In the same interview, Edwards' memory was hazy about the Enquirer's photograph that showed him holding baby Frances.

"Are you saying you don't remember holding that child of Miss Hunter?," Bob Woodruff asked him. "I'm saying you asked me about that photograph. I don't know anything about that photograph, I don't know who that baby is. I don't know if the picture has been altered, manufactured, if it's a picture of me taken some other time, holding another baby…I have no idea. I was not at this meeting holding a child for my photograph to be taken I can tell you that."

Having your lover deny both you love and your love child surely felt like a public fist to the stomach for Hunter, who engaged in the tryst with the full knowledge that Edwards was a married man.

For Edwards', the admission of the affair was the necessary surrender of all his political capital and reputation. Admitting now that the baby is his own cements his own Phyrric confession.

But in the year since her husband's tomfoolery has been outed, Elizabeth has steadfastly refused a public accounting of baby Frances' paternity.

"I've seen a picture of the baby," Mrs. Edwards told Oprah Winfrey last May. "I have no idea [if John is her father.] It doesn't look like my children, but I don't have any idea." Then just last month, she said on Larry King Live that she expect paternity to be resolved "at some point.


"And I hope for the -- for the sake of, of this child --- that it happens, you know, in a quiet way."

And in the Times weekend story, unnamed sources say Elizabeth "has yet to be brought around” to the idea of her husband claiming paternity.

It makes sense that Elizabeth would resent coming face to face with the truth of her husband's betrayal. But her refusal to come to terms with the living evidence makes her a willing victim and turns tragedy into farce.