Verified — the `$` amounts and backticked work-titles were preserved literally. The completed audit is written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_24.clarity_pass.md`. Here is the document itself:

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# Fresh-Reader Clarity Pass — Chapter 24: First Snow

id: clarity_pass | owner: claude | chapter: 24
stance: skeptical professional editor; per-criterion evidence; strongest counter-candidate quoted on every pass.
reader-knowledge state assumed: a sequential reader who has read Ch01–23 (fake-couple premise known since Ch01; nephew relation known to June/reader since Ch17; June's stay + material NY path disclosed Ch20/22/23; Week 3 portrait exists, faced in, June's to turn per Ch22; `After Class` finished with seam/label in Ch23). Odile's night-one knowledge is NOT yet reader-confirmed — this chapter is its reveal.

---

## PLAIN-EVENT SUMMARY:

Opening night of the showcase, upstairs studio above Marchetti Rooms, POV June. June works the coffee urn against the back wall by the radiator, having volunteered for it so she has a wall to stand against instead of the door. The eight-Tuesday cohort climbs the stairs and hangs wet coats on the hooks Theo installed in October. She had dreaded the showcase — specifically that `After Class` would expose her and Theo's split origin to anyone who can read a picture — but finds herself pouring coffee for Sam Rivera (black) and laughing when Sam diagnoses "Air in the east riser." Ben has printed a flyer with a photo of the empty studio. Theo has hung the cohort's work along the north wall with honest gaps: Priya's interiors, Sam's dog-or-sofa canvas, Mara's kitchen, Luis's three studies, and `After Class` second from the end on its own easel at an angle June set an hour earlier. Odile sits by the flat files watching the people, not the work.

The room "reads" `After Class`: 12×16, two eight-inch fields with a hard strip of bare priming down the center where tape lifted; Theo's lit/leaning half (classroom wall, a top corner a degree off true), June's half going down into umber around a doorway that used to be a stain; the label reads "After Class. Two underpaintings of one room, finished together." Most viewers clock the seam as a technique and move on; a few stay with it. Sam notices the leaning corner and offers to level it; Theo says "It's meant to lean" and declines the explanation he'd once have given.

Mara brings empanadas. June returns Mara's washed blue/cobalt dish; Mara fills it with empanadas and starts to route it, but Luis lifts it from her and sets it dead center on the coffee table in the sightline to the work. Priya brings June an over-milked coffee and says "We're looking again in April" (she and Ben are deferring the apartment). Ruth Kim comes to `After Class` last, reads it, and says low, "You didn't start this together." June says, "No. We didn't." The narration marks this as "the only confession the room was going to get." Ruth declines to press further, says it's "the best thing on the wall," and rejoins Sam. Theo returns to the urn; he and June confirm Ruth read it "From the label," that Ruth won't tell, and that "they know we didn't start clean. Nobody needs the rest."

The room empties. Mara leaves the dish behind on purpose ("Bring it whenever"). Priya and Ben leave. By 7:30 only June, Theo, and Odile remain. The buzzer sounds early: the Halloran collectors, at 7:40; Theo goes down and sends them to an Orchard bar until eight. Theo and June log the cohort work on Theo's CHECK-OUT clipboard. `After Class` has nowhere to hang — June's Ridgewood wall won't exist until January 2, Theo's walls are Odile's — so they write it into storage under both names, *Park* and *Brennan*, and Theo slides it into the third flat-file drawer.

June goes to fetch her coat but stops at the storage rack, where Theo's Week 3 study of her stands faced to the brick, labeled with her name and two dates. Theo has deliberately left the turning to her. She considers leaving it faced in, then turns it to look: herself at the utility sink from behind, rinsing a brush, painted at value (dark sweater against dark wall), her face barely given, painted "not knowing she was seen." She reads it first as pity, then as something harder-and-better than pity that nonetheless still stings because he hid it from her. She looks as long as she wants, then turns it back to the brick — explicitly not to hide it but because the seeing was hers to do and the panel is his to place. She takes her coat.

Odile is back in her chair with the class ledger (a black spring binder). She tells June to sign out — "You're work that left the building" — and turns the binder to a sheet dated September 24, the opening-night after-hours list, in her own hand, where near the bottom, before June ever enrolled, is written "Park, J. – Brennan, T. Last slot." June realizes Odile knew night one. Odile confirms it plainly: June corrected the `Winter Kitchen`/`Blue Stove` label with her coat still on, walked in "as half of a couple that didn't exist," and Odile "wrote in the other half" (Theo — "He was handy. He's my—" cut off before "nephew"). June sees the assignments were engineered to push them together. Odile refuses apology or credit ("I ran a class... I wanted to know what you'd make if I made you. I'm retiring, not dead"). June says "It wasn't yours to run"; Odile agrees, "No. It wasn't." June tears the page out and pockets it.

