Although we had moved out of the purple mansion, for the sake of stability we had kept Gracie and Brody at Scroggs Elementary School in Southern Village. It was just a few blocks from the campaign office I had helped set up for John Edwards but where I was no longer welcome. On the morning after the deputy sheriff came to our house, we actually saw several of my former colleagues on the street. They turned away, either pretending they didn’t see us or snubbing us intentionally. At school, Brody told his class that “the police were at our house last night.”
After we made sure the two older kids were safely inside Scroggs and delivered Cooper to his three-hour preschool class, Cheri and I ran a few errands together. (We were feeling a little paranoid and didn’t think we should separate.) The last stop on our schedule was the turtle supply department at PetSmart. If you have never been to one of these places, imagine a supermarket-size store filled with rawhide bones, aquariums, catnip toys, and every other item a family pet might require. As we went inside and looked for the right aisle, Cheri and I went through a little routine we have, where I predict that whatever we’re shopping for is going to be exorbitantly priced-say, five hundred dollars for a clear plastic turtle house-and she says we can get everything we want for next to nothing.
When we finally found the spot in the store where they sold the terrariums, heaters, misters, food, rocks, decorations, and other turtle items, I knew that outfitting Mr. T was going to cost us far more than Cheri expected. I became more certain when the young man in charge greeted us and began his monologue about what we owed this little critter when it came to his care and feeding. I was almost relieved when my cell phone rang and I saw it was the senator. I told Cheri I was going outside to speak to him, and she nodded.
The weather was warm for a day in December, and the sun felt good on my face. I sat on the curb in front of PetSmart and listened as the senator told me he wanted to find a “way out of this thing,” which meant he wanted to kill the Enquirer story or, barring that, prevent the rest of the media from picking it up. He talked about how he and John Kerry had lost by a few hundred thousand votes in Ohio in 2004 and he knew how to win in November but would never get the chance if we didn’t act decisively now. “A black or a woman can’t win the general election,” he said again.
Sensing that this was going to be a hill that would require all of my focus, I got up from the curb and walked to my minivan with the cell phone still held to my ear. I got inside and noticed, in the pile of mail on the seat, that Edwards was on the cover of the Newsweek that had just been delivered. (The article about him, which I read later, noted his surging popularity and quoted him saying, “I’m going to speak the truth.”)
The senator talked as if he had all the time in the world, even though the Des Moines debate was just two hours away. (His demeanor made me think that he possessed at least one presidential quality: the ability to stay cool in a crisis.) Gradually, he came around‹ he to the real purpose of his call. He wanted me to issue a statement taking responsibility for Rielle’s baby-to insist I was the father-and then disappear with her, Cheri, and the kids for a few weeks. The senator’s rich trial lawyer friend Fred Baron would let us use his private jet and pay for our expenses as we enjoyed the equivalent of a multiweek luxury vacation.
I was dumbfounded. How, I asked, was I supposed to explain to my wife that I should confess to an affair I never had, claim an unborn child that was not mine, and then bring her along with our family as we attempted to vanish into thin air? Although he couldn’t begin to tell me how I might accomplish these tricks, the senator did appeal to my commitment to the cause that is “bigger than any one of us” and to our friendship. When I told him that he was asking me to ruin my career and my ability to support my family, he said that was not true. He would make sure I had a job in the future, he said. “You’re family. A friend like no friend I’ve ever had,” he added before concluding that if I helped him, I would make Mrs. Edwards’s dying days a bit easier. “I know you’re mad at her, Andrew, but I love her. I can’t let her die knowing this.” He said he thought her days were short.
Sitting there on the curb in front of PetSmart, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. My wife and children had been so shaken by the creeps from the National Enquirer that they were no longer comfortable at the Governors Club. My colleagues at the office I had opened, but where I no longer had a desk, were shunning me. All of my professional contacts, made through my work for Senator Edwards, were slowly evaporating. And the much beloved and respected Elizabeth Edwards was telling mutual friends, donors, politicians, and anyone else who would listen that I was the worst kind of scoundrel. (The senator had obviously told her the lie about my being the baby’s father long ago.) In short, I was fucked, and at that moment I couldn’t see that I had any options but to continue playing John Edwards’s game.
As I hung up the phone, Cheri came out of PetSmart hauling turtle stuff. When I didn’t say anything about her purchases, she realized that the content of the phone call must have been serious. I told her that I needed a few minutes to think before I tried to tell her about it. With about a half hour left before Cooper would be ready for pickup at preschool, I steered the car toward McDonald’s.
The drive-through was backed up with the cars of other parents buying Happy Meals, so we moved slowly toward the intercom station where you place your order. After I finally got to holler for Chicken McNuggets with chocolate milk and the right toy, I turned to Cheri and in the time it took us to reach window number one (where you give them the money), I said, “Edwards wants me to say I’m the father of Rielle’s baby, and then Fred’s gonna fly us off to someplace where we can all hide.”
At this point in the “conversation,” I had reached the pay window, so I pulled out my wallet and handed the young McDonald’s cashier a twenty-dollar bill. She gave me the change, and as I pulled forward to collect the food, Cheri began to sputter.
