Canon ledger and word count audit

7.3 Chapter 003 Hawkins Family-Loss Locks

These locks exist because Chapter 003 is not only a movement chapter. It is the private-home chapter inside the Ronance / Steve standalone entrance arc. The chapter must contrast three family answers and must not soften them during skeleton, writing, or QA.

1. Nancy receives a note from Karen and a Virginia direction. This gives movement, not certainty. Nancy does not know whether Karen, Holly, Mike or Ted survived.
2. Robin's parents packed quickly and continued without her. The house must show this physically through missing bags, taken essentials, disturbed drawers / closets, or other fast-packing traces.
3. Robin's parents left no note: not on the counter, not by the phone, not in Robin's room, and not in any private place Robin would know to check. This is abandonment-without-a-word, not generic absence.
4. Robin does not know whether her parents survived after leaving, but the emotional fact she receives in Chapter 003 is that they did not wait and did not leave her a word.
5. Steve's parents are found as living dead in the Harrington house. They are not merely missing, unreachable, or implied dead off page.
6. Steve and the trio must kill them on page. The pain of the scene is not only finding them, but having to stop what remains of them. Nancy and Robin may help physically, but they must not steal Steve's emotional center.
7. The Harrington car / keys / supplies may become useful only after the family horror and the killing land. Do not make Steve's house a clean vehicle pickup.
8. Chapter 003 must leave Nancy with a route, Robin with no note, Steve with the car / keys / jacket, blood on his hands, and living-dead family closure, and the trio together on the road toward Virginia.

Small signs do not need a full scene every time. They do need to be written in prose at least as a short physical reminder, so Steve's future axis can follow a real route and not a general feeling.

A small sign must include at least:

1. An object / code / wrapper / carving / fold, or something belonging to Robin and Steve's language.
2. A walking direction precise enough for Steve, but not visible GPS for strangers.
3. Nancy's help reading road or direction, if she is in frame.
4. Raven's folding, hiding, or reinforcing, if she is in frame.

A sign at a temporary place, camp, ranger station, marina, meaningful shelter, or major departure point must receive a full scene, because it is not only direction. It is an emotional ritual of Robin, Nancy, and Raven, and it tells Steve: we were here, we are not gone yet, and if you arrive late, there is a way to continue.

Every sign written in prose must be documented in the relevant part file's signs table, so future Steve chapters can return it precisely, with location, direction, physical condition, wear, and the cost of elapsed time.

The signs are still not easy GPS. They are a private, funny, sad, tactical language. Strangers may see a wrapper or mark. Steve should read a sentence.