What Really Happened

by Rielle Hunter

  My lease was up at the beginning of December, so Quinn and I moved back to New Jersey. I was so excited to be back in New Jersey because I missed Mimi and the boys so much. The press reports were hilarious, making up all kinds of nonsensical speculation about why we would be landing back in New Jersey. The truth? I missed my best friend and I felt too isolated in Santa Barbara. As a single mom, my adult interaction was all too rare. Living with loved ones was very enticing to me, to say nothing of having emotional support.

  I also had no idea what my finances were going to be like. I had enough money from Fred to last for a while, but then what? I didn’t know.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Jersey Girls

  “Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.”

  —Ambrose Bierce

  In the beginning of December 2008 Johnny went to Haiti with the director and producer Paul Haggis and called me as soon as he arrived. Quinn and I had just arrived in New Jersey. Johnny was sounding almost like his old self. He said, “I have to tell you something very important.”

  I braced myself for whatever was going to come out of his mouth.

  “I love you. I really love you.”

  I almost laughed. This was his important news from Haiti?

  “I know that.”

  “No. I really love you.”

  He was saying it as if he had just figured it out. Apparently, being away from Elizabeth got him back in touch with his feelings.

  “I know that, even though you forgot it.”

  He called me every night from Haiti. It was nice to have him back, even though it was brief. As soon as he returned to Chapel Hill, Elizabeth’s abuse resumed, and he went back into his self-preservation mode. I felt that no matter how awful the abuse was, he was never going to leave her now that she was dying. What would be the point? He was going to suck it up and endure all her hostility. After all, didn’t he deserve it? Most of the world seemed to think so, and deep down, I believe that he thought so, too. I prayed that Quinn would still have a father left when Elizabeth got through with him. I continued talking to him, hoping our conversations would help minimize the damage to his psyche.

  Central Park, New York City, December 2008. Quinn and I had a fun ladies’ lunch with my friend Glory Crampton at Serafina. After lunch we took a stroll through the park.

  The National Enquirer showed up at Mimi’s door within days of our arrival back in New Jersey. Mimi called upstairs, “It’s started.”

  I thought she was talking about the cable guy, who was scheduled to arrive at 8 a.m. to hook up the cable in our room in the attic. Quinn and I came downstairs and Mimi was waving a letter from the Enquirer, a pitch letter offering compensation for an interview. What a joke. As usual, I did not respond, so as usual the story trashed me, saying I was down and destitute in New Jersey.

  Quinn’s first Christmas was in South Orange, New Jersey. We went into Manhattan a few times to see the Rockefeller Center tree, have lunch with Glory Crampton, and have lunch with Rob Gordon. Christmas in New York always feels so magical. Quinn loved New York City. She would begin singing as soon as we went through the tunnel and didn’t stop until she fell asleep on the way home.

  Quinn’s first Christmas. She loved Winona and was obsessed with walking her. Winona’s leash would hang on the front door and Quinn would crawl over to the door, grab the leash, and follow Winona around the house attempting to put it on her.

  We adjusted to life in New Jersey quickly. I found Vanita, who is a great babysitter. We enjoyed Music Together and My Gym, where we met other Jersey moms and tots and began doing a ton of mommy-and-me things.

  Understandably, Elizabeth was hell-bent on making my life as miserable as possible while she rewrote history and finished her book. She rejected the fact that Quinn was Johnny’s daughter simply because he believed and said he was. Even though he never denied paternity to his lawyers, they were really pushing for a DNA test because that’s what lawyers do. After months of going back and forth, Johnny finally said to his lawyers that he was offended by it. There was no denial of paternity. He wanted to stop fighting them and just move forward.

  And we tried, but Elizabeth stopped us at every point.

  I read in the tabloids that I demanded a paternity test, eighteen thousand dollars a month in child support, and ten million dollars. Perhaps stupidly, I never demanded anything.

  But I did get pissed off many, many times in 2009. Could I have made Elizabeth’s life really miserable? Yes, I could have. I could have gone public, nailing her to the wall, and believe me, I fantasized about it more than once. But I felt that if I stepped over Johnny and took control, it would emasculate him, which would have been a very bad thing for Quinn. So no matter how much anger I experienced, I chose to wait for Johnny to work out whatever he needed to with Elizabeth.

  I remember when he called me to tell me that Elizabeth had Oprah coming to their house. Johnny and I were both baffled as to why Elizabeth would do that. I had no idea how she was going to deflect Oprah when she asked the only question that anyone cared about: is John Edwards Quinn’s father?

  Johnny said, “I have no idea what Elizabeth is doing.”

  Apparently Elizabeth was very nice to Johnny the day Oprah was at the Ponderosa.

  However, she resumed her screaming at Johnny the day after she taped Oprah, saying it was all his fault that she lied on Oprah for him. He told me he said, “You lied for me? How about you lied for you! I didn’t tell you to do Oprah. I didn’t tell you to write a book.”

