I note that I'm a data analyst, the oldest child, that my younger sister Eleanor is the one getting married.
I avoid any mention of net worth. Tessa will see these documents, and I have made it this far without anyone at work knowing that I am, in the most inconvenient possible sense, secretly a billionaire.
Baxter drops a tennis ball onto my foot.
"I'm working," I say, without looking down.
The ball rolls two inches. He nudges it back against my foot with his nose.
I pick it up, throw it into the hallway, and listen to the scramble of his retreat.
Section two: how we met. I stare at the blinking cursor. The obvious answer isthrough work, but my family knows I work for a matchmaking firm. Any hint that this is manufactured and they would sense the inconsistency immediately, with the unerring instinct of people who have been suspicious of me since adolescence.
I type:We met at a gallery opening.
It is at least plausible, and gives this woman conversational material that won't require her to know anything about contract law.
Baxter returns at speed, drops the ball, and looks at me with luminous expectation.
"One more," I say, and throw it again.
I add a note in the brief's margin:confirm candidate's comfort level with art as conversational topic.
It occurs to me I know very little about the kind of person Tessa typically selects for cases like this.
What does she look like? How will she carry herself in a room full of people trained since birth to identify pretense?
But Tessa has one of the highest placement success rates at ERS. If anyone can find the correct person for this situation, it's her.
I draft section three about acceptable behavioral parameters. When I reread it, I wonder, with a flicker of discomfort, whether it sounds less like a brief and more like a list of complaints about people.
Baxter resettles at my feet, warmer and heavier against my ankles, a counterweight I hadn't known I needed.
I finalize the document at nine forty-seven with six sections, two appendices, a family reference guide with photographs I'll attach separately.
It is thorough. It is precise.
It is, I acknowledge in the privacy of my own skull, mildly excessive.
I attach it to an email, then hesitate with my finger over the trackpad, rereading the subject line:Briefing Materials. Please Review.I add:I recognize this is detailed. It will make things easier.
I send it before I can overthink it.
Baxter lifts his head and looks at me with calm, uncomplicated certainty, as if the outcome of this entire scheme is already settled and I'm simply the last to know.