“Are you out of your mind? Why would you even tell me about this? Why didn’t you just say no?”
Cheri wasn’t exactly yelling, but she was loud. At the delivery window, I reached out and took the McDonald’s Happy Meal box from the clerk and said, “Thank you.” The clerk didn’t bat an eye. My guess is that she had seen plenty of women talking loudly to their husbands at the drive-through.
Once she had vented her outrage, Cheri sat quietly for a few minutes. Among the thoughts that raced through my mind in the silence was that I had gotten us stuck in a big mess involving two billionaires, a presidential candidate, a pregnant mistress, and a whole lot of money. Cheri was having the same thought, and she was recalling the run-in with the men from the Enquirer. That ruckus had only added to the sleep debt she had been accumulating ever since Thanksgiving, as Gracie and Cooper seemed to get one cold or ear infection after another. We were both exhausted and afraid, and once we started talking about the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter problem, we could see it only in the most threatening way. What if the press kept hounding us? Who would ever hire me after the collapse of my career and Mrs. Edwards savaging my reputation? I started to feel light-headed, and Cheri could see I was upset. We were already deep into this mess. I had signed an expensive lease for Rielle’s rental house. I had bought her a car, and I had agreed to be responsible for her into the foreseeable future. These facts hung over our decisions.
The trip from McDonald’s to Cooper’s school was so short that we got there before we could settle anything. We stopped talking when Cooper got into the car and let him tell us about his experience in class. He chattered all the way home, where we went inside so he could eat his Happy Meal and we could get ready for Rielle to come over. She wanted to watch the Iowa debate with me, and since I couldn’t go to the campaign office anymore, and Cheri was not the least bit interested in what John Edwards had to say, I had told her she could come over for it.
According to the analysis I read later, the debate was a boring one. Hillary Clinton talked about the looming Social Security and Medicare deficits. Obama pandered to the locals by saying he would cut federal payments to agribusiness and give more aid to family farms. Edwards made a faux pas in his opening statement, saying, “We should make this country better than we left it.” Laughter from the audience made him correct himself. During the rest of the session, he talked about the “two Americas” and fighting corporate greed and otherwise went through the motions, as though he were distracted. Rielle and I were distracted, too, as I laid out the plan the senator had suggested.
Initially, Rielle was foursquare against it. “There’s no damn way I’m doing this,” she said. “I’m not going to live a lie.” But as we talked, she said she could “handle” the prospect of having both a wealthy presidential candidate and a billionaire benefactor devoted to her care and support. “Not too bad, considering I was sleeping in my car a few years ago,” she said. She could keep up contact with Senator Edwards and, in the meantime, live in luxury until events played out. With these thoughts in mind, her nay vote quickly turned to yea.
‹yea
My wife was not so receptive. She pointed out that the senator had offered no definitive end point for the scheme, other than a vague assurance that it would be over in a few weeks and then he would take responsibility for Rielle’s baby. She also didn’t trust the senator’s promise that if I continued to be a good team player, I would have a job for life with either him or Fred.
Cheri reminded me of promises the senator had made and broken, including his offers to give me more prominent roles in his campaigns. With her words in mind, I called Fred, who assured me that my salary-including a recent 130 percent raise-would be continued along with my health insurance until my new career was established. “You can do anything,” said Fred. “We will make it happen.”
Exhausted and under intense pressure to make a decision, we finally agreed that even if we followed through on the senator’s plan, no one who knew us would actually believe the story he wanted everyone to tell, so we took the plunge. I would work with a lawyer named Pam Marple, who was recommended by Fred Baron, to craft a statement to release to the media. Once that was done, we would fly off in Fred’s plane to a place where no one could find us.
As he listened to me accept his scheme, a prospect that anyone outside the situation would say was ridiculous, the senator breathed a huge sigh of relief. Over and over again he said that he loved me, he loved Cheri, and he was going to support us in every way he could for many years to come. When we discussed the details, he said, “It’s going to be a one-day story, Andrew. No offense, but the press doesn’t give a shit about you. They want me. But if we give them a story they can understand, a story about two staffers, they’ll go away.”
While Pam Marple and I worked on the statement that would be issued to the press, the senator and his allies failed to persuade the editors at the Enquirer to hold the story. No one knew what they planned to say exactly, but we assumed that as soon as a photo of Rielle with child went into circulation, Elizabeth Edwards would go on a furious emotional rampage. The senator was as concerned about this as he was about the prospect of his candidacy being destroyed. On many levels, he still loved Elizabeth and didn’t want to hurt her. We all knew that in her fury Elizabeth could do a lot of damage to innocent people.
To get ahead of the situation, the senator said, he would have to tell his wife a version of the story-the version in which I was the baby’s father. (In fact, he had done this already.) He said he expected that she would make him call to confirm the tale while she listened. With this in mind, he left a message on my cell phone. It said, among other things, “I’m gonna leave you this message just in case you get a call from me where I ask you what’s going on… the reason we are calling is because Elizabeth is standing there… so, be aware of that. If I am calling saying, ‘What happened? How did this happen?’‹ ha or ‘What’s going on?’ then that’s because Elizabeth is standing there with me… I’ve gotta tell her about this because it’s moving.”
