What Really Happened

by Rielle Hunter

  I honestly had no idea how our relationship could ever recover from that.

  The next day, unfortunately, Ricky brought me a computer, upon which I would receive yet another blow—a much lesser one, but wow, it still hurt. Jonathan Darman wrote a piece called, “What Rielle Hunter Told Me.” Besides the invasion of privacy, the real pain was the last paragraph:

  That October, the National Enquirer wrote a story claiming that Rielle and Edwards were having an affair. Rielle called me to ask, should she put out a statement denying it? I asked her if she would give a statement to Newsweek, which seemed to make her mad. She said she was talking to me as a friend, not a journalist. Though she said that our conversations had been “between you and me,” we had never actually gone off the record. Our conversation ended abruptly. I never got to ask her the most important question: whether she had had an affair with Edwards. I tried to contact her several times in the months that followed, but she didn’t return my calls. It occurred to me she was saddened that she had come to think of me as a friend, but I saw her as a story. In December, the Enquirer ran an article claiming she was pregnant with Edwards’s child. (Edwards denies he is the father, and has offered to take a paternity test to prove it. Prior to the child’s birth, an Edwards aide, Andrew Young, told the Enquirer he was the father of Rielle’s child. An Edwards adviser, speaking on Edwards’s behalf, declined to comment for this story. Rielle did not respond to e-mails I sent her last week seeking comment.) In early January, I was surprised to receive an e-mail from her saying she was thinking about me and hoping I was OK. I haven’t heard from her since. But I believe she really did hope I was OK. When my father died later that month, she sent me flowers.

  My friend, who just a few weeks before in July had sent me an email saying he missed me and sent me his love, was now claiming (even after I sent him an email saying everything was off the record in October 2007) that we really never went off the record and how sad and stupid I was for viewing Darman as a friend.

  Yes, he was painfully correct on that. How sad, because if what he said is true, that would mean that either he lied to me, and pretended to be my friend, and that his warmth, his feelings, his invitation to his father’s funeral were all in order to get a story. Or he lied to his readership, hiding and covering his real feelings in order to get a story and advance his career.

  Sad indeed.

  My real friends and my sister Melissa were flipping out over the way Johnny threw Quinn and me under the bus and about what the media was saying about me. Pigeon O’Brien, the woman who tipped off the National Enquirer, was now making the media rounds working her on new public career as my close friend of twenty years. I can still hear Angela Janklow, my dear friend from New York City that I’ve known since we were sixteen years old, screaming, “Who is this Pigeon person claiming to be your friend?” I was the (trash) talk of every dinner party my friends attended and every grocery line they stood in. They were all upset and very concerned about my well-being. Outside of Mimi, the media were having trouble locating any of my real friends, mostly because they did not know who they were. I asked my friends not to speak to the media and told them that I was hurt but did not want to engage the media publicly.

  First and foremost, I am a mother, so my biggest concern was and is for Quinn, her temporarily insane father, and their relationship. Crazy or not, he was still her dad, and I wanted to make sure that she always had the opportunity to have a good relationship with him.

  St. Croix, the place where I watched the interview, was not at all where I wanted to be. I didn’t feel good there. And naturally, the National Enquirer found out that I was there, and reporters were lurking everywhere, so that kept us inside most of the day. Prisoners in our hotel room, I reached my end. How many times can one read and reread A Fly Went By? I was done. I did not want to run from the media anymore. I thought if I stopped running, there would be no more chase. I called Fred and told him that I was done with running. I really just wanted to go back to Santa Barbara, the place that felt like heaven on earth. Fred had already paid for the house through December 4th.

  Thanks to being officially revealed by John Edwards, and then thrown under the bus, my life was now going to be different. I understood that Johnny’s actions were going to drive the National Enquirer and the media to hunt us even more vigorously in order to prove that he was Quinn’s father. I was just going to have to adjust.

  Keeping Quinn safe was my foremost concern. I wanted to hire security. Fred thought that was a great idea, and I thought that with that addition, we would be fine. I would just buy more big floppy hats for Quinn and big sunglasses for me. If our picture was taken, so be it. I was done with the charade.

  Johnny was still in terrible condition and had gone to stay with his friend John Moylan in South Carolina. Johnny called me from John Moylan’s a few times. Then Johnny and John Moylan went to see Bunny. He called me, I believe, from her house to ask if I knew anything about checks Andrew had received from Bunny. I told him Andrew told me he received two for twenty-five thousand dollars each and told me they were never deposited. Johnny said, “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, nor did he tell me. I assumed he did not want to tell me over the phone because he thought our phone calls were being traced or recorded. And then the feds started investigating, so we never actually talked about it, which is what the lawyers advised us to do. No one ever told me what had happened. Needless to say, I was floored when I learned in 2010 that Andrew had received around $725,000. Even with that information, I never fully believed it or realized the extent of the Youngs’ deceit until I saw the actual checks and amounts in the indictment. Only then did I finally put it all together. Andrew and Cheri played us all.

