# Voice Check — Chapters 16–20, Round 2 (post-repair verification) (`voice_check_20` R2)

**Stance:** skeptical professional editor per `voice_check_protocol.md`. Second-round scope: current text only; first-round findings are re-reported only where they survive, plus any repair-created damage.

**Calibration paragraph (step 1).** Same pinned calibration as round 1, re-verified against committed text: the Ch13 flyer-photo/kiss sequence and the Ch14 opening. Ch13's rhythm signature: hard frequent stops landing on a concrete object ("Theo's brush was on the floor, bristles down. He was crouched before she had finished lowering her hand, the rag already out of his pocket"); comedy from blocking precision, not phrasing. Ch14's Theo signature: medium steady procedure relieved every few sentences by task-residue interiority ("checked the corner by the clothespins with a dry knuckle. Dry, the same way it had been dry when he checked it at nine and again at nine forty"). Diction temperature: cool, contract-heavy, craft-nouned, zero hedged abstraction. Competence is not the standard; this is.

**First-round order verification: 14/14 executed in current text.**

1. Ch16 `the way` — now ×1, the sanctioned survivor: "She came at it from an angle, the way she came at everything." Mail-handoff, Odile-trained, and painting-lets-hands instances are gone (the circling is now "the class began to circle, slow, hands off"). RESOLVED.
2. Ch16 plan-making-itself-useful — closer is now task-plain: "He would bring the catalogs back first, put them on the table, say it while his hands were busy. He kept that order." RESOLVED.
3. Ch16 cruelty stamp — cut; the finding now lives where it belonged: "He heard Priya's clementine stop being peeled halfway through, the skin's small tearing quitting in the middle." RESOLVED.
4. Ch16 mechanics explainer — cut; "The partners split: easels angled away from easels, everyone's back to the person they knew best in the room." RESOLVED.
5. Ch18 hedged wrongness — now concrete: "The knot was right; the room around it had been wrong: a room he had keys to, a room she had been borrowing on Tuesdays." RESOLVED.
6. Ch18 measured-duration scaffold — gone; Mara's "Are you eating?" lands direct. Zero scaffold instances in the span. RESOLVED.
7. Ch18 offer-formula narration — "The Philadelphia column was better" survives once as ordered; the Monday restatement is now object terms: "The Tasker terms hadn't moved." Nia's Ch20 "That's a worse offer... on every line I have a column for" remains the formula's sole peak. RESOLVED.
8. Ch18 `which` captions — both split as ordered: "The apartment had been half packed since September. She had stopped noticing until now." and "Thursday was Thanksgiving. The street said it first: closed grates, a man balancing a foil pan on both palms so it would not crease." (The street-as-sayer wording is the order's own sanctioned recast.) RESOLVED.
9. Ch19 three-beat negation triptych — now one plain card-licensed sentence: "He didn't have another version of the room." RESOLVED.
10. Ch19 room-that-waits personification — dead as ordered; the inventory performs it: "underpainting a room with the water ready: jars filled, stool turned out from the table at the angle of someone coming right back." RESOLVED.
11. Ch19 He-chain relief + terminal-image variation — opening chain broken ("It did not sit flush with the others no matter how he angled it. Seven stools. Three stations got two."); the closing chain carries a genuine self-audit clause ("below the stain he had not been able to lift and was no longer sure he wanted to"); lock demoted mid-sentence, jar terminal. EXECUTED — but the execution created one new defect, logged as Finding 1 below.
12. Ch20 wall footage — exactly the two sanctioned instances remain (Asha's "ten feet of wall in front, north window" offer; the photo's "flat gray light across ten feet of empty wall"); elsewhere varied to "wall share," "clear wall space," and footage-dropped "I want the wall anyway." RESOLVED.
13. Squaring family — both ordered cuts confirmed: Ch19 now "He touched its spine with one finger and stopped there"; Ch20 Ruth beat now "Her eyes stopped on FRI DEC 4 / NOON" with no squared-up caption. RESOLVED.
14. "is real" formula — Asha now speaks her own card's vocabulary: "Forty-nine five and written access pays invoices" / "Ninety days to benefits changes the math." Theo's Ch17 pressure-spiral ("all of that is real") kept as licensed. RESOLVED.

---

## 1. Rhythm mismatches

CLEAN — checked both repaired zones against the calibration sample, all five openings, and the transition scaffolding ask. Ch16's blocking is now performed, not explained; Ch19's ensemble coverage is now object motion ("At the other stations, Priya and Ben traded the left side on the odd-weeks rotation, the folded paper never leaving Ben's pocket. Ruth and Sam worked without talking, Ruth on edges, Sam on mass."), which is the Ch14 sample's move exactly. Strongest counter-candidate: Ch20's timestamped task-run ("Email to Kessler, 11:14... Text to Dana, 11:20...") — clipboard rhythm adjacent to Theo's register — it survives because the run exits optical, not administrative ("The front room was worse than described: bare bulb, paint-scabbed floor, the north window putting flat gray light across ten feet of empty wall. June looked at the light longest.").