For once, I didn’t give John Edwards what he wanted. I refused to be on any call involving the two of them. In five days, he left half a dozen messages, asking me to return his call. Mrs. Edwards, who officially loathed me, even left one asking me to call back on a “hard line” instead of a cell phone, presumably for security purposes. I continued to ignore her, but I did stay true to my word, approving the following statement, drafted by Pam Marple, on December 15, 2007:
As confirmed by Ms. Hunter, Andrew Young is the father of her unborn child. Senator Edwards knew nothing about the relationship between these former co-workers, which began when they worked together in 2006. As a private citizen who no longer works for the campaign, Mr. Young asks that the media respect his privacy while he works to make amends with his family.
This single paragraph was to be offered to the National Enquirer or any other media person who called the Edwards campaign about Rielle Hunter. The senator and the advisers who worked closely with him on this issue-Jonathan Prince and Mark Kornblau-expected the onslaught to begin on Wednesday, December 19, when the new edition of the Enquirer would be posted online. Accordingly, Cheri flew with our kids to Illinois, where they would stay for a while with her parents. She couldn’t tell them exactly why we needed their help, where she was going, or when she might come back. This frightened her mom and dad, but they were supportive. I offered a similar nonexplanation to my family, telling them we were going away, that we were safe, but that I couldn’t tell them anything more.
The Enquirer story, posted online on a Wednesday and distributed to the nation’s newsstands on a Thursday, was as damaging as it could be. The front-page headline screamed john edwards love child scandal! and Rielle’s picture was included. The most important part of the text came in the first two paragraphs:
Presidential candidate John Edwards is caught up in a love child scandal, a blockbuster Enquirer investigation has discovered.
The Enquirer has learned exclusively that Rielle Hunter, a woman linked to Edwards in a cheating scandal earlier this year, is more than six months pregnant and she’s told a close confidante that Edwards is the father of her baby!
Besides these most pertinent paragraphs, I was struck, of course, by a reference to “Andrew‹o & Young, who’s been extremely close to Edwards for years.” The paper added:
And in a bizarre twist, Young-a 41-year-old married man with young children-now claims HE is the father of Rielle’s baby! But others are skeptical, wondering if Young’s paternity claim is a cover-up to protect Edwards.
The Enquirer was right: From any outsider’s perspective, the explanation we had offered to the questions about Rielle was bizarre. But to our relief, no serious newspaper or TV network picked up the story because they couldn’t find a source to confirm it. Our phones and those of our friends and relatives rang constantly with calls from reporters and producers, but we ignored them all. Rielle and the campaign followed the same strategy, and since they still play by the multi-source rule, the big print and broadcast news organizations were stymied.
The reaction was different in the online world, which exploded with speculation. Two prominent bloggers-Mickey Kaus and Matt Drudge-simply ignored the claim that I was the baby’s father and announced that Edwards had a girlfriend who was six months pregnant. A few radio talkers, most notably Don Imus, also made snarky remarks, but since these comments were all based on unconfirmed facts, the news didn’t seem to affect the candidate or the campaign. As I talked to the senator and Fred Baron, we began to think that perhaps our strategy had worked. All that remained was for us to disappear until the more persistent reporters and photo graphers got frustrated enough to give up the hunt.
While Cheri had been in Illinois, Mr. Turtle ended up in a lake, and Meebo went to stay with her brother along with Granny, the cat. Rielle took charge of the decisions about where we might hide out and chose the same resort-the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa in South Florida-where she had been caught in the senator’s room by the campaign staff and hotel security. The destination dictated a light wardrobe, so I packed summer-style clothes for Cheri and me. I also grabbed a small number of the Christmas presents Cheri had bought, because I couldn’t be sure where we might spend the holidays, but I knew I would demand that we be together with the kids.
At four A.M., Cheri and I left the Montross house in my car and went to pick up Rielle, who traveled light-just a few clothes and a bag of makeup-and wore a black bandanna over her hair and her signature bright pink scarf around her neck. Although Cheri and I were both exhausted, Rielle was wide awake and excited. We drove around aimlessly for a bit, making sure no one was following us, and then went to the acres in the woods where our new house was going up. My friend Tim Toben met us there so I could hide the car and he could drop us at the airport. He didn’t ask a single question about why we were dashing out of‹ da town or where we were going. (Later, Tim explained that he had supported Edwards’s campaign because of his interest in energy policy. He wasn’t much interested in the nuts and bolts of electioneering, like who was flying where and when.)
At the FBO, we drove into the hangar and parked next to the jet so no one could see Rielle get out of the car. We were met by a pilot and copilot who ushered us aboard. I noticed that the cabin had been stocked with food, coffee, and liquor. We were the first flight out when the airport opened for the day. The takeoff was smooth, and the plane climbed sharply until it reached an altitude where we could see the sun breaking over the eastern horizon. Rielle grabbed a copy of The New York Times and pored over it for political news. She and I talked quietly about politics while Cheri fell asleep.
