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“What happened?” I asked.
“You were standing there, and it looked like you were talking to someone,” Hannah, a student intern who was helping with the site, said. “Then you took a step back and tripped, but I’m not sure over what.”
“What are you holding in your hand?” Tripp asked.
Glancing down, I found myself staring at a locket. I turned it over and saw the wordCharlotteetched onto the back. My heart kicked against my chest.
“Where did you get that?” Tripp asked in an amazed voice.
It took me a few moments to reply. I had no fucking idea where I’d gotten it. Not wanting to hand it over as a find from the site, I pushed it into my pocket and replied, “It must have fallen out of my pocket when I fell.”
“It looks old. What’s the story behind it?” Hannah asked.
Forcing a smile, I said, “We’ll save that for another time—let’s get this doll out, shall we?”
Hannah nodded and moved to the area where the doll was. Tripp gave me a questioning look. “You okay?”
“I’m great. Let’s see what we’ve got here.”
The three of us all got down on the ground and carefully worked around the area of the doll. The entire time, I couldn’t shake the feeling of déjà vu I kept having.
Hollie
After setting the lasagna on top of the oven, I slipped the bread in and stood up. I went to turn and stopped when I felt the baby move. Smiling, I put my hand on my stomach.
“Hello, little Charlotte!”
I dropped my hand and stared down at my stomach. “Now why in the world did I just call you Charlotte?”
Another small move. Smiling, I rubbed my swollen belly. “You like that name?”
When the baby kicked, a strange sense of knowing came over me and I startled. I had somehow known that the baby was Charlotte.Shewanted her name to be Charlotte.
Reaching for my phone, I dialed my mother.
“Hello sweetheart, how’s the cooking coming along?” she asked.
“Um, fine. It’s great. Mom, I have to ask you something.”
“Okay. Ask away.”
“When you were pregnant with me and Sarah, did you ever talk to us?”
She laughed. “All the time, Hollie. I read to you, sang to you. The baby can hear you.”
I drew in a breath. How could I word what I needed to ask without my mother thinking I’d gone insane?
“No, Mom, I mean did you communicate back and forth with us?”
She paused. “No. But I do remember my grandmother saying she could hear my mother’s thoughts, but only until she reached a certain point in her pregnancy. Why? Can you hear the baby’s thoughts?”
Chewing on my lip, I said, “I’m almost positive she just told me she wants to be named Charlotte.”
“Oh, Hollie, sweetheart! That was your third great-grandmother’s name. Or was it your fourth? I can never remember. She was named after her father’s sister who passed away when she was young.”
“How do you know this?” I asked with a slight laugh.
“It’s on the family tree and in the family book. There’s a family legend that Charlotte’s mother gave her daughter her favorite dolly while she was in labor with her third child. It was a rather difficult birth, and Charlotte had heard her mother crying out and was scared. So, her father gave her the doll and said that Charlotte’s mother had asked her to watch over it and practice being a big sister. Sadly, both her mother and the unborn child died in childbirth.”
