The cramped space, the circumstances of the move, and the ugly paint weren’t the only reasons for our urge to flee for the trailer on the hilltop whenever we could. The previous occupants of the mansion had been pet lovers, and soon after we settled in and turned on the heat, we discovered that the whole place smelled of cat pee. Constant cleaning and deodorizing helped, but the scent never really went away. You would have wanted to escape, too. Our cat Pepper certainly did. A rambunctious boy we had adopted in 1999, he went outside as much as possible, and on a fateful night soon after we moved in, he was killed by a car. I found his body along a busy highway and rushed to dispose of it before the kids saw him.

Cheri and the kids spent far more time in the purple mansion than I did, because every day I walked over to the Southern Village town square office to work. This convenience was in contrast with the demands the move made on Cheri. The kids remained in their school in Raleigh, and she drove them back and forth for three months. She also brought them there for sports after school and visits with friends. She must have felt as though she spent her life on the road.

My workdays were devoted to chasing donations, fielding calls from the senator, and solving certain problems. Once, when he was on the road, he called sounding very upset and explained that he had lost the Outward Bound pin that Wade had received before he died. (Edwards had worn it to public events since 1998.) Many staff members dropped what they were doing to search in every vehicle or room he had occupied in the last twenty-​four hours. When they failed to find it, we bought a new one from the organization, but it was a new design and did not resemble Wade’s pin.

Aside from managing the senator’s personal crises, I dealt with inquiries from colleagues who knew I had Edwards’s ear and understood him better than anyone else. For example, when John Davis reported sighting Rielle on the trail, I reassured him that although she was no longer on the payroll, she and the senator were probably just friends and there was nothing to worry about.

Rielle’s travel arrangements required fancy footwork, and here my experience as a campaign aide came in handy. When I knew where the senator was staying, I made reservations in my own name, faxed copies of my credit card and state identification card, and told the hotel staff that my “wife” would be checking in on my account. This ploy allowed Rielle to get into the hotel and wait for the senator, who then called and signaled her to come to his suite. Rielle would leave before the aides came to get the senator at the start of the workday.

The routine worke {rod perfectly except for on one occasion in Florida, when the campaign bus left a swanky resort where the senator had spent the night so early that Rielle was still in the suite when he departed. She planned to go back to the room I had arranged for “Mrs. Young” but decided to get into the shower first. That’s when she heard pounding on the door. She got out, wrapped herself in a towel, and looked through the peephole to see someone from the campaign. (The staffer had a key card, but fortunately Rielle had fastened the security chain on the door.) Afraid to respond, she hid in the bathroom and called the senator on the Batphone. When the senator heard what was going on, he called me.

Accustomed as I was to having the phone ring at all hours with emergency requests from John Edwards, it still rattled me when the phone rang before the alarm clock, and it took me a few seconds to wake up. The senator, who was calling from the campaign bus, where he was surrounded by staff and press, spoke in an upbeat voice-as if nothing were wrong-but his breathing sounded panicked, and I could tell he was faking it.

“Our friend is having a problem,” he said. “Can you give her a call right now?”

I soon understood what was wrong. Someone from the staff had gone to the room with a key card to make sure the senator had not left behind any confidential papers. This was standard operating procedure, and whoever it was had been surprised to find the door bolted from the inside. I told him I would fix it, and as he hung up I immediately heard from Rielle. There were now two security guards and three campaign aides, including my old assistant, banging on the door. Rielle was scared, but also excited and giggly. (I think she wanted to get caught.) She agreed to tell them she needed to get dressed and would open the door in a few minutes.

While Rielle dressed, I called the hotel, which was the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa in Hollywood, Florida. Using my best presidential campaign aide voice, I asked for and got connected to the manager. “I had an old friend drive through the night to deliver confidential papers to the senator this morning,” I explained. “I told her that she could take advantage of the room-since it was paid for-and enjoy the resort after he left. If you want to check out who I am, call the campaign. They’ll confirm who I am.”

Five minutes later, the manager called me back and agreed to call his security men on the radio and have them leave the hallway. But this still left the Edwards staffers who were upstairs and wanted an explanation. I called Rielle again, then had her open the door a crack and, since Mrs. Edwards had turned my former assistant against me, I told her to hand the phone to one of the other staffers. When he got on I said, “Who the hell is this?” with as much authority and impatience as I could muster.

With my opponent back on his heels, I said, “This is Andrew Young.” I then said that all he needed to know was that the woman in the room was someone I had sent with confidential documents because every call I had made the previous night had gone unanswered by staff people, who were out partying. (This was an assumption that turned out to be true.) “I had to get one of my friends to do {fr your damn job, so leave her alone.”

The bluff worked and they left Rielle alone. I then instructed her to pack up and call me as she left the room. She did as I told her, and I kept her on the phone to calm her as she walked down the hallway, rode the elevator, crossed through the lobby, and went outside to a cab stand. She noticed the Edwards staffers who had come to the door of the room outside the hotel, but they saw her on the phone and didn’t intercept her. She breathed a huge sigh of relief and then started laughing as the cab departed the hotel, with her aboard, safe and still secret. I called the senator and told him the crisis was over.

Senator Edwards thanked me up and down on the day I got Rielle out of the Florida hotel, but the next time I saw him, he’d developed a case of amnesia about this event. Having had my daytime driving privileges restored, I had picked him up at the airport, following our usual routine. I had continued to tease him by putting down the armrest. He looked at me and said, “Why do you keep doin’ that?”

I stayed silent as he handed me the Batphone, enjoyed a sip of wine, and sighed with relief. I then casually mentioned the tight scrape we had just survived. He turned to me and with a perfectly straight face said, “I don’t know what you are talking about. Rielle wasn’t in Florida.”

I looked at him, amazed, and said something about how he must be joking. Of course Rielle was in Florida with him. She had been discovered by the staff, and I had come up with a brilliant scheme to explain why there was a woman in the shower of his suite. The senator looked at me blankly, repeated that “Rielle was never in Florida,” and asked me how I could say such a thing.

We were hurtling down the interstate, and since I had to keep my attention on the road, I didn’t stare into his eyes directly. But I could tell from his tone of voice that he truly believed what he was saying. I decided that he was either the best liar in the world or he was having some sort of psychological episode. My phone records showed more than thirty calls with him, Rielle, and the Westin on the day of this incident. Clearly, I could prove to him that something big had happened that day. But I decided to drop the subject.