**Focused check — do Ch16/19 still read as Theo, not generic logistics: PASSES.** Names removed, Ch16 declares him through count-distrust ("counted fourteen chairs, distrusted the number, and counted again") and shame-as-tasks ("the rule gave him somewhere to put his hands"); Ch19 through jar/stool/label procedure that fails into feeling ("He wrote her name first. He pressed the tape down with his thumbnail so it would still be legible in six weeks."). No passage in either chapter could be reassigned to a neutral logistics narrator; the procedures keep leaking motive.

**Focused check — do Ch18/20 stay June-specific rather than decision-summary: PASSES.** Ch18 runs grief as labor with a painter's nouns (wool soap, gouache, "the doorframe out of square at the top corner, the light switch with paint sealed over one screw"); Ch20's arithmetic keeps her hybrid idiom ("She looked at them the way she'd look at a ground: holes, thin patches, places where wanting had been scumbled over need") and her praise-move turned on her own study ("The left edge is good... The value structure held all the way into the corner"). The Vandercook confession to Nia ("The part I keep wanting is the Vandercook... They'd call the key number. It would be my phone.") is want-as-suspect-evidence, her exact register.

## 2. Banned phrases

Checked verbatim against the reading-guide tic catalog and tics.md:

- "load-bearing" and variants: **0 hits**, all five chapters.
- breath-catching, flips/flutters/pooling/electricity: **0 hits** ("a spot where the cobalt had pooled and gone almost black," Ch20, is literal glaze — cleared).
- "something shifted"/"the air changed"/unspecified tension: **0 hits**; all `shifted` instances are literal strap/tray/table actions.
- smirk/chuckle/"a beat"/standalone "Oh.": **0 hits**.
- weather-as-emotion, mirror epiphany, NYC postcard, snow: **0 hits** ("Sunday was bright and ordinary" is calendar fact, not underline).
- **Dialogue diagnosis (zero tolerance): OBEYED, 0 hits.** Re-checked all repair-touched dialogue plus the round-1 counter-candidates. New hardest case: Ruth's Ch20 "I kept them to myself and called it manners" — she rates her own conduct, not anyone's wording; survives. Ch16's "Tonight was the most honest you've ever been in this room" targets the person across six weeks, not a sentence; survives the person/work carve-out.
- Cap and spent-family orders: measured-duration scaffold back to **0** (Ch18 repair held); `the way` now 1 / 4-at-audited-cap / 0 / 0 / 1 by chapter — no chapter over cap; no ledger/debt narration in Ch18–19; no stool-count joke or jar symbolism in Ch20; no `Winter Kitchen`; no clementine after Ch16.

## 3. AI-sounding constructions

All five round-1 findings are confirmed dead in current text (see verification ledger). One new instance, created by the repair:

- "He carried it to the rack and set it upside down on the shelf at the right end of their ground, below the stain he had not been able to lift and was no longer sure he wanted to. He turned off the lights, locked the door, and left the jar upside down below the stain." (Ch19, final two sentences) — the terminal-image repair restates the fully-established placement verbatim ("upside down... below the stain" twice in consecutive sentences). This is the paired-echo confirmation beat-closer the chapter packets ban by standing order; the image needs to be placed once, in final position.

Survivors checked and passed: Sam's "That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck." (Ch20) — not-X-but-Y shape, but a speakable joke anchored to an object he is holding; Ch19's "It was a good beginning, and from this side there was no missing what it was a beginning of" — a poised turn, but earned by the physical seat-swap Odile forces two paragraphs earlier; survives narrowly, do not let Theo generate a second one in Ch21.

## 4. Anachronistic language

CLEAN — register unchanged by repairs; Zelle, W-9, net-45, media mail, 80lb matte all period-true and character-assigned. Strongest counter-candidate remains "cadmium-adjacent" (Ch18) — internet-era "-adjacent," but adjacency in a painter's color narration is literal pigment talk; survives.