  Of course, everyone wanted to know what she was going to say. And when Oprah aired, it resulted in all sorts of cars and vans parked outside Mimi’s house. The media called her cell phone constantly and even tried to friend her on Facebook, all in pursuit of me. Mimi really wanted me to end the charade and speak the truth. She was getting very frustrated at Johnny and Elizabeth’s bullshit because it had now invaded her house, and believed that my waiting, instead of fighting or speaking up, was just making it worse for all of us.

  Elizabeth was constantly afraid that I was going to go public. In Johnny’s typical passive-aggressive way, he dealt with Elizabeth by leaving the country during her media stint. He called me every day from wherever he was. All the while, Elizabeth talked about how noble he was and how he was such a perfect husband, except for that one-time thing.

  For me, it was odd to watch her talk about how much I wanted attention and that she was not going to give me what I wanted, by naming me, which I heard was her one condition for all the people who interviewed her, thereby creating even more of an air of mystery around me than if she’d actually said my name.

  As I said, I did get pissed off a few times, like the time I was standing in the kitchen making coffee. I had just put Quinn in her high chair when I looked up and saw a camera pointed at us from outside on the front sidewalk.

  And while Elizabeth paraded around on TV as the poor victim wife who had overcome her husband’s one-time-only shortcoming, giving a tour of the twenty-thousand-square-foot house that Johnny paid for, Johnny’s youngest daughter was living in an attic in New Jersey because Elizabeth was preventing Quinn from having access to her father’s health insurance or sustained child support, and preventing Johnny from publicly claiming paternity. She was in a constant tirade, using her cancer and Emma and Jack as weapons in the war against a father trying to take care of his daughter. Elizabeth made sure that Emma and Jack knew that that woman, Rielle Hunter, was responsible for all the misery in their family. All the pain she was experiencing was because of Rielle Hunter. She drilled that into their heads.

  My heart broke for those kids. How sad for them to grow up in a household like that.

  Whatever Elizabeth’s feelings were about me, the law states that Quinn deserves the same as what her siblings are receiving from their father. And yet,
thanks to Elizabeth, that wasn’t even close to happening. What was going on for Quinn every month was a fight for the small amount of money that was being sent. One month we had no money; my lawyer gave us a thousand dollars out of his own pocket so we could eat.

  So yes, at times I experienced some anger. But did I want to litigate and fight Elizabeth? No. I wanted my daughter to have her father and have him intact. If I were fighting Elizabeth, it would only increase the abuse directed at him. I would then be helping to destroy him.

  Around that time, the National Enquirer reported that I was going to be interviewed by Barbara Walters or Diane Sawyer. Elizabeth went ballistic that I was going to do any interview and ranted at Johnny for many long nights that I was going to ruin their family and their children by going public. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand her thinking. Her actions were teaching her kids that to lie and deny is better than telling the truth, if the truth turns out to be a truth you don’t want.

  Johnny had always and consistently told me the same thing: if I wanted to speak to the media, I should, whenever I wanted. He said, “Whatever you choose to do, it will not hurt my relationship with Quinn.”

  I was not going to speak to the media but I believe I did surprise him once, only because I had no way of telling him beforehand. He was in a depression from his regular all-night lashings he was getting from Elizabeth and didn’t call me for a few days. During that time I got an invitation that I saw no reason to turn down: I was invited to Barbara Walters’s home.

  Barbara and her team had been trying for a long time set up a meeting between the two of us, but I just wasn’t interested and didn’t want to waste her time or mine. But when they threw in Barbara at her home? Now that sounded pretty interesting. Where did Barbara Walters live? What did her apartment look like? What would she be like at home? Yes, my interest was piqued.

  So Mimi, Quinn, and I went to Barbara’s for a casual lunch. And the meeting never got out! I was so floored that it never leaked. Barbara kept her word, and everything ended up being just like she said it would be: off the record. In my life, that was a first.

  Her home was exactly as I imagined—a grand old New York apartment overlooking Central Park. It was a fantastic experience and one I don’t regret. What surprised me was how much Barbara appeared to want my interview. She was really angling hard for me to talk to her. I mean, come on, she is Barbara Walters; why would she want my interview so badly? It just didn’t make sense to me. She even threw in that she and my oldest and very good friend Angela Janklow had known each other forever, and not only was Angela’s father her agent, but Angela’s parents were her very close friends.

  Barbara was clearly positioning herself to help change the incorrect media portrayal and she just might have had the chance had the network’s news program 20/20 not rolled out the red carpet for the Youngs, enabling them to spew their BS on national TV. Of course, Barbara screaming at me on the phone, trying to bully me into doing her interview also didn’t do her any favors.

  Early one June morning, the feds came knocking on our door. Mimi let them in, and I promptly told them I couldn’t talk to them. I called my lawyer and put him on the phone with them. Vanita, my beloved babysitter, took Quinn out for a walk during this visit. While they were out, a photographer with a long-lens camera snapped a shot of Quinn over Vanita’s shoulder. The photo was published all over the place; Vanita was heartbroken. So what are the paparazzi and the feds doing at the same place at the same time? After the feds left, we got in the car, and I discovered that I was being followed. The feds denied having anything to do with it. I asked them about it when I went to testify and walked into a media firestorm. Gee, I wonder how the media all knew I was going to be there? The feds insisted that I testify before the grand jury at the beginning of August. It was crucial; they couldn’t wait. (The investigation went on to last another two years.) But it was a problem for me because the grand jury meets only twice a month, and I couldn’t get childcare in August. I could get it in September or October, but none of Quinn’s babysitters were available in August. The feds gave me no choice, however; they needed me in August.

