# Chapter 21 — Thought-Development Audit (Round 2 — verification)

audit: thought_development | owner: claude | trigger: flag:reflective-chapter (via flag:emotional-peak / flag:protagonist-heavy on CHAPTER CARD - 21)
chapter: output/chapters/chapter_21.md
round: 2 — verifying Round 1 orders (output/critiques/claude/chapter_21.thought_development_round1.md)
stance: skeptical editor per audit spec; passes shown with counter-candidates; findings convert to revision orders.

## Input notes

- Watch counts were again not supplied; no watch-count adjudication performed.
- **Repair-boundary integrity:** the `0022...before` → `0025...after` snapshot diff touches exactly two lines — ln 89 (delivery-box beat inserted between "stopped." and the paragraph break) and ln 103 (colon merge + "the study against the brick") — and nothing else. No unordered edit rode in. The current chapter is byte-identical to the `0025...after` snapshot (diff empty): no drift entered between repair and verification. Order 1's negative constraint ("do not add interiority explaining the settlement afterward") is confirmed by the same diff: ln 91 is untouched.
- **Stale sibling audit:** `chapter_21.plain_translation_round2.md` (REGISTER-HOLDS) was verified byte-identical against snapshot `0021...after_plain_translation_round1_repairs` — i.e., it predates the thought-development repairs. Two of its recorded states are now stale: its Aphorism Gate clears "The wait was terrible in an ordinary way." as a freestanding sentence (it is now colon-merged, ln 103, which if anything reduces quotability), and the new ln 89 sentences ("He could wrap the panel flat... not have to start with his own sentence.") were never gate-tested by that audit. No thought-development finding follows; noted so the plain-translation owner can re-sweep the two seams.

## Order-by-order verification

**Order 1 — make the offering temptation live between the glassine fold and the palette-knife cleanup, from existing scene materials. EXECUTED.**

Current ln 89:

> "The glassine lay open beside the easel. He started to fold it back over the panel and stopped. The delivery box was still by the freight door, silver tape split down its top seam. He could wrap the panel flat, slide it into that box, carry it to Sonia's, and not have to start with his own sentence. He put the glassine down."

The order offered three material options; the repair uses the second (the delivery box, seeded at ln 3 as "sealed with a strip of silver tape that said MARCHETTI: 8," its split seam consistent with the utility knife that opened it) and runs the ordered machine: the temptation forms whole — object, method, destination, and what it would buy him ("not have to start with his own sentence") — and is declined in an object action ("He put the glassine down"), the same shape as ln 13's reflex text left in the coat and ln 71's drill set on the flat files. The chapter-card risk ("the hidden Week 3 study of June risks becoming a romantic offering instead of his own work") and the Ch 22 dependency ("the portrait is offered after the apology in Ch 22, not as the apology") are now staked on page: the temptation's named payoff is precisely gift-as-substitute-for-speech. Unordered bonus verified as emergent, not added: the box he would carry it in is the box June routed around him — taking it would remake him the route two scenes after "I'm done being the route" (ln 53) — and the text leaves that uncaptioned. Ln 91 stands as pure action per the order, and "He did not put it in a crate" now negates an alternative that existed two sentences earlier.

**Order 2 — concretize one item in the preparation catalog. EXECUTED.**

Current ln 103:

> "His head kept reaching for preparation: the study against the brick, what he'd say first, contingencies for each of her possible openings. Each time he set it down like the drill."

"What he'd bring" is now "the study against the brick" — the first-position item, one concrete instance, the rest of the list left lean per the order, with the setting-down still the event. The coordination clause of the order is satisfied: the portrait is refused twice in the same key, once at the easel ("He put the glassine down," ln 89) and once at the sink ("Each time he set it down like the drill," ln 103). Note: "the brick" names the wall's material one paragraph before the shutdown reprise does ("painted side against the brick," ln 113); this is specification of an in-scene surface, not invented decoration, and it pays the reprise forward.

**Order 3 — colon merge. EXECUTED.**

Current ln 103:

> "The wait was terrible in an ordinary way: he wanted to move something and had nothing in reach worth moving."

Exact ordered wording, character for character.

## Re-run: Criterion 1 — Pre-solved reflection

VERDICT: DEVELOPED

The Round 1 flag (R10, disposition of the study) is discharged. Straight-line test on the repaired beat: could "He cleaned his palette knife instead" (ln 91) now follow "He started to fold it back over the panel and stopped" (ln 89) with nothing lost? No — the middle contains the offering temptation the chapter card stakes and the Ch 22 card depends on; deleting it restores the Round 1 defect. The settlement's three terms (label legible, faced to wall, no crate) now read as answers to a live alternative rather than a verdict without a trial.

**Strongest counter-candidate considered (new text): the delivery-box beat itself, ln 89 — announce-and-dismiss risk.** One conditional sentence of temptation followed by an immediate refusal could be the same pre-solved shape at smaller scale. It survives, work shown: (a) the temptation is not a category but a complete concrete plan — panel wrapped flat, that box, Sonia's — with its motive stated as the want it is ("not have to start with his own sentence"), which is the minimum interiority that makes the box a temptation instead of scenery; (b) the decline is enacted in an object, not narrated as resolve, matching the chapter's twice-established machine (ln 13, ln 71) that Round 1's order explicitly prescribed; (c) the refusal is then re-tested rather than banked — the same want recurs at the sink ("the study against the brick," ln 103) and must be set down again, so the beat is not a one-tap cure; (d) a longer deliberation would inflate the beat past its voice-card license — Theo's cognition under stress "lists facts, tries to solve logistics" and does not monologue. Cleared.

