Two students―worlds apart―unite to solve the mystery of a legendary decades-old love story gone tragically wrong in a captivating romance by the award-winning author of The Karma Map and Dating Dr. Dil.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Nisha Sharma’s The Letters We Keep, which is out May 1st 2024!
It doesn’t take long for ambitious freshman and aspiring engineer Jessie Ahuja to learn about two university legends. One is the haunted history of Davidson Tower, where more than fifty years ago, two ill-fated lovers disappeared in a devastating fire. The other is Ravi Kumar, a privileged billionaire nepo baby who’s aggravatingly charming and occupying more brain space than Jessie has room for. Things change when a campus prank locks them both in the old tower’s ghostly library.
There, Jessie finds letters from the fabled lost lovers, forgotten in a hollowed-out copy of Persuasion. One by one, the letters suck Jessie and Ravi into a beguiling mystery and an achingly beautiful long-ago romance destined to go up in flames. It’s also drawing Jessie and Ravi―every bit as star-crossed―closer together. Can they overcome whatever fate has in store for them? Or are they just as doomed as the young lovers whose tragic end has become legend?
Two
Ravi
Ravi Kumar knew he was a nepo baby: the third generation of a tech family that had amassed enough patents and wealth to keep even his great-grandchildren in luxury. Which meant that he could do whatever the hell he wanted as long as it didn’t reflect poorly on his legacy.
There was more than one limitation on his freedom, of course: none of his actions could reflect badly on the family name; he was required to come home during summer breaks and make public appearances during his father’s company retreats; and, more importantly, he’d had to fight his parents on the subject of where to go to college. They preferred Harvard or MIT, which was where the men in his family had attended, but he didn’t want to follow in anyone’s footsteps. No, Ravi wanted to disappear. He wanted an opportunity to pretend that he was fucking normal. And at Hartceller, he had that freedom.
But based on his family’s very early morning FaceTime, things were about to change.
“I still have one more year left of school,” he said in Hindi.
His father was sitting in his office. A wall of framed awards was positioned behind him in different shapes and sizes, all polished and perfectly displayed to reflect years of service and success in tech innovation, computer science, and math. “We understand that you still have some time, Ravi, but it’s good to think about these things now.”
“The press is already starting to ask if you are going to follow in your father’s footsteps,” his mother added. She was holding a chai cup in one hand and her phone in the other. Her hair was freshly washed, and despite not having a stitch of makeup on, she looked as glamorous now as she’d once looked when she graced the big screens in India. Based on the curtain backdrop, she hadn’t left the master suite yet and had dialed in from the home office.
“Papa registered his first patent at nineteen,” Arjun said. “Our cousins have already launched apps of their own. I’m twenty-six and have my own start-up. You’re at an age where you should commit to a career and have an idea of what you want to do.”
Ravi barely managed to control his eye roll. Arjun wanted so hard to be the prodigal son that sometimes he ended up sounding like a desperate suck-up instead.
“Dude, did you sleep in your desk chair again? You look like a mess.”
Arjun straightened his collar and ran a hand through his spiky hair. “It’s 6:00 a.m. here. What do you think?”
“Ravi, we want you to succeed, but we want you to find success on your own path,” his father interjected. “A media studies major won’t help you get an executive position.”
“I know what you’re saying,” Ravi said. He looked at the time on his phone screen, then pushed his chair back. “I don’t know why you all called a family meeting to tell me this on my first day of classes, though. Now if you’re done, I have to go.”
“No, we’re not done,” his father said. He removed his wire-rimmed glasses and leaned forward. “You’re part of a business family. You have a responsibility to hold up our name. You have until winter break to choose an internship with Arjun’s or my company; otherwise, we’re transferring you to a different school.”
Ravi’s heart stopped. “I’m not transferring for my senior year of college.”
“You will if I say so,” he replied calmly. He folded his hands together as if he were delivering a performance evaluation instead of speaking to his son. “It’s time for you to get some office or lab experience. Victor will send you a varied list of choices from my office later today. There will be quite a few options that you can choose from.”
