Short Story Emulation

I've been thinking a lot about my short story and what it's going to be. My family has had a young woman working for us ever since she was about my age right now. She started working with us when my mother was pregnant with my oldest brother. She stayed with my family until a few years ago when she got married. She's now pregnant but that's not really relevant. She comes from an extremely large family, one of twenty seven children, not all of the same wife and she's pretty much acted as my third parent. I still see her on vacations, and I've been missing her a lot recently.
So what I've decided to do with my short story was use Paulette's character and put her back in her home village of Kotonu but old, and a widow. Her husband will reappear, but be missing the scars that her people are adorned with from birth. I'm going to call her and ask her what she would do in that situation and I'm also going to call her and ask for details about her family, how they celebrate, what her village looks like, what her husband does for a living, and all these other details to make the story come to life. Also, it's her birthday quite soon, and I was gonna call her and read it out to her as a birthday present, so hopefully I'll be done by then.