  Johnny and I had both agreed that Quinn and I should move to North Carolina. He had been looking for houses for us over the phone while he was at the beach. I would find one online, and he would drive by or see if he could get inside to check it out. We had decided that Quinn and I should come look at some places the week after I testified.

  He called me the Saturday before I testified. He was concerned that they were going to exploit Quinn by having me do the “perp walk” in front of the cameras. I told him I had floppy hats for her, and that that was not my biggest concern. I was mostly concerned that I was still breast-feeding and she had never been away from me for more than two hours and when she had been away, it was with people she knew. So my only choices were to leave her for nine hours in a strange place with someone she didn’t know or bring her with me, where she could be with my lawyer, whom she knew, and the woman who was going to watch Quinn. I could see her during my breaks and at lunch, but that would mean being in front of cameras.

  The feds told me they would take me in the back entrance of the courthouse, away from all the cameras. Yeah, right. We pulled up and there were cameras surrounding the front and the back. I got out of the car and pulled Quinn out of her car seat. There were cameras behind us, with photographers screaming, “Ms. Hunter! Ms. Hunter!” As we walked, Quinn liked to look directly at the cameras, the way she just had with Vanita in June when the paparazzi got a clear shot of her. She was curious about all the screaming people. I turned Quinn’s head and told her to look at the guys in front. Of course, there were cameras at every angle. I was later raked over the coals in the media for bringing my daughter with me and accused of purposely turning her head toward “the” camera, as if there were only one. A news station took two clips of the exact same video footage with me turning Quinn’s head and spliced it together, (I assume to make our walk longer than it actually was to use as B-roll) but some reporters, including from The New York Times, were unable to decipher that it was the same clip spliced together and claimed that I turned Quinn’s head toward “the” camera not once but twice. Underlying message: what a terrible mother.

  After I testified, Jim Conney, one of Johnny’s lawyers, thought it would be best if Johnny didn’t talk to me indefinitely. Given we have a child together, not to mention the insanity that we were attempting to deal with, I thought that advice was terrible.

  A week later Quinn and I flew to North Carolina, just as Johnny and I had already discussed. We looked at a bunch of houses in Wilmington, only to learn from my lawyers that Elizabeth and Johnny had decided that Wilmington wouldn’t work. We learned this, of course, after we’d been traveling for three days and had decided on a house.

  My lawyer told me that Elizabeth needed to pick where we lived. So she began house hunting.

  And I’m sorry, but how crazy is it that Elizabeth had gone out house hunting for a child that she wouldn’t allow her husband to furnish with health insurance or publicly acknowledge as his own child? What kind of logic in her head allowed her to do that?

  Quinn in the U-Haul, helping me pack it up. She loves to help me with any and all chores.

  By this point Mimi had reached the end of her rope with Team Edwards and the media circus; she was pretty adamant about wanting us out of her house. I had given her a departure date and when that day came, I had packed up our stuff and put it in a U-Haul, but we still didn’t have a place to go because Team Edwards had not yet signed off on a house nor given us the money to move. I was going to go and stay at my lawyer’s beach house in New Jersey. And then, in the very final hours, Team Edwards sent a link to a rental house in Southport, North Carolina.

  My lawyer suggested that we stay in the rental house for two months and look around North Carolina to figure out where we wanted to
live. He said, “You should check out Charlotte. I hear great things about Charlotte.” Not a bad idea.

  The beginning of October 2009 found me pulling a U-Haul for the first time ever, with Christine (my babysitter who flew from Santa Barbara to help me move) and Quinn in the backseat, all headed south, out of New Jersey into the great state of North Carolina.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Father of the Year

  “Hell hath no fury like a hustler with a literary agent.”

  —Frank Sinatra

  After a grueling month-long nightmare looking at every house available in Southport, North Carolina, with a Realtor who was working for the “Team,” we finally headed to Charlotte. The second that we drove into Charlotte, I was happy. It was autumn. Trees were everywhere and stunning. Charlotte has trees like no other city I have ever seen, and I love trees. Charlotte is a fantastic place to raise a child and call home.

  The first house we looked at was perfect for us. Quinn loved it. She didn’t want to leave. It was on a private street, making it difficult for paparazzi to get to us. It had a screened porch (good to keep the mosquitoes at bay), a garage (good for privacy), and a back yard (heaven for Quinn). It’s not easy to find all those qualities in Charlotte housing.

  But there was a problem. Elizabeth wasn’t the one to find it so she would not allow Johnny even to go look at it. Elizabeth had to be the one who controlled all the money for the house and she was the only one who was allowed to find the house.