Beautiful story, @dianelson. It is quite heartbreaking. You succeeded in creating a very powerful story, and one that integrates the important story elements we look for, with interesting characters, a good mix of dialogue and action along with the narrative, and an excellent story arc.
There are some errors that you could find if you did a careful read through again, or perhaps use a tool like Grammarly (there's a free version) or drop the content into Google Docs. It will point out most of the errors.
Thank you for sharing your story in The Ink Well, and for reading and commenting on the work of other community members.