Script words tattooed on three fingers

The snow came down on Tuesday and has not let up since, so the Crown at Hollin Pass is cut off from the valley and I am writing this at the kitchen table with Father's ledger open beside the teapot. I found it in the bottom drawer under the tallow candles. Every guest he ever took in has a line, and beside most of them he wrote a single word in the same careful copperplate you used to copy out of your sums.

Beside Mr Abernethy, who paid in gold and tipped the girls, he wrote Favoured. Beside Eli, the carter who brought flour through every winter when the road was shut, he wrote Constant. Beside the drover with the lame horse and the borrowed spurs there is no word at all, only a smudge where a thumb rested on the wet ink. It took me an hour to see that the smudge was meant to be the third word, the one Father once said to me over the washing up, the one I never once believed him about.

You are not in the book, Tom, though you were the one who ran off to Leeds with the takings and never sent a penny back. I have not decided what to write beside your name. I tried Favoured first, which is the kindest word I know, and it looked like a lie in my hand.

The snow has stopped. Eli's cart is at the bottom of the lane with its lamps lit, and he has asked after you twice. Come home before the thaw. I will leave the ledger open at your page with the ink still wet, and you can choose the word yourself.