In Santa Barbara, Rielle and I met real-​estate agents, who were told that she was my “stepsister,” and we scoured rental listings on the Internet. I found several nice houses in the $5,000 to $10,000 (per month) range and was sure I had discovered the perfect spot when I stumbled upon a mountaintop home owned by Herb Peterson, who had invented the Egg McMuffin for McDonald’s. Mr. Peterson, who was going into a nursing home, o‹nurffered me a Heineken, and we shared his last beer in that house while Rielle looked around and decided it did not have the right karma.

The winner in what became a dream house contest was a huge, single-​level home in the gated Montecito neighborhood of Ennisbrook. Adjacent to Oprah Winfrey’s estate (where Barack Obama had recently held a fund-​raiser) and hidden behind its own secondary gate, the hacienda-​style home had nine-​foot-​high steel-​and-​glass entry doors, a great room with a grand piano and a view of the ocean and mountains, and a library with a fifteen-​foot ceiling. The layout of the place, which offered separate wings for our family and Rielle, provided a measure of privacy for all of us. The final stamp of approval came from Bob McGovern, whom I met for the first time when he arrived in his BMW 740i to perform a blessing, which Rielle said would “clear the energy” of the place.

Roughly six feet two and well over two hundred pounds, Bob was not at all what I expected. A few years past sixty, he had bushy hair that was silvery gray and a big belly that made him look like Captain Kangaroo. His voice was extremely measured and soothing, and his smile seemed genuine. I didn’t go inside to watch him do his thing, but whatever it was, it made Rielle happy and calm, and I appreciated his effect on her.

When Cheri got back, we all moved in. We had gone to great lengths to hide from the press and the public, so we couldn’t risk enrolling the kids in school. Instead, we found a teacher who would come to homeschool the kids and establish a routine for them. Ennisbrook isn’t exactly teeming with kids, so I regularly took them to the park and the local YMCA, where they met lots of playmates, and I let them run on the beach as much as possible.

Because Rielle was late in her pregnancy and her picture was in the Enquirer and all over the Internet, she stayed home most of the time. She spoke often with Senator Edwards and told us that it didn’t matter that he was losing his bid for the nomination. “The universe” had other things in store for him, she said, including a life with her and a new baby.

When I spoke with him, the senator grumbled about John Kerry-“that asshole”-endorsing Barack Obama and speculated about how he could parlay his own endorsement into a position for himself. Cheri and I fell into a routine of taking care of Rielle’s basic needs almost as if she were our child. When we cooked meals she was included, and when we went to the store we bought her supplies along with ours. As an expression of rebellion, I ran these errands while listening to Hank Williams cranked up loud on the stereo in my redneck Jeep, which I had had shipped out from North Carolina. I waved to our neighbors, who drove Bentleys and Aston Martins, and I didn’t care that they never waved back. Once, as I pulled up to the front gate of the development, the guard looked at my four days’ growth of beard and my Jeep, and when I said, “Andrew Young, Ennisbrook,” he said, “Is he expecting you?” He didn’t believe me at first when I said, “I’m Andrew Young,” but a call to the manager, who confirmed the identity of the redneck in the Jeep, convinced him.

When the sun was shining a‹n wnd the breeze carried the scent of the ever-​blooming flowers through the air, Santa Barbara was so beautiful that I almost forgot we were on the run with John Edwards’s pregnant mistress. But then I would get back to the house and discover that Rielle was ranting about some bit of praise John Edwards had offered to his wife during a TV interview or that my wife had received a hostile message on her cell phone from Elizabeth. In one, which we saved, she said, “We thought you should know that this is not Andrew’s first woman,” and then she cackled into the phone.

Listening to this stuff, I became convinced that her husband’s infidelity, the inevitable end of the campaign, and her ongoing battle with cancer had become too much for Mrs. Edwards to bear with any grace. She didn’t want to recognize the doubts sown in the minds of voters by the Enquirer or the possibility that Obama-with the help of several Edwards castoffs, including David Axelrod and Julianna Smoot-was simply a better candidate. She preferred to believe that I was responsible for John Edwards losing his advantage and the caucuses in Iowa and getting clobbered in New Hampshire.

The last straw for the campaign came on January 26, when the senator finished third in the primary in South Carolina, where he was born. After this defeat, he quit the race. However, anticipating a convention split between Obama and Clinton, where his handful of delegates could determine the winner, he didn’t officially end his campaign but merely “suspended” it. “It’s time for me to step aside,” he said, “so that history can-so that history can blaze its path.” Ironically enough, Rudy Giuliani, whose sign had annoyed Elizabeth Edwards every time she left her house, dropped out of the Republican race on the same day her husband ended his run for the Democratic nomination.

When I spoke to him next, Senator Edwards sounded defeated, but he was already scheming about how to turn his endorsement, and his hold on a few delegates, into a top position in the next administration. It was impossible to get him to focus on resolving Rielle’s status and mine. Fred Baron was similarly evasive when I pressed him.

But at night, when the house turned quiet, Cheri and I…

Twelve

John and Elizabeth Edwards held their “farewell and thank-​you” party for the people who had worked for, volunteered for, and funded the 2008 campaign in the barn-​style gym at their estate, where a stage and sound system had been included in the design for just such an occasion. The crowd numbered about five hundred and included friends, family, donors, staff, and a smattering of celebrities, including basketball coach Dean Smith and actor Danny Glover.

This kind of get-​together is a lot like an old-​fashioned Irish wake, where people have an opportunity to both celebrate and begin mourning. The comparison seems even more appropriate if you consider that those who idolize and devote themselves to a candidate come to feel that the campaign is like a big family. In this family, John and Elizabeth played the role of mom and dad, and at their party they were so obviously angry with each other that they made all the children nervous.

I’m confident writing about an event I didn’t attend because I received dozens of texts and phone calls from people who did-many came during the party-and they all reported the same thing: The senator mingled easily, thanked people profusely, and gave a brief talk that my friend Tim Toben reported was heartfelt and kind. Toben had once been captivated by John Edwards, but unlike others, he had developed powerful doubts. He said that at the party Elizabeth told several people what a truly bad person I was.

Other friends who attended the farewell told me that the senator and his wife were noticeably cold to each other. They spent most of the night in different corners of the room and rarely came together. When it was time for them to speak, they stood at opposite ends of the stage. The way they related to each other made the members of the “family” feel as if the parents were fighting. If you recall from your own family what that’s like, then you know that the folks the Edwardses were supposed to be thanking felt awkward and uncomfortable. During the campaign, this kind of thing happened far too often, as the candidate and his wife argued while staffers waited and wondered what to do.