I think our gap is that I didn't see "no movement" as much as "no talking." I think those are different.I think that we're both very close to being on the same page here, but there was no lack of leaks. Cora himself "leaked" that there was no movement on a contract three weeks ago. That's straight from his mouth. From there you can form an opinion on whether he will or will not be back which is what the media did. When you combine this with the history-based assumption, I don't think that it's a bridge too far to say that Cora wouldn't be back.
Actually, the @donutogre post above said what I was trying to. (More specifically, he did the work I didn't.) Speaking only for me, it was Flemming's tweet that sort of crystallized it. If he or anyone else had simply said, "it would be pretty surprising if 'not talking' turned into 'coming back' because it usually doesn't," that would be pretty par for the reporting course. But all of the reporting on this lately made it sound like there was something new to report when it was just more feels based on the same info.