Free Iona Moon by Melanie Rae Thon

drinking her coffee with cream skimmed from the milk. She knew the exact moment she would hear her brothers on the stairs, so she was already on her feet, sliding biscuits in the oven, dropping sausages in the pan.
    Soon they sat at the table. Dale looked sleepy and dim. His hair was thick, but his eyebrows were wisps, so he always seemed surprised. Sometimes Iona wanted to put her arm around him, and sometimes she wanted to hit him. Rafe smiled to himself, remembering a dream or thinking up ways to steal Dale’s sausage. He was hard. A little tree, Iona thought, muscles tight as burls. Leon’s brow furrowed into three deep creases. He worried about the day ahead of him, and the one after that. He couldn’t sit still waiting for biscuits to bake, so he rolled a cigarette and took his coffee to the back steps. Iona watched him. He was built just like their father, thick through the chest and not too tall; his arms bulged, but his legs were skinny and his butt flat.
    Frank was the last to sit at the table. He wore a flannel shirt and blue jeans, just like Iona’s brothers. A matched set , Hannah called the four men, and for some reason this never failed to amuse her. Frank Moon had one wild eyebrow. A tuft of hair whipped up in rebellious glee over his right eye, silent mockery of a serious man. He slicked his dark hair straight back, exposing his high forehead and the blue vein that throbbed in his temple.
    Leon came inside, and Iona filled his plate. He grunted. She closed her eyes and turned back to the stove. What made Leon so afraid? She knew the answer: the rest of his life, all the mornings just like this one. He couldn’t imagine a wife or a child, a life that was his own. One day soon he would sit in his father’s chair, thinking his father’s thoughts. He saw himself old and he saw himself dead.
    When Iona turned around again, all the chairs were empty, as if the men had simply vanished. They’d left dirty plates and half-filled mugs, pans to scrub and food to put away. And it was late. Mama was awake by now, ready for her white coffee: one quarter coffee, three quarters milk. If Iona wasn’t standing on the road in half an hour, she’d miss the bus to school, and Mr. Fetterhoff would call again to remind her she had eight absences. The year’s hardly begun, Miss Moon, and already I wonder if you’ll graduate .
    â€œI’m glad they’re gone,” Hannah said to Iona. Frank had driven the boys to town and put them on the bus for Missoula. “Rafe will push his brother too far someday. The crazy thing is, Dale loves Rafe. Like part of himself. Like you love your own arm.”
    Iona sat on the edge of Hannah’s bed. She wouldn’t say she loved her own arm, but she thought she knew what Hannah meant about another person being part of herself. Sometimes when she slipped the bedpan under her mother, she felt the sting of the sores as if they were on her own rump.
    â€œAre you warm enough, Mama?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou want another cup of milk?”
    â€œI’ll float away.”
    â€œAnything?”
    â€œJust keep talking.” Iona reached under the covers to hold her mother’s hand. “It’s quieter with them out of the house,” Hannah said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBut I worry about your father.”
    â€œLeon chopped enough wood to get us through two winters.”
    â€œThat’s not what I’m talking about,” Hannah said. “I saw your daddy chase a bear one night. He ran out of the house wearing nothing but his nightshirt and his boots. The bear was having a time for himself. He’d knocked over the garbage and was batting tin cans across the lawn. He was twice the size of your father, but he took one look at that crazy little man waving the flashlight and headed for the hills. Literally. I remember thinking, Frank Moon has the skinniest legs I ever saw, but he is brave.”
    Iona glanced