED.** "she was not going to pin them up or turn them face out" (line 91), closed by the physical action: "She turned them over one at a time, squared the stack by feel, backs up, blank, and set the water jar on the corner so they'd stay flat." (line 93). The negation is hers, not the object's — no agency transfer. No new blocker.

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

**OUT-OF-SCOPE WATCH:**
- The order-3 replacement spends "a wrong first pass" / "see the first pass differently" (line 5) — painting-process metaphor adjacent to the unfinished/underpainting motif, which the reading guide caps at one metaphorical use per act. Not a Positive Prose blocker, but the motif tracker should count it for this act.
- "The row was good: the truest drawing she'd done since Week 6." (line 91) sits in the repaired paragraph; it's June rating her own work, which her care-move register supports (precise, unsentimental praise), and it motivates the refusal to pin them up — passing, but worth one glance from the tic tracker for superlative self-assessment creep.

**OVERALL: ORDERS-VERIFIED**
