The next day—the very next day—your wife reneged.

By email.

Tom told me he simply could not believe she was pulling out—“Not after everything we’d been through negotiating with her, not after that breakfast meeting,” where they had agreed all that was left to do was “draw up the contract” and sign.

Handshake though it was, Tom believed a deal had been made.

Figuring your wife had cold feet, Tom called her and asked to meet. He wanted to try to work things out. And she refused to see him. Your wife (with you by her side) promised to take his $800,000.00 the day before, but today she won’t agree to see him face to face.

Stunning when you think of it, no?

So, no meeting, but Tom managed to get her on the phone. That’s when your wife told Tom that she’d “gotten a better deal.”

So, picture me, on the phone with Tom in February 2023, and please recall that back in January 2022 I asked your wife (through my lawyer) if your wife had “sold the Apothecary for a million dollars” because your one son said she had . . . and, that same son added the detail about your wife “traveling the world.”

Keep in mind that I’m aware of that lovely trip your family took (in late 2021) to the Dominican Republic. Then a couple of months later, your wife goes solo to Paris. And then a couple of months after that, despite her badly sprained ankle, didn’t she take your younger son hiking for 6-weeks in Austria?

So, I’m getting ready for Tom to tell me that your wife sold it for a million dollars and she’s hitting Asia next—but that’s not what I hear.

This “better deal,” curiously, seemed to involve no exchange of money whatsoever:

Your wife told Tom that a “company in Connecticut” had offered to pay for the entire build-out of the shop and would stock it with the product and allow your wife to remain the owner/operator. All she had to do was promise to give this “company from Connecticut” the “right of refusal” when your wife decides, sometime down the road, “to eventually sell.”

In effect: a Connecticut company offers to underwrite 100% percent of the capital and initial inventory expenses to get the Apothecary up and running, agrees to receive no equity share, and leaves your wife 100% in charge of operations. She’ll also be entitled to pocket (the estimated) $500k-$1.5m profit annually as the Apothecary’s 100% owner. And this Connecticut company is happy to wait for the day when the Apothecary is “eventually sold”—all the while getting nothing from your wife but a “tomorrow” benefit in exchange for a lot of “today” expenditures.

No doubt, your wife (and by extension, you) did think this was a “better deal.”

Your wife would have to work hard, but certainly in the long run it would be “better”—money wise, ~$1million/year in profits.

And with a “Connecticut company” backing all this, your wife’s money troubles were gone. Poof.

But the shop was not open. And it had been fifteen months since your wife got this “better deal.”

And then Tom suggested something I hadn’t ever considered.

Your wife was paid NOT to open—there was no other way to explain it.

Paid not to open.

And that would mean what your son said was true, partially: “My mom is now going to travel the world because she was paid a million dollars not to open the Apothecary.”

TTYS,

Jkb