**Standing passes re-confirmed on unchanged text** (diff-verified untouched; Round 1's full workings incorporated by reference): the boundary speech (ln 53, "I'm keeping the keys... But I'm done being the route") still passes on the objects-first build (route noun at ln 3, ledger at lns 9–11, thumbs at ln 5) plus the refused wrong ask ("I need you to tell me it wasn't my fault," ln 45 → "It was partly your fault," ln 47); the fear-canvas reading (lns 67–69) still passes on the inventory-earned realization with the dated misreading quoted ("He had spent three weeks telling himself she'd painted his helpfulness"); the portrait corrections (lns 79–85) still pass on carpenter-knowledge-to-moral-knowledge translation ("a door that could complete its swing in either direction... It had been a maybe"); the deleted caveat (ln 101) still passes on the mid-word kill.

## Re-run: Criterion 2 — Missing concrete development

VERDICT: DEVELOPED

The Round 1 flag (ln 103, genus terms where the scene owned an instance) is discharged: "what he'd bring" is now "the study against the brick," the exact object standing a few feet from the sink, and the new ln 89 material is concrete end to end (box, silver tape, split seam, Sonia's).

**Strongest counter-candidate considered: the surviving genus terms in the same list — "contingencies for each of her possible openings" (ln 103).** Could be read as the same dodge one clause later. It survives because the order's own design caps the list at one concrete anchor: the paragraph's event is the setting-down, and fully concretizing the catalog would develop the preparation more richly than its renunciation, inverting the beat. The one named instance ("the study against the brick") is the item that carries the chapter's thematic freight; the residue staying generic is what "kept reaching" costs him staying blurry, which is correct. Second candidate re-checked: "in a state he had refused at the time to name" (ln 75) — survives as before; the refusal-to-name is the datum, and the sentence grounds itself immediately in the concrete circumstance ("he had painted a woman he was pretending to date, from memory, without telling her").

## Re-run: Criterion 3 — Split cumulative movement

VERDICT: DEVELOPED

The Round 1 flag is discharged by the exact ordered merge: "The wait was terrible in an ordinary way: he wanted to move something and had nothing in reach worth moving." (ln 103) — the ruleset's choppy→connected pattern applied verbatim.

**New-text split candidates tested (strongest first):**

- "He could wrap the panel flat, slide it into that box, carry it to Sonia's, and not have to start with his own sentence. He put the glassine down." (ln 89) — could merge as "...his own sentence, and he put the glassine down." Survives as written: the full stop isolates the refusal as an act, parallel to "He hung the clipboard back on its nail and left the phone in the coat" (ln 13); merged, the refusal becomes a trailing clause inside the temptation's syntax and the decline loses its beat. The break does the work.
- "The delivery box was still by the freight door, silver tape split down its top seam. He could wrap the panel flat..." (ln 89) — could merge into one sentence. Survives: the first sentence is the eye landing, the second the want forming; the conditional is already a four-verb cumulative movement and taking the box description into it would bury the noticing that triggers it.

**Round 1 surviving candidates re-confirmed unchanged:** ln 11 ("That was accurate. It was accurate on purpose...") — the repetition is a visible doubling-back; ln 87 ("The door stayed half open. The cheek stayed bare ground.") — parallel breaks preserve each decision as a decision; ln 7 ("He knew what the acknowledgments page said. June knew. Odile knew.") — per-person enumeration.

## Re-run: Criterion 4 — Allowable efficiency (exemptions honored, named)

VERDICT: DEVELOPED (exemptions applied as follows; nothing flagged falls under an allowance, and no allowance was used to excuse the repaired sites)

- The Odile confrontation (lns 15–59): pressure scene carried in dialogue; Theo's plainness voice-card-licensed ("goes very plain when he finally stops hiding") and chapter-card-mandated ("prose dials: Theo direct"). Not flagged.
- Odile's clipped answers ("It was partly your fault," "No," "You will be less convenient"): her card's mandated cognition ("one sentence, sometimes two; no speechifying"). Not flagged, correctly unsoftened.
- The unresolved Sunday (lns 107–113): plot-required non-resolution per the chapter card's final setback ("he must wait without managing"); "he was not going to spend them building anything" (ln 109) is a held thought the Ch 22 card owns. Not flagged.
- The shutdown ritual (ln 113) and "Okay" (ln 111): procedural efficiency in a low-interiority close. Not flagged.
- Both repaired sites (lns 89, 103) were *not* exempted on any ground; they were tested under criteria 1–3 above and pass on their own development (noted so the passes are not silent skips).

## Stress-target re-adjudication (Round 1 targets 3 and 4)

3. **Portrait scene:** the painting still develops through painter decisions (unchanged), and the disposition no longer begins solved — the romantic-offering temptation is live at ln 89, concrete, motivated, and refused in action before the label / faced-to-wall / no-crate run, which now reads as settlement of a contested question. Discharged.
4. **Text-message scene:** the recurrence paragraph now carries one concrete instance of the reflex ("the study against the brick") and the merged cumulative sentence; the setting-down remains the event and the reflex is refused twice in the same key across the two sites, per the orders' coordination clause. Discharged.

## REVISION ORDERS

None. All three Round 1 orders are executed exactly (orders 2 and 3 to the letter; order 1 within its offered options and constraints), the snapshot diff contains the ordered edits and nothing else, and the full re-run of criteria 1–4 on the current text produces no new instances.

OVERALL: DEVELOPED
