diff --git a/persistit/core/src/test/java/com/persistit/TreeTransactionalLifetimeTest.java b/persistit/core/src/test/java/com/persistit/TreeTransactionalLifetimeTest.java
index 2f9109dbc..55e3a49c2 100644
--- a/persistit/core/src/test/java/com/persistit/TreeTransactionalLifetimeTest.java
+++ b/persistit/core/src/test/java/com/persistit/TreeTransactionalLifetimeTest.java
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 /**
  * Copyright 2013 Akiban Technologies, Inc.
- * 
+ *
+ * Portions Copyrighted 2026 3A Systems, LLC.
+ *
  * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
  * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
  * You may obtain a copy of the License at
@@ -235,6 +237,21 @@ private void createRemoveByStepHelper(final String treeName, final boolean primo
         if (crash || restart) {
             _persistit = new Persistit(_config);
             _persistit.initialize();
+            /*
+             * Recovery itself completes synchronously inside initialize(), but
+             * two maintenance tasks are asynchronous after it: the
+             * TransactionIndex's active-transaction-cache updater thread and
+             * the CleanupManager's timer-driven pruneTimelyResources(). If the
+             * next helper iteration starts a transaction before those settle,
+             * residual tree-version state from this iteration's crash/restart
+             * can leak into its step-based MVCC visibility -- e.g. a tree
+             * created at step 1 shows up at step 0 -- producing an intermittent
+             * ComparisonFailure ("expected:<0[]...> but was:<0[:]...>") seen on
+             * CI. Force both here, the same way the sibling tests quiesce MVCC
+             * state before asserting.
+             */
+            _persistit.getTransactionIndex().updateActiveTransactionCache();
+            _persistit.pruneTimelyResources();
         }
         assertEquals("Expected contents at steps", expected2, computeCreateRemoveState(treeName, 1));
     }