A hired car and driver met us at our destination airport and took us to the hotel, where Rielle went into full diva mode. Unwilling to accept just any room, she left the luggage in the lobby while we all traipsed upstairs to inspect the accommodations. The first room had “bad energy,” the second exuded the wrong “ambience,” and the third simply “didn’t feel right.” Since, as she said, “Fred was paying and wouldn’t care,” she kept harassing the desk clerks until we wound up in expensive adjoining suites overlooking the ocean from the top floor. While I booted up my laptop and began nervously checking for news about us, Rielle took off her traveling clothes, put on the thick robe she found hanging in the closet, and called room service.
Of all the people who tried to contact me during this first stage of our life on the run, the most persistent was John Edwards, who, despite being on the road as a presidential candidate, managed to leave a message every few hours:
12:51 A.M.: “Uh, Andrew, it’s John. If you could call me back at 402-998-3400, room 8030.
6:47 P.M.: “Andrew, it’s John. Call me back on this number. Thanks.”
6:49 P.M.: “Andrew, if you get this message, too, you can call back on this number. Thanks.”
7:13 P.M.: “Uh… Andrew, call me back as soon as you can on this phone. It’s now-” (Cuts off.)
7:26 P.M.: “Andrew, I keep trying to reach you. I have called you a bunch of times. I have talked to Elizabeth and I think it’s under control, so I just wanted to talk to you about it, but I have to go into an event now. I will try to call you guys later. Thanks. Bye.”
9:09 P.M.: “Andrew, it’s John. It’s nine-ten P.M. East Coast time. I just got out of my last event. I’m on my way to the airport to get on a plane. I’ve got about ten or fifteen minutes if you can call me back. If not, I will talk to you from Des Moines. Thanks.”
When we did actually speak, the senator talked anxiously about the scandal-related press calls coming into the campaign but also kept telling me how grateful he was for my help. He went out of his way to make me feel important, as if I were saving him and therefore the country from a catastrophe. He said he was worried about calls the campaign had had from a reporter for The New York Times who said he had evidence that I had undergone a vasectomy after our last child was born with heart problems. He claimed that Rielle’s child couldn’t be mine. This wasn’t true, of course. I hadn’t had a vasectomy
In this conversation, the senator told me his wife was now calling supporters and saying derogatory things about me but that he would try to get her to stop. He acted as if we were partners now more than ever, and he reinforced this connection by sharing inside information. When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan, he told me about how Pervez Musharraf had called him directly to consult. Strangely, he made these observations on world and national affairs with less urgency than he brought to his comments about keeping Rielle happy and quiet. He was careful, though, to avoid using her actual name. Typical was this message:
I’m in Nashua, New Hampshire, about to get on a plane to go to Iowa… I’m sorry I couldn’t reach you, but we’re just, you know, I’ve got four CBS reporters on the plane with me so I’m standing out in eighteen degree temperatures to call you. And please tell her I said hello and I will call later tonight. Thanks.
Rielle required the senator’s constant attention, because now that she was playing “fugitive on an expense account,” she was even more demanding and, at times, less careful. Although her picture was displayed on the front page of the National Enquirer, which was on the rack in the lobby newsstand, she traipsed around the resort as if she owned the place. With Rielle indulging in this risky behavior, and Cheri and me anxious to reunite with our kids for the holiday, Fred Baron arranged for us to get out of Florida on Christmas Eve aboard another private jet. At checkout, I noticed that we had racked up a bill totaling more than eight thousand dollars in seven nights. The clerk also gave me a FedEx envelope from Fred. It held one thousand dollars’ cash and a note that said, “Old Chinese proverb: Use cash, not credit cards.”
The plan called for us to travel to southern Illinois to pick up the kids and then to Aspen, Colorado, where we would stay in Fred Baron’s vacation home. Aspen was going to be our temporary haven until we found a place where we could live together in seclusion until Rielle gave birth. The only hitch in the plan, other than the fact that we were giving up our normal lives, involved a friend-a trial lawyer from Georgia-whom Fred had invited to use the house from December 27 to January 2. During this time, we would have to hide ourselves at a hotel in San Diego which Rielle chose. Complicated as these arrangements may sound, I was used to juggling campaign travel for the senator, who might take half a dozen flights in a single day, so this itinerary seemed easy to me.
As we left Florida, we phoned Cheri’s dad to ask him to bring the kids to the MidAmerica Airport, a little-used facility outside St. Louis where we would be unlikely to attract any attention. We asked him to come alone, because her mom wasn’t too crazy about me. (She had good reason to feel this way.) To his credit, he didn’t say anything even after he saw Rielle and her swollen belly and realized she was with us. Like everyone in my family, Cheri’s folks were aware of what was on the front page of the Enquirer and must have guessed what was going on, but her dad said nothing as he said good-bye to his grandchildren and they climbed aboard a private jet for some mysterious adventure.
Because we knew the kids would miss their regular Christmas celebration, Cheri and I had bought a tiny artificial tree with lights and installed it inside the plane, so as they climbed aboard it looked as if they were getting a ride on Santa’s private jet. We had never been separated from all three of them for so long, and they hugged us as though we had been lost in the jungle for a year. Rielle, whom they called “Jaya,” did her best to smile and be friendly during the flight, although she must have felt like an outsider at a family picnic. The kids ate candy, visited the pilots in the c‹pilockpit (where they helped “fly” the jet), and screamed with roller-coaster delight when we landed and the plane wobbled from side to side as the crew applied the brakes to bring us to a halt on the icy runway.
