If ever there was a star-crossed coupling, it was ours. It made perfect sense except for how it made no sense at all. We returned from Arizona determined to make a go of it, though I’m not sure either of us understood what that meant. It was an affair built on need, hope, frailty, and doom.
The fact is, Hallie and I weren’t close before Beau died. I remember being surprised when Beau married her. As a bachelor, he was much sought after by single women within a thousand-mile radius, and he kept his relationships close to the vest. When Beau lived upstairs in the Delaware house Kathleen and I first bought, Hallie’s older sister, whom we knew growing up, came around all the time and Hallie just seemed to tag along. I first saw a connection between her and Beau while he studied for the bar exam, which he had to retake several times (the Delaware bar is notoriously difficult). When he went into lockdown mode, she was both attentive and compassionate. Clearly, there was something there.
She really stepped up in 2001, after Beau returned from postwar Kosovo, where he’d served as a legal advisor who helped train civil and criminal justice officials. He’d contracted a virus there that triggered ankylosing spondylitis, commonly known as bamboo spine, a horrific genetic disorder that causes bones in the back to freeze up, like acute arthritis. Beau was treated with Humira, then an experimental drug, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. It proved effective, and Hallie tended to him throughout his treatment and recovery. They married a year after that.
At times, interactions between Hallie and Kathleen could get a little tense. Hallie confided to me that the night before their wedding, Beau told her, “Make it right. You need to because my brother means more to me than anything.”
As couples—Hallie and Beau, Kathleen and me—we were together all the time. We spent every holiday together, every vacation together. Beau and Kathleen grew close. They laughed with each other all the time, a couple of practical jokesters for whom I was an easy target. Somewhere there’s a photo of the two of them dangling a Thanksgiving turkey leg over my wide-open mouth as I lie sound asleep on a vacation-home couch. I loved it.
Hallie and I had none of that. We didn’t have much in common, didn’t even have much to talk about. She wasn’t consumed by politics, wasn’t devoted to the same issues that I was. But she’s incredibly alluring—her wide eyes and flashing Cheshire cat smile are hypnotic. I could see why my brother fell for her. Hallie was proud of Beau and what they built as a family. That’s what satisfied her in every way.
Beau’s death tilted everyone’s equilibrium in a manner I don’t think any of us could have predicted. Life trajectories became entangled and dependent on others in whole new ways because of the outsized role Beau played in so many of our lives.
After the funeral, Hallie showed me a deep sense of compassion in making certain I took care of Beau’s memory as he would’ve wished, most notably by helping her start the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children. She also allowed me to be there for Natalie and little Hunter, just as Beau wanted.
Our relationship started with me staying at Hallie’s house to help with the kids. I fell right into the role. Driving the two hours between DC and Delaware, I’d get there in the early evening, in time for dinner or to take the kids to their soccer games. I’d then help put them to bed, often telling them stories about their dad; Natalie, especially, loved to hear tales about Beau and me growing up. I slept on a Murphy bed in the den, then took them to school in the morning before I headed back to Washington for work and my outpatient rehab. As time went on, we traveled as a pack to the movies, Sunday mass, the beach.
I was seduced by the idea of providing the same kind of extended family that surrounded Beau and me after we lost our mommy and sister, when Aunt Val lived with us and Uncle Jim converted our garage into an apartment. I’d even suggested to Kathleen after Beau’s funeral that we move as a family into Hallie’s Delaware house. That went nowhere.
My motivations were wrapped up in those kids. It all became about making sure I was there for them in the way I knew my brother would be there for my girls under the same circumstances. I knew in my bones what Natalie and Hunter were feeling because I felt it, too. We had a unique relationship. I was part of raising my brother’s kids before he died. I was a central person in their lives. It was the same relationship Beau had with my daughters. I never held back anything around Beau’s kids, whether to counsel or reprimand them, and the same was true with him. My girls would talk with Beau about something that was bothering them as much as they would come to me, and Natalie and Hunter sought me out as much as they did their dad.
I didn’t want to replace my brother. God knows I could never do that. But I did want to feel his presence. I did want to be reminded of him and thought that by being there with his children I could somehow resurrect that love.
Looking back, it’s hard to tell if it was selflessness or selfishness on my part. I just don’t know.
After Hallie and I returned from Sedona in the fall of 2016, our relationship remained a work in progress. We kept it to ourselves while we figured out where it might be headed.
That didn’t last long. After our trip, Kathleen found texts between Hallie and me on an old iPad that I must have left at the house. That gave her the gift of justification: I was