Theo returns; June tells him "I turned the study." He offers it to her ("It's yours, if you want it"); she refuses to accept the hidden thing as a handoff ("Don't hand me the thing you hid and call it mine"), reframes it as his first real work, tells him to keep it, and leaves an opening ("Paint another one where I'm facing the right way and I'll think about it"). June kills the strip lights so the collectors get warm light; the window stops mirroring and she sees the first snow, visible only in the streetlight cone. Theo says it won't stick (ground too warm). They go out the freight door; June carries her jar of dirty rinse-water home as always (training for the January Ridgewood commute). The cold's material facts land: no warm coat yet, a "Kessler-in-March problem," an "eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday problem." Theo catches his walk-you-home reflex and downgrades it to "the corner." At the corner June kisses him quick, steps off the curb, and leaves to catch her train, "eight hundred dollars due Thursday, and she went."

[UNCLEAR: whether "the collectors" Odile "had gone up with" (l.89) are the Halloran buyers or a separate retirement-reception group, and whether the Hallorans are on the studio floor or a level below — l.83 sends them to a bar, l.89 says Odile "had gone up with the collectors," l.113 puts the Hallorans "by Odile's office door," and l.139 has Odile say "The Hallorans can come up" and separately go "up to be retired at some collectors." These do not reconcile on a single vertical axis or a single referent for "collectors."]

Every other beat in the chapter reconstructs without a guess.

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## INVENTORY:

- `"After Class" final label ("Two underpaintings of one room, finished together.")` — introduced: l.23 — first plot weight: Ruth's read, l.51 ("You didn't start this together") — orientation: **SUFFICIENT** (the seam is shown before the label — "down the center a hard sixteenth of bare priming where the tape had come up: not blended, not bridged, a join you could find from clear across the floor" l.19 — and a character models the correct read: "step in again to check the label against the picture, doing the honest thing, letting the object correct her" l.25).
- `the bare-priming seam / "hard sixteenth of bare priming"` — introduced: l.7 (as June's dread) / l.19 (shown) — first plot weight: l.49–51 — orientation: **SUFFICIENT** ("the two eight-inch fields and the hard strip of bare priming down the middle telling on her and Theo to anybody who could read a picture" l.7 tells the reader what the strip *means* before it is read aloud).
- `CHECK-OUT clipboard / storage / third flat-file drawer` — introduced: l.85 — first plot weight: l.85 (`After Class` has no wall, so it is stored) — orientation: **SUFFICIENT** (the mechanic and the reason are both scene-native: "Theo took the CHECK-OUT clipboard off the brick, his block letters, columns for piece, name, out, back" and "After Class had nowhere to go, because June's wall was in Ridgewood and did not exist yet... So they wrote it into storage instead").
- `the study (Week 3 portrait)` — reactivated: l.91 — first plot weight: l.95–107 (June turns and reads it) — orientation: **SUFFICIENT** (re-anchored in-scene without exposition: "The study was where it had been since Friday. Faced to the brick, the pencil label on the stretcher bar... her name, and two dates. Week three, the day he started it. Last Thursday, the day he made himself finish" l.91).
- `the opening-night after-hours list / class ledger (black spring binder)` — introduced: l.113 / l.117 — first plot weight: l.117–121 (the night-one reveal) — orientation: **SUFFICIENT** (physically described and dated before it carries the reveal: "open to a sheet tucked before Week One. September twenty-four. Opening-night after-hours list in Odile's square hand... *Park, J. – Brennan, T. Last slot.* One line. Ink that had been dry since the night June walked in with her coat still on" l.117).
- `the blue/cobalt dish` — reactivated: l.35 — first plot weight: l.39–43 (belonging beat, Luis's placement) — orientation: **SUFFICIENT** ("The blue dish had been riding in her tote for two days and a Tuesday" l.35; "cobalt going almost green at the rim where the kiln had starved the glaze" l.37 identifies it as June's made object).
- `future-life facts ($800 due Thursday / Kessler-in-March / Ridgewood wall, January 2)` — reactivated: l.85, l.93, l.163, l.175 — first plot weight: the closing image of June's chosen-life cost — orientation: **SUFFICIENT as continuations** ("June's wall was in Ridgewood and did not exist yet and wouldn't until January second" l.85 = the Jan-2 key handoff; "a Kessler-in-March problem, an eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday problem" l.163 self-defines each as a money-timing pressure). "Thursday" anchors cleanly: the Tuesday showcase is Dec 8, so "due Thursday" = Dec 10, matching the Ch23 figure of $800 due Dec 10. Note: Asha and Tasker are **not named in this chapter at all**; the referral thread is not raised here, so there is nothing for a reader to be left hanging on — its absence is not a clarity finding.
- `the Hallorans / "the collectors"` — introduced: l.83 — first plot weight: l.83, l.113, l.139 (they occupy Theo, so he cannot walk June home; they mark the gallery's ongoing life) — orientation: **INSUFFICIENT** (the reader cannot pin their physical location, and cannot tell whether "the collectors" at l.89 are the Hallorans or the separate "some collectors" of l.139; see Confusion Map).

