“Who is this?” Thandi whispered.

“You like Eddie?”

The old man laughed—a dry, sad sound. “Eddie Zondi? He quit in 2005. Said the music business was ‘too loud for his soul.’ He’s a gardener now. In Mamelodi. Prunes roses for rich people.”

Because Eddie Zondi hadn’t given her back her lover. He’d given her something better: the courage to let the silence in her flat be filled not with loneliness, but with the memory of a thread, sewing her back together, one romantic ballad at a time.

And somewhere in Mamelodi, a gardener stopped pruning a rose bush. He hummed a melody—an old one, not yet recorded. Maybe tomorrow he’d go to the church hall. Maybe not.

Thandi paused the tape. She picked up her phone. She typed a message to her ex—not an angry one, not a pleading one. Just: “I hope you find your constellations.”

She took it to the counter. The old man behind it squinted.