In her new memoir, Resilience, Elizabeth Edwards reveals she vomited in a bathroom after learning of the affair between her husband, former U.S. Senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards, and weird videographer Rielle Hunter.
When she heard, “I cried and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up,” wrote Elizabeth Edwards, 59, who is battling terminal breast cancer.
She says that John Edwards admitted to having an affair with Rielle Hunter just days after declaring his run for president in late 2006 – or nearly a year before the National Enquirer broke the story in December 2007.
Elizabeth does note that when John initially admitted the affair, he “left most of the truth out.” Like the part about possibly fathering her kid, maybe?
To protect her and their three children from scrutiny, Elizabeth says she urged John to quit the race, eventually won by Barack Obama. He did not.
In August 2008, the Enquirer again reported he was the father of Rielle Hunter’s daughter, but this time busted him visiting her secretly at an L.A. hotel.
John was pretty much forced to admit that he hit that after that incident, though he still denies paternity. Elizabeth does not address this in the book.
Elizabeth also takes aim at Rielle, whom she never identifies by name, in writing that Hunter initially seduced her husband outside a fancy New York hotel by giving him the time-honored compliment, “You are so hot.”
What politician could say no to that?
She says Hunter – who was paid $114,000 from his political action committee to produce web documentaries – was nothing more than a sad groupie.
While her own life may be tragic, Elizabeth says, Hunter’s is “pathetic.”
Although she long struggled to cope with her husband’s affair, Elizabeth suggests she forgives John – who she was rumored to have kicked out of the house – and says that they are now on much better terms.
“I lie in bed, circles under my eyes, my sparse hair sticking in too many directions, and [John] looks at me as if I am the most beautiful woman he has ever seen,” the accomplished attorney reflects. It matters.”
THE WOMEN OF JOHN EDWARDS: His cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth Edwards, his weird mistress / ex-employee Rielle Hunter, and his likely love child Frances Quinn.