What Really Happened (28 page)

The entire interview was excruciating to watch. Obviously this was a man who needed serious mental help. Rob Gordon would call after every commercial break and stay on the phone with me, which really helped with my initial shock. The disbelief, pain, and awfulness of it was so multilayered. Johnny denied his love for me, denied his relationship with me (which was ongoing), and made me and my friend Bob, whom I loved so much, seem like blackmailers on national TV, without any regard as to how it would impact Bob or his family. And worst of all, he continued on his path of lies concerning Elizabeth—how great and strong and wonderful she is, how strong his marriage and his love for Elizabeth are, and how much the Lord and Elizabeth have forgiven him. Irritating and painful, yes, but all of that paled in comparison to hearing him say, “It is not possible that she is my child.”

Nothing—nothing—prepared me for that.

I watched the man that I loved more than any other man in the world deny our child, the greatest love of my life, his own flesh and blood and, like most people, wondered how could he do that?

I believe one, he had a twenty-year habit of fixing things by lying about women. Two, he was temporarily insane.

Here’s the thing: no one who is
not
off his rocker would do that, especially if he believed he could get away with it. Clearly he was not going to get away with it and he just wanted to stop the pain.

And as much as I hurt—and boy, I wish that experience on no one!—I also knew he did not need my judgment or anyone else’s. He needed help. Think about it: sane, healthy people do not deny their children, especially on national TV, simply because they are afraid of their abusive spouse’s reaction. Only a mentally off person would do that.

When Johnny was indicted, I read an opinion piece by Ruth Marcus in the
Washington Post
, in which her first line read, “John Edwards is pond scum.” All I could think was, “Pond scum? Did he go on national TV and deny the paternity of
your
child?” I mean, the judgment is unbelievable. A lot of people believe his cheating on Elizabeth and fathering a child while she had cancer was his worst action. Knowing the truth of their decades-long–no intimacy/abusive relationship and being the mother of the daughter he denied, I would beg to differ. Listening to him deny our child broke my heart and obviously confirmed to me that he was in dire need of help.

I had spoken to him earlier in the day, before the interview aired, as he was scrambling to write some sort of statement. He thought that ABC had screwed them and that some of the content had been leaked, thus starting a media firestorm (talk about ratings for ABC!). However, he told me that he believed the interview had gone well.

He honestly thought it had gone well.

This was not a well man.

After I watched the interview, I told him, “Wow. That hurt.”

He said, “Sorry, but it didn’t mean anything.”

It’s very weird to be so disconnected from your public image, which doesn’t remotely match the reality of your life, the way my public image doesn’t as I am writing this. When it’s so far off, it’s understandable how he could get to a place where he gives the public what they want: that public guy,
John Edwards
, which is not, nor has it ever been, the Johnny Reid Edwards I know.

Back then I didn’t understand that the way I do now. I didn’t sleep at all that night. And the barrage of, “Who is Rielle Hunter?” was just beginning. What appeared on screen with that terrifying image from the
National Enquirer
, coupled with what John Edwards himself said in that interview, could make anyone reasonably assume that I was a gold-digging, blackmailing whore, with whom he did not father a child, and whom he did not love. “A serious mistake in judgment” was all I amounted to.

I honestly had no idea how our relationship could ever recover from that.

The next day, unfortunately, Ricky brought me a computer, upon which I would receive yet another blow—a much lesser one, but wow, it still hurt. Jonathan Darman wrote a piece called, “What Rielle Hunter Told Me.” Besides the invasion of privacy, the real pain was the last paragraph:

That October, the
National Enquirer
wrote a story claiming that Rielle and Edwards were having an affair. Rielle called me to ask, should she put out a statement denying it? I asked her if she would give a statement to
Newsweek
, which seemed to make her mad. She said she was talking to me as a friend, not a journalist. Though she said that our conversations had been “between you and me,” we had never actually gone off the record. Our conversation ended abruptly. I never got to ask her the most important question: whether she had had an affair with Edwards. I tried to contact her several times in the months that followed, but she didn’t return my calls. It occurred to me she was saddened that she had come to think of me as a friend, but I saw her as a story. In December, the
Enquirer
ran an article claiming she was pregnant with Edwards’s child. (Edwards denies he is the father, and has offered to take a paternity test to prove it. Prior to the child’s birth, an Edwards aide, Andrew Young, told the
Enquirer
he was the father of Rielle’s child. An Edwards adviser, speaking on Edwards’s behalf, declined to comment for this story. Rielle did not respond to e-mails I sent her last week seeking comment.) In early January, I was surprised to receive an e-mail from her saying she was thinking about me and hoping I was OK. I haven’t heard from her since. But I believe she really did hope I was OK. When my father died later that month, she sent me flowers.

My friend, who just a few weeks before in July had sent me an email saying he missed me and sent me his love, was now claiming (even after I sent him an email saying everything was off the record in October 2007) that we really never went off the record and how sad and stupid I was for viewing Darman as a friend.

Yes, he was painfully correct on that. How sad, because if what he said is true, that would mean that either he lied to me, and pretended to be my friend, and that his warmth, his feelings, his invitation to his father’s funeral were all in order to get a story. Or he lied to his readership, hiding and covering his real feelings in order to get a story and advance his career.

Sad indeed.