The name of his father’s chief of staff had him straightening in his chair. “Arjun wasn’t forced to do an internship!”
“That’s because I was winning hackathons at your age,” Arjun replied. The smugness in his voice was hard to miss. “I’d already proven myself and committed to a career instead of messing around.”
“You’re doing an internship,” his father repeated. “Nine to five. Winter break, spring break, and through your summer. You’ll stop wasting your time with those parties and reading those books that rot your brain—”
Ravi flinched at the reference to his thrillers.
“And if you intentionally sabotage your work, then you will be transferred to a different school.”
“What if I want to do something outside of the tech sector?” Ravi blurted out. He knew his parents hated his passion for novels, but only because it distracted him from things they thought he should be prioritizing. Honestly, his parents were just as predictable as he probably was.
“Okay, I think that’s enough for today,” his mother interjected, switching to English. She blew him a kiss, as if to soften the tension between Ravi and his father. “Why don’t you go to class now, darling? Your father and brother have said what they said, and your brother can help if you want to talk about it.”
Ravi didn’t even bother saying goodbye as he closed his laptop.
“Damn it,” he hissed. He knew that he would have to work eventually, but joining either his father’s or his brother’s company felt like a death wish. Part of the reason why he was so determined to go to a different school was because he wanted to know if there was anything that excited him as much as tech excited his family. He was good at programming and all the other elements that came with a job in tech, but he didn’t like it. There was no soul, no story to the work his family expected him to do. It felt so . . . cold and clinical, when he wanted something different.
He wanted to forge his own path, but now his time was running out.
He tried to shake off the feeling of restraint around his throat before he slipped his computer into his backpack. Today was the first day of class, and as much as people thought he was just dicking around and biding his time before he entered the family enterprise in Silicon Valley, he cared about doing well in his classes. They were a part of his life that he had complete control over, and he wanted to show, even if it was just to himself, that he was good at something other than tech.
Ravi had ten minutes to make the fifteen-minute walk across campus. That meant he’d have to skate there. Maybe the fresh air could help him clear his head.
He shoved aside the stack of paperback thrillers that he had piled on his bedside table to grab the textbook that was buried at the bottom; then he rushed out of his condo. With a wave to the front-door security guard, he hopped on his electric skateboard and cut behind buildings and through parking lots to reach the center of campus. It was still relatively quiet this early in the morning, which meant that he didn’t have to worry about crowds to slow him down.
He hopped the curb, passed the food trucks dishing out breakfast burritos to the enamored first-year students standing in line, and strode into the Hart Humanities Building three minutes before the start of class.
Thankfully, he knew exactly where his classroom was and walked right into the lecture hall that fit over one hundred students.
Just as he thought he’d caught his breath, he saw the stranger he’d run into the night before in the alley. He’d followed her home to make sure she got there safely and had memorized her profile, her height, her hair, as the features of the person who fought with him in the darkness. In the bright light of day, he could identify her between one heartbeat and the next.
She sat five rows up from the front, all the way to the left. It was as if he’d conjured her from his dreams. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, similar to her outfit from the night before. Her fingernails were a soft pink, and he was pretty sure that she was the kind of person to paint her toenails to match. She looked up from her tablet, and her gaze met his.
That’s when he knew that she recognized him, too. Her eyes went big behind those black square glasses, and her lips parted. He unconsciously started in her direction, as if drawn by an invisible force, before someone shouted his name from the back of the room.
“Ravi,” his fraternity brothers called out. He waved, with the intention of stopping next to the first-year girl before heading to the back. His plans were waylaid when Professor Barnard walked in.
“Please take your seats!” she called out as she strode across the front of the lecture hall.
Ravi hesitated for another moment, debating whether or not he should sit next to the freshman. The only problem was that if she wasn’t interested and Professor Barnard wanted them to stay in the same seats for the rest of the semester, they’d be stuck together. Then the rest of the semester would go to shit, and he wasn’t evil like that. Instead, he walked up the lecture hall stairs toward the very back. He barely finished saying hi before Professor Barnard began talking.