At the FBO, which is a stone-and-timber building that looks like a ski chalet, the crew shut down the engines, opened the door, and lowered the steps. The kids ran outside and immediately grabbed some of the fresh snow to throw at one another. Two SUVs waited for us, and the driver of the one that carried our family narrated the journey through a development started by the singer John Denver: “That hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar house belongs to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States; this one belongs to Robert Wagner, the actor…” When we drove up Fred Baron’s driveway, we discovered a stone-and-wood mansion secluded by evergreens and staffed by a house manager, a chef, and a masseuse, who were all on call.
Fred’s sprawling house was lavishly furnished. Pictures of his frequent guests Bill and Hillary Clinton were placed in conspicuous places, and the coffeepot in the kitchen was, we were told, the property of Lance Armstrong, who had lived in the place during training. I was impressed by the home gym, which was filled with equipment. The kids loved the racquet-ball court, which they called “the ballroom,” and the indoor pool/Jacuzzi/sauna complex, which was enclosed by a ceiling painted to look like the night sky, with twinkling lights to represent the stars.
Within an hour of our arrival, the kids were splashing and floating in the pool as Cheri, Rielle, and I watched them. For a moment, we forgot the craziness that had brought us to the place and allowed ourselves to enjoy it. Rielle got so relaxed that she again started talking about her sexual escapades with the senator, including specifics about where, when, and how they performed certain acts. We interrupted her with cries of, “Whoa! TMI!”-too much information-and she retreated from this subject. But the details about their affair would come up again and again in our time on the road.
After Cheri and I put the kids to bed and the quiet overcame us, we remembered that it was Christmas Eve and we were far from friends and family and unable to give our kids the holiday they usually enjoyed. On Christmas Day, we managed a small celebration with a tree Fred had arranged and the few presents we had brought from home. Cheri and I called our families and had some awkward conversations, and we had fun playing in the snow with the kids. Rielle was unhappy to be out of contact with the senator over the holiday and impatient to move on to California, where she hoped that Fred Baron would set us up in a house in either San Diego or Santa Barbara. The latter was her first choice because it was the home of her spiritual adviser-a guy called Bob-who was her most important source of “spiritual” support.
Anyone who spent any time around Rielle knew that Bob McGovern was the source of wisdom who guided many of her decisions. She called him “an intuitive,” which in her world meant that he possessed a sort of sixth sense that he could use to acquire special insight into any situation and to predict the future by reading the stars. Although I had never met him, I heard Rielle consult him on the phone many dozens of times. Often she wou‹. Old just leave a message describing her problem and requesting he intervene. A little while later, she would say she could “feel” the changes Bob was “creating” in the spirit realm. Because we paid her bills, I learned that Bob charged for his cell phone consultations-two hundred dollars was typical-and that Rielle relied on him for help with everything from the profound to the ridiculous.
The ridiculous was on display in Aspen on the one occasion when we all went out to eat together. With the kids in mind, we picked a burger-and-shakes place called Boogie’s Diner. With 1950s-style music and decorations, the place is as casual as you can get and still have sit-down service, so most people order something greasy and chomp away. Rielle left Bob two voice mails about her Reuben sandwich. To be precise, the issue was the Russian dressing, which she found lacking, and she wondered whether she should send her meal back to the kitchen. She did. Twice.
The impatient and self-indulgent attitude that led Rielle to make a double fuss over a Reuben sandwich would get worse as her due date grew closer. But as much as she appalled us, we also tried to empathize with her because she was alone, without emotional support from her baby’s father, and scared of everything, including giving birth. She also knew that a major effort was being made to control her and that my loyalties were with Cheri, the kids, and John Edwards, in that order.
After just four days in Aspen, we all packed our stuff and got back on the private jet to spend a week in San Diego. We landed there on December 27, crammed ourselves and our luggage into a rental car that was way too small, and drove to the Loews Coronado Bay hotel. After check-in, when another envelope full of cash was handed to me, we all got back in the car so we could hit an ice-cream shop for the kids and a drugstore so I could pick up a few necessities like toothbrushes and shaving supplies. While I was in the store and everyone waited outside, I spotted a new edition of the Enquirer on the news rack and was relieved to see we weren’t on the cover. I thumbed through a copy while at the register and still didn’t see anything about Rielle or the senator. When I brought the paper to the car, I said, “Hey, good news. We’re not in the National Enquirer.” Then I glanced down at the paper as it fell open to page six, where I saw a nice picture of Cheri next to a larger and very unflattering photo of Rielle with her mouth hanging open and her left hand extended, clawlike, making her look like a Tyrannosaurus rex in a maternity smock.
“Oh shit,” I said without thinking.
“What?” said Rielle and Cheri in unison.
