Every moment in this robe feels like a blasphemy.

My presence here certainly is.

Sénanque Abbey is one of the oldest monasteries in the world, founded in 1148. Cistercian monks have lived and worked here since 1854, with a brief absence between 1903 and 1988 when a new priory from Lérins Abbey returned. Since then the abbey has flourished, the monks tending to the lavender and apiaries for their livelihood. In keeping with this 21st century trend of mindfulness, they also take in people seeking spiritual retreats.

That's how I arrived here years ago.

I wasn't seeking peace. I was seeking absolution for the sin of being alive.

I have loved two women and I have lost them both. There were others in my youth. But only these two mattered.

One was my savior, who came to me when my road was at a dark end. She helped me find my way in an untethered world, helped me pave a path and life that for a few years provided me with happiness. If only we'd understood that the emptiness in my memory was false serenity; that my past would always be my present and my future, and no one with me could be safe. Marie died when a bullet meant for me struck her.

The other woman was my salvation. I loved her in two lifetimes, and in neither could I keep her.

Nicolette Parsons, née Parish.

Nicky.

She knew me when I was another man, when I was a secret, hidden beneath the machine Treadstone built and called Jason Bourne. His name was David Webb and she loved him. Even when she came to me, I knew she loved him still; but she never called me by his name. Never. To her I was Jason. It was at once relief and benediction, her acknowledgement and acceptance of who I was. But all the same, there was a lingering emptiness, knowing that David, her David, shared my face, my body, my being, and I was none of him. Sometimes I felt like a shadow, a thief, a doppelganger.

The first time we tried to make love, we stopped, pained, anguished, confused. Her touch was new and unfamiliar, yet at the same time, she knew where to touch me, how to touch me; and it felt like an unfaithfulness to Marie. In Nicky's eyes, I could see all her sorrow, how making love to me was simultaneously a betrayal of her memories of him, and of that moment with me.

We did not touch each other intimately again for several long months.

I could tell you the exact moment she fell in love with me, when David Webb no longer held her in thrall, when Jason Bourne was the man for whom she smiled, all the love shining in her eyes.

We were in Provence. She told me we'd been there before, but I had no memory of this. For months after that aborted lovemaking attempt, we simply allowed ourselves to be…to be. Just to be. We lived together, we ate together, we slept in the same bed. Our touches were infrequent at first; but as we adapted, as we learned how to be Jason and Nicky together, it got easier to reach out, to stroke her face with the back of my fingers; to accept her body curled around mine in the morning; to take her hand when we walked along Omaha Beach outside the home we shared. Our silence became less measured, more peaceful; I'd wake up from naps on the couch in the wood-paneled family room to find across from me, reading in an armchair. It felt so…fucking normal.

We went to Provence on a whim, found ourselves near here, in the town of Gordes. The locals suggested a tour of the ancient Abbey. As we drove up and saw the lavender fields outside the Abbey walls, Nicky yelled, "Stop the car!" I did, but was unprepared for her sprinting out of the car to run shrieking into the garden, spinning around and around happily. I had never seen her…joyful. The sun was in her hair, delight in her brown eyes…and I smiled at her. Smiled with every bit of pleasure I felt at seeing her like this, of being with her.

And when Nicky saw my smile, she stopped, stared. The wide grin on her face gave way to something soft, something tender. Something that took my breath away.

We fell in love amidst a riot of purple flowers and made love that night in a bed strewn with them.

Lavender is Nicky and Nicky is lavender.

Sometimes I wake, overpowered by the perfume of lavender that lingers in the morning air, and despite the hardness of my bed, the roughness of the sheets, the paucity of comfort, for a moment, I think she is with me. My body craves her, wants her silken warmth; I am hard, I am aroused, I need her; and each time I come to consciousness, with reality comes the misery and the fury that effectively douses my desire and reminds me that my body will never know hers again.

It kills me that I never held her again as David Webb, even when I could recall that part of me.

The Cistercians are among the most austere of the Catholic orders, practicing monastic life as it was in St. Benedict's time. We live under the Rule of St. Benedict, so we are sometimes known as Benedictines, and also "White Monks" because we wear white cucculas, or choir robes, over our habits, instead of black ones like other Benedictine orders.

Our life at the abbey is divided between prayer and work. We gather seven times a day to pray, to sing, to observe the liturgy of the hours. Vigils begin at 4:30 am followed by Lauds and Mass; sext, none, then vespers; and compline finishes our day at 8:15 pm. In between prayer, we work. We care for our lavender and our bees and our olive groves. We sell the products of our labor to the public.

We are at none, the three o'clock liturgy. My brothers are praying and celebrating God. I am not.

I'm just mimicking every other man here, head bowed over clasped hands. My lips are moving and my eyes are closed; but I am not engaged with The Lord. My penance is to suffer every moment that I live whilst they are dead. Marie. Nicky. The unborn child I forfeited along with my memory.

So while my fellow brothers seek comfort and spiritual completion, I don my mental cilice and replay the moments when those two women died, a hairsbreadth away from me, because they'd had the folly to love me, to be…a hairsbreadth away from me.

There's a tradition of warrior monks, both historically and in literature. It makes sense. When you live in blood and chaos, silence and order are alluring. Your time is not your own; it belongs to prayer and to work, to the hallowed and the mundane. You can forget yourself because you are expected to put yourself aside. There is symmetry in death and in devotion.

Conversion to monastic life takes about five to six years so I'm almost halfway there. We don't take a vow of silence despite public perception to the contrary; Cistercians may speak on three different occasions, but generally, we don't talk as we are in continual prayer. This is acceptable to me.

But…I am a fraud in a friar's frock. I am here to punish myself, not to celebrate the Divine Office. Maybe this is part of the conversion process – becoming aware of my doubts, of my reasons for being here, why I've chosen to wear this robe.

This robe which I'm pretty sure I'm dishonoring with my thoughts.

Fuck.

And my cursing.

There is satisfaction in punishing your body with back-breaking, bone-wearying work, leaning over to harvest lavender; normally I care for the bees, collecting honey, or making sure that the hives are thriving and the queens are healthy. Today, I have been asked to gather lavender bundles and prepare them for sale in our store.

Vespers is in an hour and I will repeat my mental torture, remembering the way Marie's head snapped back before lolling to a side; the way Nicky's brown eyes were glazed with pain as she – even to the goddamned last trying to help me – threw me the key that gave me insight into my past.

A shadow falls over my table of bound lavender sheaves and I look up. I already know it's not one of my compatriots.

Standing before me is a girl with dark blond hair and aviator glasses. She's in jeans, hiking boots and layers: collared shirt, pullover and a down jacket. Slung over her shoulders are the straps of a dark backpack.

At first I think she's gotten separated from her school group – the abbey offers educational tours – but she's so clearly alone as she stares up at me that I wonder instead if she's one of the tourists who's passing through. But that thought is discarded because she's too young to be on her own. She's what? Fourteen, maybe fifteen?

My daughter would have been a little older than her.

The thought sears through me. At that moment she lifts the aviator glasses and lets them rest on top of her head. Her face is familiar, refined; slate blue eyes flecked with black, grey, green stare at me.

But my daughter would have had brown eyes instead of blue eyes…

Wait. I know those eyes.

I think I'm pretty poker-faced, but maybe I betray some reaction because that strangely calm face crumples and tears well up in her eyes. She's trying to hold herself together and losing the battle; but she manages to choke out one word:

"Treadstone."

The robes in which I chafe will be set aside.

I am a monk no more.

I am Jason Bourne.