## 5. Repetitive metaphors and phrase families (with counts)

- **"at the angle(s) of someone/people..." recognitional figure: 3, unchanged from round 1** — Ch18 "at the angles people left them," Ch18 "at the angle of someone who had just stood up," Ch19 "at the angle of someone coming right back." Round 1 ruled the leaving/returning pair (Ch18 "just stood up" / Ch19 "coming right back") a deliberate cross-POV rhyme that earns its keep and called the chair-study instance surplus, but issued no order; the repair batch accordingly did not touch it. Converting to an order now: the surplus instance is the generic one and dilutes the rhyme.
- `the way` connective: **6 across span** (Ch16 ×1 sanctioned, Ch17 ×4 at its audited cap, Ch20 ×1). Within all caps. Resolved.
- offer-formula (good/better/worse): reduced to Ch18 ×1 narration + June's notebook GOOD ×2 + the Ch20 Nia peak. Resolved.
- wall footage: 2, both sanctioned. Resolved.
- "is real": Theo Ch17 only, licensed. Resolved.
- squared/flush family: ~12 remaining after the two ordered cuts, but now character-assigned as round 1 intended — June's receipt/card tells (Ch20 "She squared the receipt against the notebook's edge"), Ruth's paper tells, Theo's room-prep flush. Holding; no order.
- **New count — thumb-as-measure: 3** ("a thumb-length of it" and "a stain the size of a thumb," Ch19, same object; "that thumb-sized flaw near the foot... and it was the best part of the dish," Ch20). The Ch19 stain / Ch20 flaw pair reads as a designed rhyme (kept mark ↔ best part); survives, but a third thumb-sized mark in Ch21+ makes it a tic. Watch, no order.
- **New count — face-down/face-up object family: ~9** (face-down phone Ch17/18/20, face-down flyer Ch16, face-down studies Ch18 ×2 and Ch20, printed-side-down receipt Ch20) inverting deliberately at the close ("She turned the top one face up... put the study up on her own wall"). The inversion is the arc payoff; it works. Rest the family in Ch21. Watch, no order.
- Look-duration comparatives ×3 ("Luis looked the longest," Ch16; "longer than she meant to," Ch18; "looked at the light longest," Ch20) — strongest counter-candidate considered for a finding; each is a different construction doing literal attention-work, and the Ch20 instance is the chapter's thesis beat. Survives.

**Focused check — Asha/Nia distinctness after the dialogue repair: HOLDS.** The repair removed their sole convergence. Asha now confirms in her own card vocabulary (invoices, math, rates: "The install pays late, but it pays" energy throughout — "You invoice the 25th, net-45, you'll see money in March"); Nia keeps columns, payroll, and calendar authority ("I know her invoices. She itemizes." / "It's 10:52... I have payroll at eleven."). Neither borrows June's optical nouns.

## 6. Sentence length problems

CLEAN — the Ch19 He-chain monotone is relieved as ordered (opening broken by "It did not sit flush... Seven stools. Three stations got two."; closing chain carries the self-audit relative clause). Terminal images across the two Theo chapters are now differentiated (keys pocketed vs. jar below stain) pending Finding 1's trim. Strongest counter-candidate: Ch20's short-burst notation paragraphs ("DEC 10--DANA, $980. DEC 15--W-9 KESSLER.") — compression matches deadline pressure and is notebook-literal; survives. All five chapters still end on an object-action closer; with the terminal images now varied this remains house cadence, watch only.

---

**VOICE SCORE: 9/10** — All fourteen first-round orders are executed and verified in current text with no regression: no banned phrases, the zero-tolerance dialogue rule holds, blind-POV differentiation holds in all five chapters, both round-1 dead zones are repaired into live prose, and the span's family densities are back inside their caps. The missing point is the two residual line-level items: a repair-created paired-echo beat-closer at Ch19's final sentence and the surviving surplus instance of the angle-of-someone figure, plus the accumulating watch-tier families (thumb-measure, face-down inversion) that must rest in Ch21.

**POLISHED-BUT-DEAD ZONES: NONE** — both round-1 zones are repaired into object motion. Nearest call: "She sat with the two columns for a long time." (Ch18) — hedged duration, generic posture — still rescued two sentences later by the beat no other book owns (typing "Also, is there decent ventilation?", selecting it, deleting it).

**REVISION ORDERS:**
1. Ch19 closing — "He carried it to the rack and set it upside down on the shelf at the right end of their ground, below the stain he had not been able to lift and was no longer sure he wanted to. He turned off the lights, locked the door, and left the jar upside down below the stain." — paired-echo beat-closer (banned family; repair-created). Place the image once, in final position: end the penultimate sentence at "He carried it to the rack," and move the clause into the closer — "He turned off the lights, locked the door, and left the jar upside down below the stain he had not been able to lift and was no longer sure he wanted to." Terminal image stays the jar, lock stays demoted, Ch16 differentiation preserved.
2. Ch18 — "the studio's chairs from behind, after class, at the angles people left them" — surplus third instance of the angle-of-someone recognitional figure, diluting the deliberate Ch18 "just stood up" / Ch19 "coming right back" cross-POV rhyme. Recast to plain placement per the sample's temperature: "the studio's chairs from behind, after class, where people had left them" (or drop the clause; "She painted the backs, the shadows under the seats" already carries it).

**OVERALL: VOICE-DRIFT (2 findings)** — the span is one trim from VOICE-HOLDS: every first-round order is confirmed resolved, POV and character contracts hold, and no banned-list or dead-zone criterion is breached; but one repair introduced a banned-family echo at a chapter's most exposed position and one round-1 surplus figure was never ordered cut, so both convert to orders for the current revision round. Both are executable in minutes without re-deriving reasoning.
