Free What Really Happened by Rielle Hunter Page A

stuff and lie. Don’t do it until you can be honest. Of course I shared my thoughts but come on, for a guy and his spouse who may actually run for the highest office in the land, do you know how many people watch Oprah?
    It still astounds me how naïve I was. Of course he went to Chicago and taped Oprah . I watched it and found the whole thing to be extremely sad—and extremely irritating.
    Toward the end of September, Johnny called me sounding very odd and detached, informing me that he wanted to talk to me later in person. He sounded strange, so I began mimicking his tone and what he was saying, so he could actually hear it. I believe he had gone to church on Sunday and had gotten some good old-fashioned Southern religion. Whatever the case, I got the feeling from his tone that he intended to end our relationship when we talked later in person.
    Johnny was set to come to New York to be on a panel at New York University for The New York Times , which Sam was going to shoot. I met everyone downtown in front of the building.
    Johnny was very odd that night and not at his best, which was not lost on any of us. Afterward Josh, Johnny, and Kim immediately got in the car and left while I was still upstairs. I thought that was so weird of Johnny to leave without asking me if I needed a lift uptown. Was this the end? How would I ever continue working with him if this were the end?
    So I got in a cab alone and headed uptown. I figured I’d just go to Serafina and wait for his call. I sat down at the bar and ordered a glass of wine, and who should pop in to get dinner for the senator? Josh. He was a bit freaked out that I was there. It really wasn’t that weird, given how often I ate at Serafina, which was in Glory Crampton’s neighborhood, but Josh didn’t know that and acted as though he had caught me doing something I shouldn’t be doing. Granted, I didn’t know that this was the restaurant Johnny would order from, but it was a place that I often went, so I didn’t act as though it was odd because it wasn’t.
    Josh and I chatted about how ineffectual Johnny had been on the panel. Josh said, “Yeah, no more panels for us.” He left and Johnny called. I went up to his room and we ate dinner together. He told me he wanted to end his relationship with me because he wanted to work on his marriage. Work on his marriage? Was that a joke? Like he and Elizabeth were finally going to enter therapy all of a sudden, all on his incentive? Despite my doubts, he insisted he really wanted to work on his marriage, so the only thing I could say was okay.
    I spent the night as though it was our last, and when I left in the morning, I remember looking at him from the door as I said goodbye, thinking that I’d never see him again.
    I went back to New Jersey and got into bed, where I stayed most of the day. My heart was broken. I had no idea how I would ever fulfill my contract nor did I want to think about it. I was experiencing way too much pain.
    Around 5 P.M. he called and asked, “How are you?”
    “Broken-hearted.”
    “Yeah, I feel it. I felt it all day. Do you want to come see me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Come on.”
    And that was it. I went back to the Regency.
    I think we both realized then that there was no way out of this. We were madly in love.
    Two days before we left for Africa, I bought a new phone for myself—a pink Motorola RAZR with a Johnny Cash ringtone—and a black RAZR for Johnny that looked exactly like his work phone.
    I took a train to DC to spend the night with him and gave him his new phone. He finally got rid of the ex-mistress’s phone, which solved all our ex-mistress problems. Why it took me so long to do that, I have no idea. Maybe because every minute I wasn’t traveling, I was logging footage or editing. Or maybe I thought there was a chance our relationship wouldn’t survive long enough for it to matter. Johnny told me that he really wanted to move forward, without the ex-mistresses, without all the