Cheri took the paper out of my hand and got into the backseat of the car to look at it. As I drove, I could see she was studying it carefully. The article didn’t offer anything new about Edwards, Rielle, or the Young family but was instead a breathless report titled “Edwards Love-Child Bombshell Causes Nationwide Frenzy.” (The last two words, “Nationwide Frenzy,” were printed in red ink.) Since no new facts were offered, the only real new tidbit was the picture of Cheri, which she didn’t like but I thought was fine. Rielle, as you might e‹ asxpect, was unhappy with her photo.
During our week at Coronado Bay, we ran up a $10,000 tab as Rielle used every service the hotel had to offer while Cheri and I took the kids to Legoland, SeaWorld, and the San Diego Zoo. I authorized our biggest single room service purchase on December 29 when I realized as we were leaving the hotel for the zoo that it was Cheri’s birthday. (I got a little help when Cheri said, “You don’t even know what day it is today, do you?”)
After apologizing, and apologizing, I spent the time at the zoo walking a step and a half behind Cheri and performing child care like the world’s best dad. When I was able to get a private moment, I used my cell phone to call Rielle and ask her to help me out. She called the concierge, who went to the hotel gift shop and bought a bunch of odd presents. The concierge also got Cheri balloons, flowers, and a birthday cake, and the kitchen sent a small banquet to our room. It was a celebration, but nothing like the all-stops-out birthdays I had arranged for Cheri in the past. The proof was in the pictures, which show my wife and supposed mistress seated together at a well-appointed table, forcing smiles.
Cheri’s birthday was just one moment in what was becoming an unnervingly surreal misadventure. Unable to tell anyone where we were, and barred from speaking honestly with colleagues and friends, I began to feel as if I were watching the world turning from a spot on the moon. The Internet became even more important to me, and I followed news sites closely for some hint that the bargain I had struck with John Edwards was going to help him win Iowa and grab the momentum to propel him to the nomination. Everywhere I looked, I saw that he was gaining on the front-runner, Obama. This success came from a new campaign strategy that stressed taking a tough approach to the election battle with Republicans. Edwards told his audiences, “You try and nice them to death, they’ll trample you.” This message worked with activist Democrats who had seen too many of their guys take the “high road” to defeat.
As Senator Edwards barnstormed across the state, the press took note of the fact that he was significantly tardy-an hour late wasn’t unusual-for every event. But no one knew that the delays were caused, in part, by the time he used on the phone listening to his angry wife, comforting his lonely mistress, and maintaining his relationship with me. In the ten years I had known him, John Edwards had never tried harder to strengthen our bond, by sharing information and expressing concern and gratitude. In one call, he said to me, laughing, “[Former president] Clinton’s been calling around trying to hire you… He said he would still be president if he had you to cover for him.” On another call, he left a message noting he had just finished an interview on CNN with Larry King but wanted to make sure “you’re safe and in a place where you are good.”
By “place,” the senator meant state of mind, and I didn’t expect to be in a good place until we got our normal lives back. If he got the nomination and Mrs. Edwards survived, we would be hard-pressed to find a way ‹ toout of our arrangement with Rielle before November. If he didn’t win the nomination but wanted to pursue either the vice presidential slot or a place in some future Democratic administration, we’d be in the same predicament. Barring a sudden surge of honesty, the only way we were going to get out of our commitment would be if Mrs. Edwards died. And we still loved her too much to hope for this terrible outcome.
The three of us watched the reports on the Iowa caucus results in Fred’s house in Aspen. (We had returned there once his friend from Georgia had vacated the place.) Barack Obama won handily, becoming the genuine front-runner for the nomination. John Edwards offered a raspy thank-you to the voters who had given him second place. Unfortunately for him, Edwards had gone “all in” in Iowa, and he finished with just 1 percent more of the vote than Hillary Clinton. And while Obama and Clinton had big organizations in the next battleground state, New Hampshire, Edwards had no real organization there, and was quickly running out of money.
“It’s not about me,” said Edwards in New Hampshire. “It’s about the families who deserve a real chance in this country.”
With Obama trumpeting “change” and Hillary turning on the emotion (her eyes welled with tears when a voter asked about the rigors of the campaign), Edwards continued with the basic themes he had used in Iowa, stressing that he would fight for the average American. But as he faced opponents with far more resources and depth of support, he was eventually reduced, in his last days of campaigning, to pleading that a vote cast for him would not be wasted.
On New Hampshire primary day, the senator actually took time to call me in Aspen. I was out playing in the snow with the kids, so he left a message. It said, in part, “Just wanted all [his emphasis] of you, including her, to know that I am thinking about you. I will be in South Carolina tomorrow, flying in there in the morning, and should be by myself tomorrow night, so I will talk to you then.”
Rielle, whose belly was approaching basketball size, was now living for the moments when she could talk to the senator at length. Uncomfortable and lonely, she consulted Bob on a regular basis, watched the TV news channels, and when there was no election news, searched for reruns of Law & Order. This show and her pink cell phone, which now displayed a photo of her lounging with the senator whenever it was on, were comfort objects for her. She used them to pass the long hours in the house because she was unable to go out because of the paparazzi. Aspen was crawling with them.