---

## CONFUSION MAP:

- **"Odile had gone up with the collectors." (l.89)** — reader loses: physical orientation and referent (are these the Hallorans, who were just sent to a bar until eight, and if so how are they simultaneously "gone up," "by Odile's office door" at l.113, and told they "can come up" at l.139?) — opacity: **ACCIDENTAL.** Nothing in the reading guide assigns collector-choreography as deliberate; the vagueness of "*some* collectors" at l.139 reads as Odile's disdain for her own send-off (assignable), but the *position* contradiction across l.83/89/113/139 is hosting logistics, not atmosphere. This is the chapter's one accidental finding. It is peripheral — it does not touch the Odile reveal, the portrait, or June's departure — but it is a real "wait, where are they / who are 'the collectors'?" beat.
- **"You didn't start this together." / "No. We didn't." (l.51, l.55)** — reader loses: nothing critical, but the exact epistemic content is deliberately soft (does Ruth now know they were never a couple, or only that this painting had two separate origins?) — opacity: **ASSIGNED (later-payoff / thesis).** The book's design is artifact-borne partial disclosure: reading guide §2 and the chapter card ("artifact-borne fake truth; no nephew reveal to class") plus the thread-ledger Ch24 line ("Paid only partially/artifact-borne... Preserve no public confession"). The text supplies the footholds that make the graded public knowledge legible: most "decided it was a technique, and moved on" (l.25); Ruth "read the strip and stopped there. She didn't ask for the itemization" (l.53); Theo caps it, "They know we didn't start clean. Nobody needs the rest" (l.69). The Ruth/Sam mirror ("declining to say what they were to each other... categories nobody's business," l.53) tells the reader why the room does not itemize.
- **"the stockroom word still not gone" (l.149) / "pity was the easier word... the word stayed in the room" (l.101)** — reader loses: momentarily, which word "the stockroom word" names — opacity: **ASSIGNED (voice).** June "compresses when exposed" (voice card), and the referent is recoverable ("pity" is foregrounded three times in l.101–103 as the word that "stayed in the room" during the stockroom looking). Even a reader who does not pin the exact word still gets the gist — residual grievance from what she saw. This is interior texture, not hidden scene logistics; it was the closest call and it holds.
- **"She turned it back to face the brick." (l.105) → "It's yours." "It's yours." (l.143, l.145)** — reader loses: potentially, whether turning it back + "Keep it" reads as rejection — opacity: **ASSIGNED (later beat resolves it), and it holds.** The text pre-empts the rejection reading explicitly: "She wasn't hiding it. She'd seen it, and the seeing was what was hers to do with it. The panel itself was his... and he could decide where it lived now that she'd decided whether to look" (l.107). Consent (June's right to look) and ownership (Theo's to place) are cleanly divided, and the forward opening — "Paint another one where I'm facing the right way and I'll think about it" (l.151) plus "she liked him so much in that second" (l.153) — closes off rejection/confusion. This tests exactly as the task requires: consent/ownership, not rejection.
- **"neither of them looking eleven minutes apart tonight" (l.81)** — reader loses: the exact prior referent of "eleven minutes apart" — opacity: **ASSIGNED (callback / voice).** The local construction ("neither... looking eleven minutes apart tonight" = in step now) carries the meaning without the callback, reinforced by "Both of them looked like April was a real place they intended to walk into on their own feet." Not logistics-hiding.