“Welcome to Creative Nonfiction. This class satisfies first-year seminar requirements as well as a humanities credit for English nonmajors. If you look around, you’ll see there is an eclectic bunch in here, but my expectations for all of you are the same.”
The rustling stopped. The sounds of laptops turning on, bags being shoved under seats was done. There was something about Professor Barnard that commanded everyone’s attention. Ravi could respect that. His father was the same way. When Neeraj walked into a room, every person turned and listened. Professor Barnard, with her well-cut beige suit, her hair slicked back in a stately gray bun, and her tanned skin clean of makeup, had everyone holding their breath. She was an institution at the school, and one of the few female professors who had attended Hartceller as an undergrad and graduate student.
“Does anyone know how the university got its name?”
A student on the opposite side of the room raised their hand. They looked familiar to Ravi, but then again, most students wore pajama pants with their hair in topknots at Hartceller.
“Yes,” Professor Barnard said, pointing to the student. “Say your name, pronouns, and class.”
The student dropped their hand. “My name is Amy, she/they, and I’m a sophomore. The university changed its name from New Jersey Technology Center in the year 2000, after the senator and representative who introduced an immigration reform bill. That’s because we became the largest private university in the country for immigrant students.”
“That is correct, Amy,” Professor Barnard said. “Thank you.” She began walking at a slow, measured pace across the front of the classroom. She passed a pen from one hand to the other, pausing to twirl it around her fingertips. “In 1965, the US government signed into law a landmark federal legislation that allowed Southern and Eastern European, African, and Asian immigrants to enter the US for the purposes of employment, family reunification, and asylum. Many immigrants had to come from a specific caste and education status and hold a professional degree, in most circumstances. These restrictions were based on the narrow views of the politicians who signed off on the bipartisan bill. It reeked of colonialism. Of anti-Blackness.”
Ravi leaned closer, just as so many of the other students shifted in their seats to listen.
“Then in 1970, Hartceller, then New Jersey Technology Center, started a program to encourage the continued education of immigrant families,” Professor Barnard continued. “They welcomed one hundred South Asian students in the first-year undergraduate class. Many of those students had parents who came in the first wave after the immigration reform. Regardless of the biased intentions of our politicians, these students were looking for a new life and an education so they could join the workforce.”
Ravi glanced at the back of the new girl’s head. He didn’t know why he was so curious about her. But he had to wonder how someone her age had gotten to be so uptight. Did she have the same kind of parents he had? Ones that came over decades ago?
“Now some of you may be wondering why we’re talking about the origin of the Hartceller University name,” Professor Barnard continued. “That’s because names have power. They have meaning, and your grade in this class will depend on your interpretation of a name.”
Vague, but okay.
“Your final paper in this class will be about your family name, or the name and legacy of someone you value. How did their name develop so much meaning? Why is it important for people to remember?”
A student in the front of the classroom raised their hand. Professor Barnard pointed to them. “Say your name, pronouns, and what class you’re in.”
“My name is Theo, she/her/hers, and I’m a senior,” she said. “Professor Barnard, can we write about the names of people who helped build the university? Like the Davidson family?”
Awareness sparked in Professor Barnard’s eyes. “Ahh, yes. The Hartceller Library and the infamous Davidson Tower. I remember all the stories from when I was a student myself. If it’s important to you, then yes.” She motioned to the room. “Many of you are here because of the name of this institution, but if you all choose to write about the legacy of Davidson Tower, then I’m going to start to question your papers.”
A wave of laughter rolled through the classroom. Ravi knew what she was referring to. The two students who disappeared the night of the fire in 1972. Over the years, what had started as a rumor had become campus legend, just like the stories that haunted so many colleges and universities. Hartceller was a young school, but that didn’t mean it was exempt from the same type of folklore.
He glanced one more time at the first-year stranger, curious to know if she was interested in the legends and stories that fascinated him, too.
Text copyright © 2024 by Nisha Seesan writing as Nisha Sharma