Rielle knew long before the polls closed that the results of the New Hampshire primary were going to be worse for Edwards than the Iowa caucuses. We watched the results in the library, which overlooked snowcovered mountains. He got clobbered, finishing a distant third behind the winner, Hillary Clinton, and the runner-up, Obama. Mrs. Clinton claimed the title of “Comeback Kid,” and Obama finished just three points behind her. This success, in a‹s s largely rural and almost entirely white state, would help propel his fund-raising toward a record-setting total. It also suggested that Democrats were ready for either a black candidate or a woman. Edwards gamely declared, “Two states down, forty-eight to go. I’m in this race to the convention, and I intend to be the nominee of my party.”
Realistically, the Democrats in New Hampshire had just made the contest for the presidential nomination a two-person affair, and if Edwards was running for anything, it was to be as candidate for vice president or for a spot in some future Democratic administration. After New Hampshire, even Fred Baron’s enthusiasm began to wane, but he remained interested because his friend might win the veep slot or be named attorney general. In either of these spots, Edwards could help protect the nation’s trial lawyers from Republican efforts to cut their business by imposing tort reform.
While some Democrats began calling for the senator to drop out, we turned our attention to finding a more permanent hideout where we could give our kids some semblance of a normal life. School was starting, and Cheri and I wanted to go home. But now Fred and the senator were insisting we stay away and keep Rielle under control until his part in the election was over or Mrs. Edwards died. Santa Barbara was now the only place Rielle was even willing to consider for her hideout. This decision had been made during a blowup that began with a suggestion from Fred Baron. He told us of a place in the Southwest “where they take care of situations like this” in utter privacy for wealthy clients. Rielle took this to mean that Fred wanted to send her to a clinic for late-term abortions. In fact, Fred was recommending a secluded retreat, with staff, where celebrities and other pregnant guests get the utmost privacy. But nothing anyone said could reassure Rielle, and the argument made her even more eager to live near Bob McGovern. On January 10, we took another private jet flight, this time from Aspen to Santa Barbara. While we were in the air, Fred left me a voice mail that confirmed how things might be changing now that the dream shared by John and Elizabeth Edwards (and the shared ambition that held them together) was breaking apart:
Andrew, it’s Fred. I just want to give you a heads-up on something. I’m gonna be meeting with the principal tomorrow, but they want you to know that he is not taking your calls or her calls right now because of his circumstance, uh, with EE [Elizabeth Edwards] and not to take it personally, but it will get better soon. But right now he is in a bad place… When you get settled out there, give me a buzz.
By calling the senator “the principal” and referring to Rielle as “her,” Fred Baron displayed a little of the lawyer’s impulse to assure himself plausible deniability. He may have spoken this way out of habit or because he worried about future legal problems. To me it just sounded strange, as if Fred were backing away emotionally. This turned out to be true. As Fred later told me, in the weeks after the New Hampshire primary the Clintons put extra pressure on him to abandon Senator Edwards and get him and the nation’s trial lawyers behind Hillar‹s by’s campaign.
Fred’s account squared with comments I heard from the senator, who was worried about losing his support. He had talked to me about how Fred’s cash would be only “our short-term solution.” Edwards believed this because he thought Fred would soon shift his interest to another candidate. He also knew that Fred had been diagnosed with cancer and, like Mrs. Edwards, might not be around for very long. With this in mind, he said that Bunny Mellon was more likely to provide “the long-term solution” to his need to fund both Rielle’s lifestyle and an organization to keep the Edwards name in front of the public after the election. (Bunny’s support would also keep me employed.) He was confident about Bunny’s loyalty because he had been building a relationship with her. She was so fond of him that she had given him one of her gold necklaces to carry as a good-luck charm.
Despite the concerns the senator expressed, in the winter of 2007-2008, Fred Baron’s short-term support was unwavering. He spent time on the phone with Rielle when she needed comforting and enlisted his wife, Lisa Blue, to do the same. Fred also said that money was “no object” and told me to spend whatever it took to placate Rielle and Cheri, and he would pay the bills. But because Mrs. Edwards’s condition was not as dire as the senator had told us, this was beginning to look like a long-term project. Believing Fred would eventually stop writing checks, we set aside the money Bunny had sent for future use. As the senator kept saying, “Fred’s the short-term solution and Bunny is the long-term solution.”
On January 10, we boarded Fred’s jet to leave Aspen for good and landed in Santa Barbara to start house hunting. Encouraged by Fred to “make everyone comfortable,” I checked everyone into the Biltmore Four Seasons at Butterfly Beach. Although Rielle was disappointed that we couldn’t get suites at the exclusive Bacara Resort & Spa, the Biltmore was a luxurious five-star place. Built in Spanish colonial style with red tile roofs and bubbling fountains, the hotel offered attentive service from the moment you arrived and were greeted by bellmen wearing argyle sweaters. Rielle had to inspect three different rooms and request upgrades, but to her credit, we wound up with blissfully quiet accommodations overlooking the croquet green. When the kids ran to look at the ocean, they saw a pod of dolphins jumping in the water about a quarter mile from the beach.
The main task I had to accomplish in Santa Barbara was finding a home where Rielle could wait out the end of her pregnancy and raise her baby through the first few months of life. Cheri flew home for a couple of days to clean Eric Montross’s house (and take down the Christmas tree there) so he could put it back on the market. When she got there, she discovered reporters had left about a dozen notes and business cards slipped under the front door.
