What Really Happened (30 page)

I braced myself for whatever was going to come out of his mouth.

“I love you. I really love you.”

I almost laughed. This was his important news from Haiti?

“I know that.”

“No. I really love you.”

He was saying it as if he had just figured it out. Apparently, being away from Elizabeth got him back in touch with his feelings.

“I know that, even though you forgot it.”

He called me every night from Haiti. It was nice to have him back, even though it was brief. As soon as he returned to Chapel Hill, Elizabeth’s abuse resumed, and he went back into his self-preservation mode. I felt that no matter how awful the abuse was, he was never going to leave her now that she was dying. What would be the point? He was going to suck it up and endure all her hostility. After all, didn’t he deserve it? Most of the world seemed to think so, and deep down, I believe that he thought so, too. I prayed that Quinn would still have a father left when Elizabeth got through with him. I continued talking to him, hoping our conversations would help minimize the damage to his psyche.

Central Park, New York City, December 2008. Quinn and I had a fun ladies’ lunch with my friend Glory Crampton at Serafina. After lunch we took a stroll through the park.

The
National Enquirer
showed up at Mimi’s door within days of our arrival back in New Jersey. Mimi called upstairs, “It’s started.”

I thought she was talking about the cable guy, who was scheduled to arrive at 8
A.M.
to hook up the cable in our room in the attic. Quinn and I came downstairs and Mimi was waving a letter from the
Enquirer
, a pitch letter offering compensation for an interview. What a joke. As usual, I did not respond, so as usual the story trashed me, saying I was down and destitute in New Jersey.

Quinn’s first Christmas was in South Orange, New Jersey. We went into Manhattan a few times to see the Rockefeller Center tree, have lunch with Glory Crampton, and have lunch with Rob Gordon. Christmas in New York always feels so magical. Quinn
loved
New York City. She would begin singing as soon as we went through the tunnel and didn’t stop until she fell asleep on the way home.

Quinn’s first Christmas. She loved Winona and was obsessed with walking her. Winona’s leash would hang on the front door and Quinn would crawl over to the door, grab the leash, and follow Winona around the house attempting to put it on her.

We adjusted to life in New Jersey quickly. I found Vanita, who is a great babysitter. We enjoyed Music Together and My Gym, where we met other Jersey moms and tots and began doing a ton of mommy-and-me things.

Understandably, Elizabeth was hell-bent on making my life as miserable as possible while she rewrote history and finished her book. She rejected the fact that Quinn was Johnny’s daughter simply because he believed and said he was. Even though he never denied paternity to his lawyers, they were really pushing for a DNA test because that’s what lawyers do. After months of going back and forth, Johnny finally said to his lawyers that he was offended by it. There was no denial of paternity. He wanted to stop fighting them and just move forward.

And we tried, but Elizabeth stopped us at every point.

I read in the tabloids that I demanded a paternity test, eighteen thousand dollars a month in child support, and ten million dollars. Perhaps stupidly, I never demanded anything.

But I did get pissed off many, many times in 2009. Could I have made Elizabeth’s life
really
miserable? Yes, I could have. I could have gone public, nailing her to the wall, and believe me, I fantasized about it more than once. But I felt that if I stepped over Johnny and took control, it would emasculate him, which would have been a very bad thing for Quinn. So no matter how much anger I experienced, I chose to wait for Johnny to work out whatever he needed to with Elizabeth.

I remember when he called me to tell me that Elizabeth had Oprah coming to their house. Johnny and I were both baffled as to why Elizabeth would do that. I had no idea how she was going to deflect Oprah when she asked the only question that anyone cared about: is John Edwards Quinn’s father?

Johnny said, “I have no idea what Elizabeth is doing.”

Apparently Elizabeth was very nice to Johnny the day Oprah was at the Ponderosa.

However, she resumed her screaming at Johnny the day after she taped
Oprah
, saying it was all his fault that she lied on
Oprah
for him. He told me he said, “You lied for
me
? How about you lied for you! I didn’t tell you to do
Oprah
. I didn’t tell you to write a book.”

Of course, everyone wanted to know what she was going to say. And when
Oprah
aired, it resulted in all sorts of cars and vans parked outside Mimi’s house. The media called her cell phone constantly and even tried to friend her on Facebook, all in pursuit of me. Mimi really wanted me to end the charade and speak the truth. She was getting very frustrated at Johnny and Elizabeth’s bullshit because it had now invaded her house, and believed that my waiting, instead of fighting or speaking up, was just making it worse for all of us.

Elizabeth was constantly afraid that I was going to go public. In Johnny’s typical passive-aggressive way, he dealt with Elizabeth by leaving the country during her media stint. He called me every day from wherever he was. All the while, Elizabeth talked about how noble he was and how he was such a perfect husband, except for that one-time thing.