  Johnny later told me that Alex Forger, Bunny Mellon’s lawyer, discovered the checks written to Bryan Huffman, a decorator, and he signed them over to Cheri Feister (Cheri’s maiden name) and Cheri had endorsed the checks. Alex told Fred about them, and Fred told Johnny.

  Johnny had no idea what Fred was talking about. Apparently Fred was furious upon making this discovery, even though I think he always sensed that Andrew had been taking advantage of him.

  Leaving St. Croix, Quinn and I flew privately to Miami and then boarded a commercial flight to LAX. A car met us at the airport, and on our way back to Santa Barbara I called Fred, telling him we had made it and thanking him for how wonderful he was to Quinn and me. Fred was an amazing man. I know a lot of people who don’t have half the heart that Fred did. Fred always managed to see the bright side. He was filled with optimism and always wanted to do the right thing. Fred’s passing was a big loss to our world.

  We got back to Santa Barbara. It was a beautiful drive, and I was happy to return. As soon as we got inside, I called the highway patrolman on his cell.

  “Hi Dana, it’s Rielle Hunter. I was wondering if you, by any chance, would like a job? Also, if you aren’t too busy right now, is there any way you could do a drive-by? I have three strange cars parked outside my gate.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Goodbye, Santa Barbara

  “Conflict cannot survive without your participation.”

  —Wayne Dyer

  Lisa Blue called me very early in the morning. She seemed very uncomfortable and awkward. After speaking to her for a little while, I was finally able to get out of her that Johnny told her to call me and end our relationship.

  “What? Are you serious?”

  She was serious.

  “Lisa, tell him to call me directly.”

  “He can’t, because of Elizabeth.”

  “What, are we in high school? Johnny told you to tell me that he is breaking up with me? Lisa, I love you. Tell him to call me directly.”

  She called me back and patched Johnny through to me on a three-way call. Then she put her phone down and went in the o
ther room so he could talk to me directly.

  He told me he had finally told Elizabeth everything, including that he was Quinn’s father and promised her that he wouldn’t ever speak to me again.

  I listened to him for a few minutes. He was just talking and talking and sounded completely off his rocker. I believed it was true that he had finally actually told Elizabeth everything, which is what triggered more of this craziness. He was saying things to me like, “I have never loved you. I was not in love with you. I have loved one woman.” He was talking as if he were giving an interview, not like we were having a conversation. He was that weird, disconnected, false-persona guy, the same guy he was during his interview with Bob Woodruff, talking all over the place. The big problem for me was that he actually believed what he was saying as he was saying it.

  “Okay,” I said. “Listen to me. You have to trust me. Have I ever told you something that wasn’t true?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, listen carefully. You are not yourself right now. You have been traumatized and you have gone temporarily insane. I cannot let you go into the world. I cannot leave you in the hands of Elizabeth and her abuse until you have returned to your normal self. If then you want to end our relationship, I will be fine with that, but right now, I am not allowing this to end. You cannot cut off your connection with me. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “I’m not sure I agree with you.”

  “You don’t have to agree with me but you cannot stop talking to me right now. Your daughter needs you.”

  Quinn’s favorite vibrating, musical seat, which enabled me to cook or take a shower.

  That got him. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  To this day he has no memory of that phone call. I, on the other hand, revisited that call in my head many times over, wondering why I didn’t just let him go. The only rational explanation I can come up with is that I didn’t want to cut him out of my life at that point because I didn’t want to cut him out of Quinn’s life.

  He called again the next day, sounding much better, but still not anywhere near himself. He informed me that Elizabeth wanted me to sign a confidentiality agreement that I would never, ever tell anyone the truth about our relationship, except Quinn. I could tell my daughter who her father is.

  I balked immediately. “No, I will not sign that.”

  “I need you to. She is going crazy. She screams at me all the time.”

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “In order for Elizabeth to save face, she wants my daughter to grow up living a lie? That is never going to happen.”

  “She’s going crazy. She is afraid you are going to tell the world the truth.”

  “I have no desire to talk to anyone but I am not signing a confidentiality agreement. I went against what I believe is right once. That will never happen again.”

  “I am stuck between both of you. And she is screaming at me constantly.”

  It was that simple: he wanted me to give Elizabeth her way so she would stop screaming at him. She could scream all she wanted; it wouldn’t change my mind.

  He sighed. “You’re both impossible. She is never going to change.”

  “So be it. I am not signing anything.”

  It still amazes me the extent to which people do not understand that most of the mental and emotional pain that we experience is caused by not getting our way. We want something other than what happened or is happening. Once, Johnny and I were having a conversation, and he said, “But it’s more complicated than that.” I said, “No, your mind makes it complicated. It’s actually quite simple. The world isn’t going the way you want it to, and that is what’s causing the pain.”

  Also, at this point, Andrew wasn’t getting what he wanted—more money— and he was driving Fred crazy. Fred really wanted Johnny to talk to Andrew and get him off his back.

  Johnny finally agreed to meet with Andrew. In that meeting, Johnny asked Andrew, “What are those checks you got from Bunny?” And Andrew lied to him, saying he didn’t know what Johnny was talking about.

  Now it seems to me if Johnny had actually told Andrew to solicit money from Bunny, all Andrew would have had to say was, “What do you mean what are those checks? That’s the money you told me to get for Rielle.”

