“We’re sure this is all legit, right?” Jasmine asked.

“Well, in California,” Rufus said, “medical marijuana has been legal for over a decade. To place an order on our website, people have to upload a doctor’s prescription, and we require an adult signature for the UPS deliveries. So, I’d say we’re being extra-super careful.”

“And we have a dispensing license,” Serotina added, confident about this from her conversations with Micah.

Every evening after dinner, Sero took Micah down to the basement to update him on their progress. The entire batch had sold out in the first week, generating almost twenty thousand dollars in revenue, and he was eager to get it shipped so they could collect. “How long until the next batch is ready?” he asked Sero as he licked a rolling paper to seal a joint.

“Twelve weeks,” Sero said, flipping through the crate of labeled shipping envelopes on Rufus’s table.

“No way to do it faster?”

Sero shook her head. “Unfortunately not. Hey—” She paused at one of the envelopes, then flipped through a couple more. “New Mexico?” She looked up at Micah. “And Montana? Can we do that, legally?”

“Listen, Sero.” Micah smiled at her as he leaned back in his chair. “There’s legal and then there’s right. Something may be legal, but it’s not right. And something can be right but might not be legal. I believe in applying our intelligence and sense of right and wrong to situations, not just blindly following the letter of the law like a lemming. You agree?”

“Well, I think it depends—”

“Okay, let me give you an example,” Micah interrupted. “You might not know this, because the girl is tough as nails, but Ericka has two severely herniated disks that cause her chronic back pain. She’s entitled by law to get a handicapped placard for her car. You know how helpful that would be, when we go to the farmers’ market or the nursery, to be able to park close when we’re loading those heavy trees and soil bags? Yeah, super helpful. But is it right? Does she need that spot more than someone else? Probably not. So, she doesn’t use the placard and we park far away. If we took a handicapped spot—legal, but not right.”

“Okay,” she said, “but in that case, she’s not doing anything wrong either way.”

“Now, another situation with Ericka: Over-the-counter painkillers don’t work for her; they don’t put a dent in her suffering. And she doesn’t want to use prescription meds, because of the risk of getting hooked. You know what does help her? Smoking marijuana, once in the morning, once in the evening. That’s it. Two joints a day and she’s a perfectly functioning member of society. She doesn’t get addicted. Everyone’s happy, right?”

She nodded. “Yeah, but medical marijuana is legal, and she can get—”

Micah held up a finger and spoke over her. “Now, what if Ericka lived in Wyoming? Exact same situation, same medical condition, same solution, same ethics, right?”