My real friends and my sister Melissa were flipping out over the way Johnny threw Quinn and me under the bus and about what the media was saying about me. Pigeon O’Brien, the woman who tipped off the
National Enquirer
, was now making the media rounds working her on new public career as my close friend of twenty years. I can still hear Angela Janklow, my dear friend from New York City that I’ve known since we were sixteen years old, screaming, “Who is this Pigeon person claiming to be your friend?” I was the (trash) talk of every dinner party my friends attended and every grocery line they stood in. They were all upset and very concerned about my well-being. Outside of Mimi, the media were having trouble locating any of my real friends, mostly because they did not know who they were. I asked my friends not to speak to the media and told them that I was hurt but did not want to engage the media publicly.

First and foremost, I am a mother, so my biggest concern was and is for Quinn, her temporarily insane father, and their relationship. Crazy or not, he was still her dad, and I wanted to make sure that she always had the opportunity to have a good relationship with him.

St. Croix, the place where I watched the interview, was not at all where I wanted to be. I didn’t feel good there. And naturally, the
National Enquirer
found out that I was there, and reporters were lurking everywhere, so that kept us inside most of the day. Prisoners in our hotel room, I reached my end. How many times can one read and reread
A Fly Went By?
I was done. I did not want to run from the media anymore. I thought if I stopped running, there would be no more chase. I called Fred and told him that I was done with running. I really just wanted to go back to Santa Barbara, the place that felt like heaven on earth. Fred had already paid for the house through December 4
^th
.

Thanks to being officially revealed by John Edwards, and then thrown under the bus, my life was now going to be different. I understood that Johnny’s actions were going to drive the
National Enquirer
and the media to hunt us even more vigorously in order to prove that he was Quinn’s father. I was just going to have to adjust.

Keeping Quinn safe was my foremost concern. I wanted to hire security. Fred thought that was a great idea, and I thought that with that addition, we would be fine. I would just buy more big floppy hats for Quinn and big sunglasses for me. If our picture was taken, so be it. I was done with the charade.

Johnny was still in terrible condition and had gone to stay with his friend John Moylan in South Carolina. Johnny called me from John Moylan’s a few times. Then Johnny and John Moylan went to see Bunny. He called me, I believe, from her house to ask if I knew anything about checks Andrew had received from Bunny. I told him Andrew told me he received two for twenty-five thousand dollars each and told me they were never deposited. Johnny said, “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, nor did he tell me. I assumed he did not want to tell me over the phone because he thought our phone calls were being traced or recorded. And then the feds started investigating, so we never actually talked about it, which is what the lawyers advised us to do. No one ever told me what had happened. Needless to say, I was floored when I learned in 2010 that Andrew had received around $725,000. Even with that information, I never fully believed it or realized the extent of the Youngs’ deceit until I saw the actual checks and amounts in the indictment. Only then did I finally put it all together. Andrew and Cheri played us all.

Johnny later told me that Alex Forger, Bunny Mellon’s lawyer, discovered the checks written to Bryan Huffman, a decorator, and he signed them over to Cheri Feister (Cheri’s maiden name) and Cheri had endorsed the checks. Alex told Fred about them, and Fred told Johnny.

Johnny had no idea what Fred was talking about. Apparently Fred was furious upon making this discovery, even though I think he always sensed that Andrew had been taking advantage of him.

Leaving St. Croix, Quinn and I flew privately to Miami and then boarded a commercial flight to LAX. A car met us at the airport, and on our way back to Santa Barbara I called Fred, telling him we had made it and thanking him for how wonderful he was to Quinn and me. Fred was an amazing man. I know a lot of people who don’t have half the heart that Fred did. Fred always managed to see the bright side. He was filled with optimism and always wanted to do the right thing. Fred’s passing was a big loss to our world.

We got back to Santa Barbara. It was a beautiful drive, and I was happy to return. As soon as we got inside, I called the highway patrolman on his cell.

“Hi Dana, it’s Rielle Hunter. I was wondering if you, by any chance, would like a job? Also, if you aren’t too busy right now, is there any way you could do a drive-by? I have three strange cars parked outside my gate.”

TWENTY-ONE

Goodbye, Santa Barbara

“Conflict cannot survive without your participation.”

—
W
AYNE
D
YER

L
ISA BLUE CALLED ME very early in the morning. She seemed very uncomfortable and awkward. After speaking to her for a little while, I was finally able to get out of her that Johnny told her to call me and end our relationship.

“What? Are you serious?”

She was serious.

“Lisa, tell him to call me directly.”

“He can’t, because of Elizabeth.”

“What, are we in high school? Johnny told you to tell me that he is breaking up with me? Lisa, I love you. Tell him to call me directly.”

She called me back and patched Johnny through to me on a three-way call. Then she put her phone down and went in the other room so he could talk to me directly.

He told me he had finally told Elizabeth everything, including that he was Quinn’s father and promised her that he wouldn’t ever speak to me again.

I listened to him for a few minutes. He was just talking and talking and sounded completely off his rocker. I believed it was true that he had finally actually told Elizabeth everything, which is what triggered more of this craziness. He was saying things to me like, “I have never loved you. I was not in love with you. I have loved one woman.” He was talking as if he were giving an interview, not like we were having a conversation. He was that weird, disconnected, false-persona guy, the same guy he was during his interview with Bob Woodruff, talking all over the place. The big problem for me was that he actually believed what he was saying as he was saying it.