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## CHARACTER CLARITY:

- **June Park** — PLACEABLE ("running the urn gave her a wall to stand against," l.3; painter-eye throughout). POV; fully oriented.
- **Theo Brennan** — PLACEABLE ("the wall hooks Theo had screwed in level back in October," l.5; "He'd have built Sam an explanation a month ago," l.29). Re-anchored via his logistical-tenderness care move and its restraint.
- **Odile Marchetti** — PLACEABLE ("Odile was in her chair by the flat files... she wasn't looking at the work. She was looking at the people looking at the work," l.13). The teacher; economy intact.
- **Priya Nair** — PLACEABLE ("Priya's careful interiors," l.11; "We're looking again in April," l.47). Re-anchored via her painting and the deferred-apartment thread.
- **Ben Adler** — PLACEABLE ("Ben had made a flyer," l.9; "left it a half-degree off level on purpose," l.47). The flyer-maker, Priya's partner.
- **Mara Valdez** — PLACEABLE ("Mara had brought food," l.35; the empanadas/dish routing). The cohort's host.
- **Luis Valdez** — PLACEABLE ("Luis's three small studies hung so precisely you could have leveled a shelf against them," l.11; "He'd put the food where the traffic was," l.43). Placement/sightline care move.
- **Ruth Kim** — PLACEABLE ("she stood at it the length of time that means a person is reading and not being polite," l.49). The clocker; re-anchored via the reading beat.
- **Sam Rivera** — PLACEABLE ("Sam Rivera, who took it black," l.7; "Air in the east riser," l.7; installer's-eye level offer, l.27). They/them handled consistently ("they said to Theo," l.27; "They made room," l.31).
- **The Hallorans** — PLACEABLE as a function ("Early meant the Hallorans," l.83; "hand two rich people some drawings," l.165) but see the referent softness below.

Shared-surface-marker collision checks:
- **Mara Valdez / Luis Valdez (identical surname)** — UN-CONFUSABLE (first name + gender + owned care moves keep them distinct within a single beat: "Mara took it and turned it over... 'Luis, put it over by the—' / Luis was already moving. He lifted it out of her hands," l.39–41).
- **Ruth Kim / Sam Rivera (a couple, same table)** — UN-CONFUSABLE (Ruth is "she," Sam is "they," and they do different things — Ruth reads the label, Sam eyes the corner).
- **Theo "Brennan" / Ben Adler (Br-/Be-, both male-coded)** — UN-CONFUSABLE (Theo is "Theo" in every in-scene reference; "Brennan" appears only as the paired signature/label surname — "*Park* and *Brennan*," l.85; "Park, J. – Brennan, T.," l.117 — where the pairing with *Park* fixes it as Theo).
- **Priya "Nair" / Nia Torres (Nai-/Nia)** — UN-CONFUSABLE here (Nia does not appear in this chapter; Priya is "Priya" throughout).
- **"the collectors" (l.89) / "the Hallorans" (l.83, l.113, l.139) / "some collectors" (l.139)** — CONFUSABLE ("Odile had gone up with the collectors" (l.89) sits directly after "the Hallorans' drawings" and reads as the Hallorans, yet l.139 distinguishes the Hallorans from the "some collectors" Odile goes "up to be retired at." The single word "collectors" points at possibly-two groups without a differentiating marker at l.89.) — folded into Revision Order 1.

---

## COMPLEXITY CHECKS:

1. Scene action / physical orientation / focalizer perception / plot-bearing consequence available on first read — **FAILS** — "Odile had gone up with the collectors" (l.89), against "the Hallorans standing by Odile's office door" (l.113) and "The Hallorans can come up" (l.139). Scene action, June's perception, and the load-bearing consequences (the reveal, the portrait, the departure) are all available; the *physical orientation* of the collectors is not, and the bullet bundles orientation.
2. New terms/names/rules become plain before carrying plot weight — **HOLDS** — the seam is shown (l.19) before the label reads it aloud (l.23) before Ruth weaponizes it (l.51); the opening-night sheet is described and dated (l.117) before it delivers the night-one reveal (l.121). Strongest counter-candidate: the ledger reveal risks arriving as glossary — it does not, because the physical object ("Ink that had been dry since the night June walked in with her coat still on," l.117) carries it and June's plain "You knew. Night one. Before the class even started" (l.121) confirms it without Odile narrating the mechanism.
3. Mysteries deliberately atmospheric/genre-apt vs accidental underexplanation — **HOLDS** — the withholdings (what the room "really" now knows; Odile's cut-off "He's my—"; June's refusal to describe the portrait to Theo) are assigned by the reading guide's artifact-borne-disclosure and reread mandates (§2; §8 reread test) and the chapter card ("no nephew reveal to class"). The one accidental opacity in the chapter is not a *mystery* but the collector logistics of check 1.
4. Prose gives plain footholds at high-load moments — **HOLDS** — night-one reveal: "You knew. Night one. Before the class even started" (l.121); portrait: "She wasn't hiding it. She'd seen it, and the seeing was what was hers to do with it" (l.107); public disclosure: "That was the only confession the room was going to get: two words at an urn" (l.57); ending cost: "an eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday problem" (l.163). Strongest counter-candidate: June's densest interior paragraph (l.129, Odile's withholding vs. Theo's) — it analyzes rather than hides, and it does not re-explain the plants, so it stays clear under load and does not tip into over-explanation.
5. Aliases/near-synonyms make one concept look like several — **HOLDS, with one flagged wobble** — "panel" names both `After Class` (l.85) and the study (l.97, l.107), but section-local context fully disambiguates (l.85's paragraph is storage of `After Class`; l.91–107 is entirely the study at the rack). The genuine near-collision is "collectors" (check 1 / Character Clarity), routed to Revision Order 1; it is a referent wobble, not a pervasive alias.