In Santa Barbara, Rielle and I met real-estate agents, who were told that she was my “stepsister,” and we scoured rental listings on the Internet. I found several nice houses in the $5,000 to $10,000 (per month) range and was sure I had discovered the perfect spot when I stumbled upon a mountaintop home owned by Herb Peterson, who had invented the Egg McMuffin for McDonald’s. Mr. Peterson, who was going into a nursing home, o‹nurffered me a Heineken, and we shared his last beer in that house while Rielle looked around and decided it did not have the right karma.
The winner in what became a dream house contest was a huge, single-level home in the gated Montecito neighborhood of Ennisbrook. Adjacent to Oprah Winfrey’s estate (where Barack Obama had recently held a fund-raiser) and hidden behind its own secondary gate, the hacienda-style home had nine-foot-high steel-and-glass entry doors, a great room with a grand piano and a view of the ocean and mountains, and a library with a fifteen-foot ceiling. The layout of the place, which offered separate wings for our family and Rielle, provided a measure of privacy for all of us. The final stamp of approval came from Bob McGovern, whom I met for the first time when he arrived in his BMW 740i to perform a blessing, which Rielle said would “clear the energy” of the place.
Roughly six feet two and well over two hundred pounds, Bob was not at all what I expected. A few years past sixty, he had bushy hair that was silvery gray and a big belly that made him look like Captain Kangaroo. His voice was extremely measured and soothing, and his smile seemed genuine. I didn’t go inside to watch him do his thing, but whatever it was, it made Rielle happy and calm, and I appreciated his effect on her.
When Cheri got back, we all moved in. We had gone to great lengths to hide from the press and the public, so we couldn’t risk enrolling the kids in school. Instead, we found a teacher who would come to homeschool the kids and establish a routine for them. Ennisbrook isn’t exactly teeming with kids, so I regularly took them to the park and the local YMCA, where they met lots of playmates, and I let them run on the beach as much as possible.
Because Rielle was late in her pregnancy and her picture was in the Enquirer and all over the Internet, she stayed home most of the time. She spoke often with Senator Edwards and told us that it didn’t matter that he was losing his bid for the nomination. “The universe” had other things in store for him, she said, including a life with her and a new baby.
When I spoke with him, the senator grumbled about John Kerry-“that asshole”-endorsing Barack Obama and speculated about how he could parlay his own endorsement into a position for himself. Cheri and I fell into a routine of taking care of Rielle’s basic needs almost as if she were our child. When we cooked meals she was included, and when we went to the store we bought her supplies along with ours. As an expression of rebellion, I ran these errands while listening to Hank Williams cranked up loud on the stereo in my redneck Jeep, which I had had shipped out from North Carolina. I waved to our neighbors, who drove Bentleys and Aston Martins, and I didn’t care that they never waved back. Once, as I pulled up to the front gate of the development, the guard looked at my four days’ growth of beard and my Jeep, and when I said, “Andrew Young, Ennisbrook,” he said, “Is he expecting you?” He didn’t believe me at first when I said, “I’m Andrew Young,” but a call to the manager, who confirmed the identity of the redneck in the Jeep, convinced him.
When the sun was shining a‹n wnd the breeze carried the scent of the ever-blooming flowers through the air, Santa Barbara was so beautiful that I almost forgot we were on the run with John Edwards’s pregnant mistress. But then I would get back to the house and discover that Rielle was ranting about some bit of praise John Edwards had offered to his wife during a TV interview or that my wife had received a hostile message on her cell phone from Elizabeth. In one, which we saved, she said, “We thought you should know that this is not Andrew’s first woman,” and then she cackled into the phone.
Listening to this stuff, I became convinced that her husband’s infidelity, the inevitable end of the campaign, and her ongoing battle with cancer had become too much for Mrs. Edwards to bear with any grace. She didn’t want to recognize the doubts sown in the minds of voters by the Enquirer or the possibility that Obama-with the help of several Edwards castoffs, including David Axelrod and Julianna Smoot-was simply a better candidate. She preferred to believe that I was responsible for John Edwards losing his advantage and the caucuses in Iowa and getting clobbered in New Hampshire.
The last straw for the campaign came on January 26, when the senator finished third in the primary in South Carolina, where he was born. After this defeat, he quit the race. However, anticipating a convention split between Obama and Clinton, where his handful of delegates could determine the winner, he didn’t officially end his campaign but merely “suspended” it. “It’s time for me to step aside,” he said, “so that history can-so that history can blaze its path.” Ironically enough, Rudy Giuliani, whose sign had annoyed Elizabeth Edwards every time she left her house, dropped out of the Republican race on the same day her husband ended his run for the Democratic nomination.
When I spoke to him next, Senator Edwards sounded defeated, but he was already scheming about how to turn his endorsement, and his hold on a few delegates, into a top position in the next administration. It was impossible to get him to focus on resolving Rielle’s status and mine. Fred Baron was similarly evasive when I pressed him.
But at night, when the house turned quiet, Cheri and I…