“Plus,” Noah went on, “I’m no good at a lot of memorizing.”

“Memorizing what?” I said.

“Everything to do with being a Mason is passed on as an oral tradition,” he said. “There are no rule books or documents or guides to explain the orders and ceremonies, the things you must recite. There’s nothing written down.”

“Nothing at all?” Quinn said.

Noah nodded and tapped the side of his head with a finger. “You keep it all up here. Each new candidate is mentored by a brother Mason. You’ve got to learn the catechism by heart. Memorize everything. Unfortunately I’ve got a mind like a sieve.”

“What happened after you left?” I asked. “Were there any consequences? Were the others upset with you?”

“In my case, no. There’s an understanding that you’ll respect the privacy of your former brother Masons,” he said. “That you won’t betray their trust or reveal the things you learned in the sanctity of the lodge.”

“It sounds a lot like a cult,” Quinn said, “with all due respect.”

“Plenty of people would agree with you,” Noah said. “But it’s not. Once upon a time they really were a guild of masons—stonemasons who were builders of buildings. Now they see themselves as builders of men. And there are two requirements for joining: you must believe in a higher power—whatever you want to call it, or him—even though they’re not a religious group. Second, you must be a person of good character. They don’t recruit—you approach them if you’re interested and then there’s a trial period before they agree they want you and you agree you want them.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“The Masons do a lot of good things, a lot of charitable work. They’re just quiet about it. Unfortunately that secrecy is what’s led to people thinking they’re some kind of cabal trying to control the government.”

“Has anyone ever talked about what really goes on?” Quinn asked. “Written a book or something?”

“Yes, and it didn’t end well. Not just for him, but for the country,” Noah said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Back in the 1800s a man named William Morgan, who’d been a Mason for a while, decided he was going to write a tell-all book cashing in on the conspiracy rumors and fears going around. In those days anti-Masonic sentiment was a big thing. People wrote about it, talked about it.” Noah finished his cider and crumpled his empty paper cup.