Years later

After that Thanksgiving Harold spoke to his therapist and got an attorney for himself to legally request that the court appoint me his guardian. I was shocked when I found out and Libby was too. Steve seemed more offended than actually caring but I'd come to expect that from him. Mark was upset that for almost a year the child support he'd been paying for his son was actually going to support his ex-wife and her new family. Libby and I had jokingly put in to appear on Judge Judy seeing as we both knew the money from Mark was gone, and seeing something like that would make Mark happy. To our shock we did in fact up on air, I was granted the back child support and Judge Judy did in fact call Libby out on some of her bull shit.

As far as the custody case, Libby ended up never showing up for any of the court dates. I was there for every one of them. On the final hearing, I went to pick up Libby so we could carpool since I knew she was having issues with her car. When I got there she told me she wasn't going to be going with me because she was taking care of Jason. (Steve's step-dad who also supposedly raped her previously.) I told her that this was the last hearing and she told me just to tell the judge she wanted joint custody. I relayed this information to the judge and he just scoffed at it before granting me full custody with visitation options for the biological parents as long as they fell in line with the therapist's restrictions.

It was hard for any arrangements to be made for Libby and the girls to come to visist Harold. They were on a very tight leash by the Reed family and Libby even stated that she was free to come and go, she could even leave Steve but it would cost her the girls. I tried to help her with other offers of safe places to stated and protection for her and her girls but she was too. She turned all such offers down.

Harold was doing good in school, but other behavioral issues started to arise. It was very much like a mental version of Wack a Mole, we'd get one thing addressed another would pop up. We worked closely with the therapist and followed the suggestions but eventually, we did end up moving to my family's homestead. Harold did not like this idea as it did cut him off from social media and most friends but I kept him in therapy and we just had to work through it. I didn't want to move either but it was move or be homeless. He of course wanted to go live with friends but I could him that was unacceptable.

Most of the time, it felt like I was always fighting against the ghost of his past to try to show him better ways to do things. He became violent with me and started setting up obstacles and traps that would have broken bones had I not seen them. He started setting fires around the property too. Thankfully none of them ever got out of hand. I talked to his therapist about all the things he was doing. I pulled him out of normal public school when he started taking knives to school. It was then that I became aware of all the stuff he was stealing, or trying to steal from me. Headphones, mp3 players, books, it was weird. He would steal and horde food even! He had his own snack drawer that was kept stocked with things he wanted, he got full control over what was in there when he ate it, everything.

He admitted that he was still waiting for his parents to show up and take him away, he said he thought if he was bad enough I'd make them take him. I told him flat out that wasn't going to happen and for the next couple of years it was a hard time of him lashing out, and me holding my ground. He'd stopped speaking to Mark because Mark only spoke about his new family and spoke to Harold like he was 5. He stopped talking to Libby because she only ever wanted to talk about Steve and how well he was doing. I'd enrolled him in online public school, but he decided to ignore that. When the pandemic hit more people joined the online school and he was able to reconnect with some friends, but the kids found a chat room that the school computers didn't block and his grades kept going down. He missed his graduation and I sat down with his counselor and him to come up with a game plan. If he'd completed his summer school they were going to give him $800 because we were in the pandemic. Then if he got a c average for the next year he'd have enough credits to graduate.

A month later he left my house, he had no ID of any kind, no clothes except the outfit he had on, and no water or food with him. I was able to catch up with him a little way down the road and asked him what was going on. He said that he was leaving, and he said he felt this was the best thing for him to do. I asked him why but he couldn't give me any direct answers other than he didn't think staying in my household any longer was going to help. I asked about the money he was supposed to get for summer school which he didn't seem to care anything about. He spent about half an hour trying to talk me into thinking this was a good idea. I told him nothing about this would ever make me think this was a good idea. However, he was 18 and not a hostage. So if he wanted to leave he could leave. He said he would call me when he got to wherever. He never did.

The next day I let his therapist know what was going on, to which I was informed that Harold had been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, I was confused at first until it was explained to me that a-social is a person that chooses not to be around people, but antisocial personality disorder is the umbrella term now used for people who are sociopaths, multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia, and many more. The neglect suffered at the hands of his biological parents and the abuse suffered at the hands of Steve who not only was an alcoholic and a drug user but also physically and mentally abused Libby, Harold, and his two daughters, combined with the genetics of having a mentally ill parent all were the building blocks that led to Harold being the way he was. Libby was informed that Harold had been talking nonstop while in therapy sessions about kidnapping his sisters and giving them a better life than they had with Liby and Steve. It was advised by the therapist that no one in the family has any contact with Harold until he is back in therapy and on a risk management plan.