The flailing nature of these remarks-recalling the years-​old PlayStation issue, for example-reflected the paranoia that seemed to be falling over the Edwardses.

An army of media people had descended on Chapel Hill, and there were TV satellite trucks and photographers everywhere. My phone rang constantly with requests from Larry King, CBS News, Good Morning America, and every major newspaper and magazine in the country. On August 12, Fred Baron told me he believed that all the cell phones used by people close to the Edwardses were being “hit by the other side,” so he told me to use only landlines to call him.

Many months later, I can recall these anxious references and tell myself that Fred and the others were just upset and scaring themselves. At the time he spoke to me, Cheri and the kids and I were living four miles from the Edwardses’ mansion. We were in our yet-​to-​be-​finished house, where the floors and plumbing were not quite completed, and we were sleeping on mattresses thrown on the floor. Unsure about the future of my job, where we might live, and where the kids would start school, we felt besieged and insecure. Very few of our old friends and colleagues would talk to us. Our friend Michael Cucchiara told us that Elizabeth was writing a book that would be extremely harsh on me. Regarded as pariahs for our role in the destruction of John Edwards, we felt self-​conscious everywhere we went. However, we did try to keep a sense of humor.

When Cheri went to a grocery store, she grabbed t›, she National Enquirer at the check out and flipped it over so no one could see it. The man standing behind her said, “Hey, are you embarrassed that you are buying that magazine?” She turned and saw he had an armful of similar magazines. After a flash of fear, she realized that the man didn’t know she was one of the players in the scandal and she had to fight to keep from laughing out loud.

Laughs were a rare commodity for us in August 2008. Cheri didn’t have any friends, other than me, who knew what she was going through and could talk to her with real understanding and laugh at the ridiculous elements of the scandal. I was lucky to have Tim Toben. “I’ve never known anyone who could do this,” he would say. “John Edwards can convince and compel in such a genuine and honest-​seeming way but is really not authentic. He lies, but it’s like he believes it all and so do we.” His point made me think of the movie True Lies. That’s what John Edwards was all about-constructing lies that seemed like truth and had the power of truth, until he was found out.

My last encounter with Edwards came on August 18, when I got an urgent call from Fred Baron. He said that Mrs. Edwards had left the house and the senator would have access to David Kirby’s car for just a short time. He begged me to agree to see him. I was furious with Edwards and all the people around him, but I needed to meet with him to hear what he had worked out with Bunny on the matter of the big poverty foundation. When I agreed, Fred told me to drive to an intersection on a deserted two-​lane road near the Edwards estate. It was just before one o’clock in the afternoon. I got in our minivan, drove to the spot, and parked.

At 1:15 P.M., Fred sent me a text to tell me, “He is in a black suv.” Just then, Edwards pulled up in a black Chevy Tahoe and waved at me through the open window. I rolled down the window on the minivan, not knowing what to expect.

“Follow me,” he called out. Then he drove off.

I followed as he drove down the country roads, making one awkward turn after another. (He was talking on a cell phone and anxiously checking the rearview mirror as he drove the borrowed car.) Finally, he stopped and signaled for me to get in his car.

When I opened the door of the Tahoe, I saw that Edwards looked fit and tanned as usual, but when I got in I noticed he was fidgety, and as he drove off, he seemed to have a little trouble controlling the car and maintaining his train of thought.

Two months had passed since I’d last seen John Edwards, and in that time I had come to understand that I had never really known him at all. I began to worry just a bit about my own safety. In the movies, this would be the scene where the rich guy would deliver the man who knows too much to an assassin in the woods. I knew this was probably a paranoid thought, but it remained in the back of my mind as he actually tried a little small talk.

“How are you doing?” he said. ̶› he0;How are the kids?”

“We’re doing pretty shitty,” I answered. “Where’s your car?”

“Elizabeth’s taken all my keys.”

“Elizabeth’s taken your keys?” I wanted to embarrass him by making him explain.

“Yeah, and she’s got me sleeping in the barn. She yells at me all night, and when I sleep she gets in my face and screams.”

As this line of conversation died, Edwards grew nostalgic. He said he missed hanging out with me. “I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore.”

I wasn’t interested in his loneliness. I asked him what he was going to do about me now that my reputation was trashed and I had no chance of finding a job. What about the foundation he was supposed to start with a big donation from Bunny Mellon? The last I heard, he was increasing his request to $50 million.

He said that when he saw Bunny, her lawyer and accountant had attended the meeting and told him she wasn’t in a position to give him what he wanted. The senator then started talking about the checks Bunny had written to cover Rielle’s expenses and the cost of our great escape.

“I didn’t know anything about this,” he said. “Did you?”

I didn’t know what was going on. I wondered if he was secretly recording our conversation. Panicked, I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“What about your promise to take care of things?” I asked him. “What about you coming clean?”

“If you apply for a job, I’ll give you a good reference. Just let me know who to call.”

After a decade of devoted service, untold sacrifice on the part of my wife and children, and an act of extreme loyalty that left my reputation ruined, John Edwards proposed to compensate me with a good reference. I could no longer contain myself. I looked at him and in dead seriousness said, “You know, I’m not sure we can really control what happens next.” I then explained that I had the sex video, a small library of pertinent text messages, voice-​mail recordings by the score, and contemporary notes I had made almost every day since I began working for him. If he wasn’t willing to clear my name by telling the truth, then I would do it.

“Andrew, I’ve told Elizabeth everything,” he said. “You can’t hurt me.”

With this statement› th, Edwards communicated two important things. First, in the strange universe he occupied, he and his wife were the only two beings who mattered. Second, he was a remorseless and predatory creature, unaffected by the suffering of others, even suffering he had caused with his reckless behavior. I told him to take me back to my car. When we got there I got out, closed the door of the Tahoe, and stepped aside. As he drove away, I stole one last glance through the window of the driver’s door. I saw a man I couldn’t recognize at all.

Almost a year would pass before I would be near John Edwards again, on a ball field where our two boys played for different teams, and he would look past me. I heard nothing from him directly in those ten months, but his wife would continue to bad-​mouth me and Cheri to folks in Chapel Hill and around the country. The worst of what she did was accuse me of trying to bilk a helpless old woman-Bunny Mellon-out of funds for a fake foundation her husband knew nothing about. She said this much and more in a voice-​mail message recorded and played for me by Tim Toben:

… I thought that perhaps you should know that John visited Bunny Mellon, Andrew Mellon’s widow, with whom Andrew had met in the course of fund-​raising. And Andrew apparently tried to… told her that Andrew was starting a foundation, that she needed to give several million dollars in cash to the foundation.