This piece had the makings of a good story, however, it needs an edit to resolve issues with punctuation and grammar, eg: speech marks in dialogue, and some word choices. Try Grammarly or Google docs. It is also very important that you proofread your own work. At one point you call Chloe, Nicole by mistake. You also have Chloe, at the age of two years old, being told about her mother's pregnancy as a warning, and later you have Chloe explain to Nicole everything that had happened to her. Given Chloe's age at the time of her adoption, these elements of the story lack a sense of realism. The story needs to be credible to retain the interest of the reader, otherwise you are likely to lose them early and they won't read to the end. Something to consider for your next piece :-) Please do remember that we require each writer to read and support at least TWO other stories in The Ink Well each time they submit a story of their own.