Then, very slowly, she began to nod. A single tear slid down her cheek and fell onto her apron.

His mother, Nomsa, was in the kitchen stirring a pot of samp and beans, her back a permanent curve from years of sewing in a factory. She had never met Dolly Parton, never been to Tennessee. But she had raised Thando on two things: struggle and country music. Not the drinking-beer-in-a-truck kind. The weepy, steel-guitar, lost-love-and-found-faith kind. Dolly was her high priestess.

Thando clicked the repeat button. Tomorrow is Forever began again, and in that tiny room in Soweto, with the smell of samp in the air and a pirated MP3 file glowing on the screen, a broken promise was mended—not by a man returning, but by a son who understood.