The One Thing That Mattered

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, a retired schoolteacher named Margaret Robinson refused to evacuate her home in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Neighbors pleaded. Her daughter called from Houston, begging. But Margaret had weathered storms before, and she trusted her brick walls. The floodwaters came anyway. They rose past the porch, past the windowsills, past the photographs on the mantle.…