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## REVISION ORDERS:

1. **Fix the collector/Halloran orientation (l.89, with l.113 and l.139 as the collision).** Failure: accidental loss of physical orientation and a one-word referent ("collectors") pointing at possibly-two groups. `l.83` sends the Hallorans down to an Orchard bar until eight; `l.89` says "Odile had gone up with the collectors" (reads as the Hallorans); `l.113` places "the Hallorans standing by Odile's office door"; `l.139` has Odile say "The Hallorans can come up" and separately go "up to be retired at some collectors." Direct a scene-native fix in two moves: (a) At **l.89**, if the group Odile leaves with is her retirement reception (the "some collectors" of l.139), give it a distinguishing marker so it does not read as the Hallorans — e.g., have Odile go up "to the people throwing her the send-off," or to "her reception," not "the collectors." Keep it inside June's noticing (she registers the racket of the party overhead, or Odile's back going up the stairs), not an exposition clause. (b) Pin the Hallorans to **one** vertical position across l.83→113→139 and make it a moving-body beat: either they wait *below* until eight (June hears the freight buzzer again; they are a shape at the foot of the stairs) so that "can come up" (l.139) stays literal, or they are admitted to the studio floor at eight and l.139 becomes "The Hallorans can come in / come over," with l.113's "by Odile's office door" kept consistent with whichever floor you choose. Do not add an explanatory sentence about the building's layout; fix it with where the bodies stand and where the buzzer sounds.

No other UNCLEAR / INSUFFICIENT / ACCIDENTAL / UNPLACED / CONFUSABLE / FAILS findings. The night-one ledger reveal, the portrait turn-and-return, the artifact-borne Ruth beat, the blue-dish belonging beat, the disambiguation of the same-surname Valdez pair, and the future-life closing facts all pass with the evidence quoted above.

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## OVERALL: CONFUSING (1 finding)

One accidental finding, and it is peripheral: the Halloran/collector hosting choreography (l.89 against l.113/l.139) loses the reader's grip on where two minor characters physically are and whether "the collectors" names one group or two. It touches none of the chapter's load-bearing machinery. Per the format's strict definition — any accidental finding precludes CLEAR-UNDER-COMPLEXITY — this is logged as CONFUSING (1), not because the finale is hard to follow but because one fixable orientation seam remains.

Heaviest-load passage and the foothold that carries it: the night-one reveal (l.115–133). The load is a retroactive re-reading of the entire book (every assignment card, the whole class, the pairing itself) landing in one page without an Odile oracle monologue. The foothold is a physical object plus a four-word sentence: the dated page in Odile's own hand — "*Park, J. – Brennan, T. Last slot.* One line. Ink that had been dry since the night June walked in with her coat still on" (l.117) — and June's "You knew. Night one. Before the class even started" (l.121). The proof is documentary, not spoken; June does the connective work; Odile's "He's my—" (l.123) preserves the nephew secret without a stumble. The reveal proves night-one knowledge clearly and does not over-explain.

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The four current-text focus tests resolved as follows: **public vs. private** (holds — graded disclosure, footholds at l.25/53/57/69), **opening-night ledger** (holds — documentary proof, no over-explanation), **portrait turn-back = consent/ownership** (holds — l.107 explicitly forecloses the rejection reading), and **future-life facts** (holds — legible as continuations; Asha/Tasker simply absent). The single accidental finding is the peripheral Halloran/collector geography, which flips the verdict to CONFUSING (1) under the format's strict rule but leaves the finale's core machinery clear.
