For years, people asked Rochelle: What were you thinking?

Everybody wanted to know. Strangers would cross the street to cut her off on the sidewalk. Hey, they would say. Tell me one thing.

She had put the girls down after lunch and tried to catch a nap herself, but every time she started to doze off, the sirens. You’d think they’d blow the sirens only after somebody had actually seen a tornado, but no. They’d been going off all morning. She didn’t know how the girls slept through it.

They were almost out of milk. They only had enough…