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.”