  Apparently Andrew also told Johnny during this meeting, after Johnny told him there was not going to be a foundation funded by Bunny, that Cheri found a sex tape and described the tape in a vulgar, inaccurate way. Andrew was blackmailing Johnny.

  Johnny had finally had enough of Andrew. From all accounts, it appeared that Andrew had stolen money from Bunny and had taken complete advantage of Fred. I was telling Johnny that Andrew was bad news and to stay away from him, the very same thing that Elizabeth had been screaming for years, and now Andrew was blackmailing Johnny with a sex tape. He also claimed to have voicemails and emails he was going to share with the world.

  From Johnny’s point of view, Andrew couldn’t hurt him because he had already told Elizabeth that he was Quinn’s father. He had faced his biggest fear and was still alive. He was done with Andrew. Praise the Lord.

  Johnny called me after this meeting to tell me what Andrew had said about having a tape. I didn’t believe Andrew and thought he was bluffing. I told Johnny that I had destroyed the tape in December 2006 and didn’t believe Andrew was telling the truth about that, especially given the way he described the tape.

  Elizabeth, being so brilliant at manipulating the media (and right out of the James Carville school of how to win—get your story out first), was on the cover of People. She didn’t speak to them on the record but directed her brother and best friend Hargrave to speak. The piece was all about how she was coping with her anguish and determination to keep her family together, and how she had made the agonizing decision to forgive John for the sake of her family. I read that and couldn’t help but wonder what she meant when she said forgiveness, because it certainly wasn’t anything that I recognized as being forgiving. Was it somewhere in between her vile rants, using her kids as pawns, and attempting to hold Johnny hostage in his own home, all while she attempted to get me to sign off on allowing my daughter to grow up under a lie? I wouldn’t call any of that forgiveness. As usual, my irritation was triggered from the spin being so far away from the reality. My irritation was not caused by Elizabeth spinning reality but by my own thoughts about her spinning reality. Shockingly enough, the world was happening the way I think it shouldn’t be. As usual, I let it go quickly.

  The Santa Barbara Zoo, 2008.

  At the very end of August, a surprising and glorious thing happened. It was late morning, Quinn was snoozing away during her first nap of the day, and I was watching TV next to her when John McCain named Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate. Right then and there, I smiled wide because I knew in that moment my sweet girl and I had just become yesterday’s news. Sure enough, the mainstream media, the tabloids, and the bloggers all packed up and moved on to the great state of Alaska to focus on (stalk, uncover information on, trash) their new media darling, Sarah Palin.

  Quinn’s first Thanksgiving, Santa Barbara, CA, 2008.

  September was peaceful and uneventful. Bliss in Santa Barbara. Johnny and I spoke on the phone every day. He was still not well, not himself, and very detached, but he had started seeing a therapist. Nothing had changed in his marriage. From Elizabeth’s perspective, Johnny had ruined her life. Privately, she blamed him much more than she blamed me. I also heard she blamed the old mistresses and still harassed them from time to time but directed most of her abuse and punishment at Johnny. And the poor guy, they don’t have any locks on the bedroom doors, so no matter where he was in that house, or in the barn, she would find him at all hours of the night to scream bloody murder at him for hours on end. Sometimes she would even hit him.

  She also began to write her book Resilience. It�
��s sort of a sad joke that she would be writing a book about how resilient she was and how she overcame her tragedies, including infidelity, at this point in her life. In her defense, given the success of Saving Graces, she was already set to write another book. Still, she could have also told the truth.

  Fred called me at the end of September. He was on his way to the Mayo Clinic. We talked about moving my stuff out of the house in North Carolina. Mimi was doing it all, and was going to send him all the invoices and so forth. We also talked about the used BMW that I was driving around, which now belonged to him. I let him know that the registration was expiring soon and would need to be renewed but I didn’t have the title. When I asked Fred what he wanted to do about that, he said, “I’ll send you the title. You keep the car. I have enough cars. I have cars in Aspen, Texas, and one in North Carolina. I don’t need another car. You can have it.” I was completely floored by his generosity. I couldn’t thank him enough.

  Fred also expressed to me his frustrations about Johnny. Like me, Fred really wanted him to step up to the plate and to stop placating Elizabeth. I did not know then that it was the last time I would ever speak to Fred.

  Fred passed away on October 30th, 2008. He had wanted Johnny to speak at his funeral, but Lisa Blue understandably vetoed it. Johnny went and didn’t speak. For obvious reasons she didn’t want me anywhere near the service. Fred’s highly publicized gifts to me colored all the great deeds of his lifetime. To this day, that saddens me whenever I think of it.

  I spoke to lawyer Abbe Lowell on the phone a few times after Fred passed away because he was helping Lisa at that time. Rob Gordon had signed off on me speaking to Abbe directly. By this time I was timid about talking to anyone new, but Rob said, “You will see when you talk to him, he’s a great guy.” Rob was right about that. Rob also signed off as my lawyer and continued on as my friend. Abbe told me that the feds were now investigating, so I was now going to need a criminal lawyer and a family lawyer.