How to Make the Reader Love Morris and Charlie

Morris and Charlie are characters whom you don't forget. I think I feel a great empathy with their sense of grief as a necessary presence in their life at this point. And of course the love and the longing for Dilly that they want to satisfy. So how did you decide to start on that wonderful transition? As always with my writing projects, it was in a state of befodlement. It was just gushing out. But I didn't know where to put them. They kept barging into short stories of mine. And they would always have the same immediate effect of destroying the short story. The big problem now is how do I make the reader love them? How