Bunny’s checks, written for many hundreds of thousands of dollars, were made as payments to her decorator, Bryan Huffman, so that she wouldn’t have to offer an explanation to the professionals who handled her accounts. These funds (and the money that came from Fred Baron later) were gifts, entirely proper, and not subject to campaign finance laws. She did not know that the money was being used in part for Rielle. Bunny sent the checks to Bryan hidden in boxes of chocolate and with notes discussing her contributions to “the confederacy.” Bryan sent them to me with notes of his own. One said, “A little table money,” because the memo line indicated it was payment for an antique table. Another said, “For the rescue of America,” which was how Bunny referred to the way she used her money on behalf of Democrats in general and John Edwards in particular. After I received each check, it was deposited in joint accounts I held with Cheri, to be used to keep Rielle happy and hidden from the media, Mrs. Edwards, and anyone who might divulge her existence. This was the arrangement the senator expected me to follow, so that he would have “plausible deniability.”

In accepting the checks and responsibility for Rielle, I plunged myself, Cheri, and my kids into hot water. The temperature wasn’t so high that it was uncomfortable, so we stayed in the pot. And like frogs that will remain submerged in a pot on a stove while an experimenter raises the temperature ever so slowly, we would stay in this situation far too long, enduring as each new demand increased the heat by a fraction of a degree. Unlike frogs, we would get out before it was too late. But looking back, I find it hard to believe that we didn’t hop away on the day Rielle arrived at our house with photographers from the National Enquirer hot on her trail.

For months, Rielle had complained to me about how her boyfriend, now the father of her child, neglected her. She also talked to her “close friends,” who she said would never betray her because of their “spiritual connections.” One of these friends was Newsweek writer Jonathan Darman, who spoke with her on the phone from time to time and once had lunch with her. (She talked with him about having an affair with a very powerful man but wouldn’t divulge his identity.) Whenƒide I talked with her, Rielle requested my help with financial and emotional concerns and every once in a while threatened to go to the press and reveal the affair. Rielle was especially outraged on July 30 when the Edwardses marked their thirtieth anniversary by renewing their wedding vows and celebrating at Wendy’s. The event got extensive coverage from the media, including pictures in People magazine and a bit of fawning from Diane Sawyer of ABC-​TV’s Good Morning America.

Besides my having to deal with the senator’s mistress, the summer brought new personal demands as the builder began work on our new house and we moved out of the smelly purple mansion and into a big, luxurious house owned by former UNC and NBA basketball player Eric Montross. I knew him, and when he told me he had been having trouble selling the place, we made a deal for a lease. The house was in a gated development called the Governors Club. It had four bedrooms, and the screened backyard gave our dog, Meebo, a great place to hang out. The only odd thing about the house was that all the furnishings-sink, shower, countertops, cabinets, and so on-had been built for someone seven feet tall.

In this time period, I was especially busy at work, which meant Cheri couldn’t rely on me as she helped the kids adjust to new schools and a new neighborhood. She was driving hours every day to take care of my mom’s second husband, Warren, a wonderful man whose health was deteriorating rapidly. Warren’s decline and death took a terrible toll on my mom, and as I focused on helping her, the National Enquirer, notorious for revealing then presidential candidate Gary Hart’s affair with Donna Rice in 1987, found Rielle in South Orange, New Jersey. On September 27, 2007, they confronted her at her friend Mimi Hockman’s house, where she stayed when she wasn’t on the road.

How did the Enquirer even know to start looking for Rielle Hunter? The answer to this question may never be known, but she would be a good person to ask. With all of her threats, she certainly had in mind a call to the media. Mimi Hockman would be another person to question. Inside the campaign there were no likely suspects, but the Internet had begun to buzz with innuendo. The most prominent source for speculation was Sam Stein of the Web site HuffingtonPost.com.

On the day before the photographers confronted her in New Jersey, Stein posted a report on his attempts to find and view the webisodes produced for the Edwards campaign. Once readily available online, they had suddenly disappeared. Stein couldn’t locate the producer, Rielle Hunter, and his effort to find her company led him to Mimi Hockman, who answered his e-​mail request for an interview with, “Nope. Not a chance.” More digging brought Stein to an article about Rielle in a New Age magazine called Breathe, which said she was a “formerly hard-​partying girl who claims that she found enlightenment.”

Stein reported all he had discovered and the fact that he was given the runaround by the Edwards staff, especially Jonathan Prince, who also had suspicions about Rielle. Prince had offered implausible explanations for the disappearance of the videos, claimed that the campaign no longer had them, and then offered to let Stein view them, but only with Edwards’s representatives in the rooƒivem. Prince’s handling inflamed the situation, and all the bobbing, weaving, and mystery allowed Stein to write in a way that made any reader imagine hanky-​panky was involved. He ended with a quote from Edwards that said, “I’ve come to the conclusion I just want the country to see who I really am,” and a quip of his own: “I’m still waiting to see.” The senator was outraged by this and said that “Clinton is behind it” and that Bill and Hillary Clinton were friends with Stein and had urged him to write the article.

Given the number of people who saw Rielle on the campaign trail, staffers who suspected something was going on, and those-including Rielle-who could confirm the affair, it was no surprise that rumors had been swirling for months. According to the whispers, clean-​cut John Edwards, who made an issue of morality, was stepping out on his cancer-​stricken wife. The staff of the Enquirer almost certainly had the story staked out, and the Stein article could well have added the piece to the puzzle that brought them to Mimi Hockman’s house.

Panicked, Rielle called me several times during the day, insisting I connect her with the senator. Now that Rielle was pregnant, I never had any trouble getting through to him. John Davis took my call, asking, “Can’t it wait five minutes?” I told him no, and he pulled the senator away from whatever he was doing and gave him the phone. I told him the Enquirer was outside Rielle’s house and patched him through to her. After he soothed her, he called me back and said he was afraid that Rielle was going to crack and go outside to meet the Enquirer team and tell all. She obviously needed to go someplace and hide, and according to the senator, she had no trustworthy friends or family to visit. The temporary solution, he decided, would be for her to come to stay behind the gates at the Governors Club with Cheri and me.

“This is bigger than any of us,” he said, evoking the many causes-peace, health care, poverty, and so on-that he represented. This struck me as disingenuous and I really wasn’t listening. I was thinking about what I was going to tell Cheri. We were both mourning my stepfather, and were about to fly to Shelter Island, New York, for his funeral. This wasn’t going to go over well.

When I finally agreed with his plan, the senator said, “Andrew, nobody has ever done something like this for me. You are the best friend I ever had in the world.” I put down the phone and walked into the kitchen to find Cheri. Her reaction was what you might expect.