In the Holloway family, I learned early that being the older daughter didn’t count for much. What mattered was who could charm our parents most easily, and that was always Brianna.
Before seven in the morning, I would be standing at a bus stop with my backpack pulled tight against my shoulder while Mom or Dad drove Brianna across town to St. Andrews Episcopal School. Her private-school tuition was treated like an investment. My public education was treated like proof that I was capable of managing on my own.
“Jasmine’s independent,” Mom liked to say. “She doesn’t need what Brianna needs.”
Even as a kid, I understood the translation.
Jasmine can do without.
I remember bringing home a straight-A report card and setting it on the kitchen table in front of Dad. He scanned it for maybe two seconds.
“Did you see Brianna’s art project?” he asked. “She was selected for the district showcase.”
That was how it worked.
My grades were expected. Brianna’s accomplishments were events.
She had ballet lessons, violin tutors, summer programs, private coaching, whatever she was interested in that month. When I asked to join the school debate program, Dad said the $275 fee wasn’t something we could justify.
“We have to prioritize our spending.”
That same week, they bought Brianna a $2,600 laptop because, according to Mom, she needed the right tools for her creative development.
There was one person who never pretended the difference was normal.
Grandma Margaret.
When my parents disappeared into one of Brianna’s rehearsals or competitions, Grandma would find me somewhere quiet.
“How’s my brilliant girl?”
And she meant it.
She wanted to hear about robotics club. She asked about the little bookkeeping jobs I picked up. She remembered what classes I was taking. She remembered which teacher I liked and which project I had been nervous about.
When I was sixteen, my parents skipped my National Honor Society induction because Brianna had a dance recital.
Later that night, I sat beside Grandma on her couch and finally asked the question I had been carrying for years.
“Why do they love her more?”
Grandma pulled me against her shoulder. Her lavender perfume filled the space around me.
“They don’t love her more, sweetheart,” she said. “They love themselves more. Brianna reflects what they wish they were. But you reflect who they really are—hardworking, practical, unadorned. And that makes them uncomfortable.”
I didn’t fully understand what she meant at sixteen.
But I remembered it.
I built my life around being practical because practicality was what I had.
While Brianna moved through college with Mom and Dad paying her tuition and living expenses, I worked two part-time jobs and took freelance bookkeeping work to cover mine at Texas State University.
She changed direction more than once.
I graduated with honors in accounting.
Boring? Maybe.
Useful? Absolutely.
When I earned my CPA license, Grandma Margaret came to celebrate with me.
My parents didn’t.
They were in Cancun celebrating Brianna’s engagement to a man she had known for three months.
The engagement ended four months later.
By then, I should have been used to being overlooked. Most of the time, I told myself I was.
Then my twenty-fifth birthday came.
It fell on a Saturday. I had mentioned it a few times in the weeks before, casually, because I didn’t want to sound needy. I hoped we might have dinner.
That morning passed without a phone call.
No text.
No plans.
Around noon, I opened Facebook and saw Mom’s post.
“Shopping day with my baby girl. So blessed.”
She and Brianna were smiling at Nordstrom with shopping bags beside them and champagne glasses raised.
It wasn’t Brianna’s birthday.
When I graduated with honors, Mom and Dad sent me a text.
“Congrats.”
When Brianna graduated two years late, they rented a venue, invited around fifty people, and hired a professional photographer.
Grandma never forgot any of my milestones.
When I passed the CPA exam, she arrived at my apartment carrying homemade lasagna. She framed my first business card. She saved some of my college papers in a folder and told everyone in her book club that her granddaughter was an accountant.
One Sunday over lunch, she reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
“You’re building something real, Jasmine. Your parents may not see it, but I do.”
Then she added, “Someday when I’m gone, you’ll have more than my love to remember me by.”
I assumed she meant photographs. Maybe jewelry.
I never imagined she meant her house.
Grandma’s place in East Austin had been the safest part of my childhood. Three bedrooms. Two bathrooms. A broad porch. A garden she seemed able to keep blooming through every season.
It was where she taught me to make apple pie.
Where she taught me to plant roses.
Where I could sit beside her and read without having to prove I was interesting enough to deserve attention.
When Grandma Margaret died, I thought I had lost the only person in my family who had ever truly seen me.
Then Camille Lawson called about the will.
I sat in Camille’s office and listened as she explained that Grandma had left the East Austin house entirely to me.
No shared ownership.
No percentage for Brianna.
No authority granted to my parents.
Just me.
The property was worth roughly $820,000.
That mattered financially, of course.
At the time, I was living in a cramped studio apartment in Round Rock. Depending on traffic, my commute could take close to forty minutes. Grandma’s house was only about three miles from Northstar Digital Systems, where I had recently accepted a senior accountant position.
Moving into the house would save me roughly $1,850 a month in housing costs.
It would also give me a home office, room for consulting work, and something I had spent most of my adult life trying to create.
Stability.
The irony was that Brianna worked at Northstar too.
She had recently been promoted to marketing manager and had spent weeks telling anyone who would listen how impressive that was. She liked mentioning that the CEO himself, Adrien Mercer, had approved the promotion.
Within days of the will reading, Mom called.
Her voice was sweeter than usual.
“Jasmine, honey, we need to talk about Grandma’s house.”
I knew immediately where the conversation was going.
“It’s a big responsibility,” she said. “Maybe too much for one person.”
Dad joined in with sudden concern about maintenance, property taxes, and whether I really needed that much space.