For me, it was odd to watch her talk about how much I wanted attention and that she was not going to give me what I wanted, by naming me, which I heard was her one condition for all the people who interviewed her, thereby creating even more of an air of mystery around me than if she’d actually said my name.

As I said, I did get pissed off a few times, like the time I was standing in the kitchen making coffee. I had just put Quinn in her high chair when I looked up and saw a camera pointed at us from outside on the front sidewalk.

And while Elizabeth paraded around on TV as the poor victim wife who had overcome her husband’s one-time-only shortcoming, giving a tour of the twenty-thousand-square-foot house that Johnny paid for, Johnny’s youngest daughter was living in an attic in New Jersey because Elizabeth was preventing Quinn from having access to her father’s health insurance or sustained child support, and preventing Johnny from publicly claiming paternity. She was in a constant tirade, using her cancer and Emma and Jack as weapons in the war against a father trying to take care of his daughter. Elizabeth made sure that Emma and Jack knew that
that woman
, Rielle Hunter, was responsible for all the misery in their family. All the pain she was experiencing was because of Rielle Hunter. She drilled that into their heads.

My heart broke for those kids. How sad for them to grow up in a household like that.

Whatever Elizabeth’s feelings were about me, the law states that Quinn deserves the same as what her siblings are receiving from their father. And yet, thanks to Elizabeth, that wasn’t even close to happening. What was going on for Quinn every month was a fight for the small amount of money that was being sent. One month we had no money; my lawyer gave us a thousand dollars out of his own pocket so we could eat.

So yes, at times I experienced some anger. But did I want to litigate and fight Elizabeth? No. I wanted my daughter to have her father and have him intact. If I were fighting Elizabeth, it would only increase the abuse directed at him. I would then be helping to destroy him.

Around that time, the
National Enquirer
reported that I was going to be interviewed by Barbara Walters or Diane Sawyer. Elizabeth went ballistic that I was going to do any interview and ranted at Johnny for many long nights that I was going to ruin their family and their children by going public. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand her thinking. Her actions were teaching her kids that to lie and deny is better than telling the truth, if the truth turns out to be a truth you don’t want.

Johnny had always and consistently told me the same thing: if I wanted to speak to the media, I should, whenever I wanted. He said, “Whatever you choose to do, it will not hurt my relationship with Quinn.”

I was not going to speak to the media but I believe I did surprise him once, only because I had no way of telling him beforehand. He was in a depression from his regular all-night lashings he was getting from Elizabeth and didn’t call me for a few days. During that time I got an invitation that I saw no reason to turn down: I was invited to Barbara Walters’s home.

Barbara and her team had been trying for a long time set up a meeting between the two of us, but I just wasn’t interested and didn’t want to waste her time or mine. But when they threw in Barbara at her home? Now
that
sounded pretty interesting. Where did Barbara Walters live? What did her apartment look like? What would she be like at home? Yes, my interest was piqued.

So Mimi, Quinn, and I went to Barbara’s for a casual lunch. And the meeting never got out! I was so floored that it never leaked. Barbara kept her word, and everything ended up being just like she said it would be: off the record. In my life, that was a first.

Her home was exactly as I imagined—a grand old New York apartment overlooking Central Park. It was a fantastic experience and one I don’t regret. What surprised me was how much Barbara appeared to want my interview. She was really angling hard for me to talk to her. I mean, come on, she is Barbara Walters; why would she want my interview so badly? It just didn’t make sense to me. She even threw in that she and my oldest and very good friend Angela Janklow had known each other forever, and not only was Angela’s father her agent, but Angela’s parents were her very close friends.

Barbara was clearly positioning herself to help change the incorrect media portrayal and she just might have had the chance had the network’s news program
20/20
not rolled out the red carpet for the Youngs, enabling them to spew their BS on national TV. Of course, Barbara screaming at me on the phone, trying to bully me into doing her interview also didn’t do her any favors.

Early one June morning, the feds came knocking on our door. Mimi let them in, and I promptly told them I couldn’t talk to them. I called my lawyer and put him on the phone with them. Vanita, my beloved babysitter, took Quinn out for a walk during this visit. While they were out, a photographer with a long-lens camera snapped a shot of Quinn over Vanita’s shoulder. The photo was published all over the place; Vanita was heartbroken. So what are the paparazzi and the feds doing at the same place at the same time? After the feds left, we got in the car, and I discovered that I was being followed. The feds denied having anything to do with it. I asked them about it when I went to testify and walked into a media firestorm. Gee, I wonder how the media all knew I was going to be there? The feds insisted that I testify before the grand jury at the beginning of August. It was crucial; they couldn’t wait. (The investigation went on to last another two years.) But it was a problem for me because the grand jury meets only twice a month, and I couldn’t get childcare in August. I could get it in September or October, but none of Quinn’s babysitters were available in August. The feds gave me no choice, however; they needed me in August.