Belynda Gray awoke to the sight of flashing red and blue lights as two police cars pulled into the driveway of her home in the early morning hours of May 3.
She already knew why they were there.
Her son, Cody Sullivan, is the biological father of two children who vanished from a rural Nova Scotia community the day before.
“They come inside. They only stood in the kitchen,” said Gray of the police officers who came to her home on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore.
“They wanted me to wake Cody up and they wanted to know when was the last time he had seen the kids and that they were just making sure that the kids weren’t here. And then they left.”
Disappearance of Lilly and Jack Sullivan: What we know so far
The previous morning, police received a 911 call reporting that Lilly Sullivan, 6, and Jack Sullivan, 4, had wandered away from their home in Lansdowne Station, a sparsely populated and heavily wooded community in Pictou County.
Their disappearance sparked extensive searches that have so far turned up little evidence, as nearly a dozen RCMP units try to piece together what happened to the young siblings amid intense international interest.
After watching the investigation unfold over the last six weeks, Gray has decided to share her family’s story in the hopes of keeping Lilly and Jack’s case in the public eye.
Gray, 62, said her son was in a relationship with the children’s mother, Malehya Brooks-Murray, for about three years.
“I thought they were the picture-perfect family,” said Gray. “Then Malehya started to tell me that they were having problems and she wasn’t happy.”
Brooks-Murray decided to end the relationship, and Sullivan chose to walk away from the children, said Gray. Their mother petitioned the court for sole custody, she said.
“When she did that, he said that he was done. He just didn’t want no part of it,” said Gray of her 29-year-old son, who is currently living with her after losing his construction job, apartment and vehicle nine months ago.
“He hasn’t seen the kids for three years.”
Despite the fallout, Gray wanted to maintain her own relationship with the children and Brooks-Murray had no objections.
“Any time we wanted to see the kids, she’d come by for a visit. She’d bring them by all the time,” Gray said.
But contact between Gray and her grandchildren eventually dwindled and stopped completely after Brooks-Murray moved in with her new boyfriend, Daniel Martell, in Lansdowne Station.
The last time Gray saw Lilly and Jack was nearly two years ago.
Grandmother of missing N.S. kids shares her story — and her son’s
On the afternoon of May 2, she received a call from a relative asking if she had heard the news about the children. Gray texted Brooks-Murray, who confirmed Lilly and Jack were missing.
“I was in a state of panic, shock, but in the back of my mind I kept saying, ‘Well, they’ll find them,'” she said.
Gray headed to Pictou County the following day to help search the dense woods that surround the home where the children were living.
“I’m yelling for Lilly and Jack. We always called Jack ‘Jackie boy.’ His heritage is Irish,” said Gray through tears, pausing to compose herself.
“I started to feel that I can’t see them being in the woods.… There’s trees everywhere. You literally have to climb over trees, climb under bushes. It is really, really thick.”
Over six days, search and rescue teams combed through the forest as helicopters and drones whirred overhead.
The wider ground search was scaled back on May 7, but subsequent targeted searches have taken place since then. RCMP say they have extensively searched the children’s home and property as well as nearby wells, mine shafts and septic systems as well as underwater searches of lakes.
Gray said she does feel the area has been extensively searched, describing the many orange and pink ribbons tied to trees to mark off areas that have been covered off.
“You could see places around where they played and you could see places around where you might want to explore as a kid,” she said.
“But beyond those exploration points, there’s no reason for any child to wander deep into the woods.”
For his part, Martell agrees the woods around his home have been extensively searched, adding that a drone was flown into a hatch that leads underneath his home.
He said he feels investigators are doing all they can to solve the “mysterious” and “strange” case.
Nevertheless, the ordeal has taken a toll on his family, attracting attention from people around the world.
“My life has been ripped apart in a thousand pieces. And six weeks after, the pieces are still laying on the floor,” Martell told CBC News in a recent interview.
Relatives of Brooks-Murray have told CBC News she has been advised by police not to speak to media.
RCMP Cpl. Guillaume Tremblay said it’s “quite rare” for two children to go missing at the same time.
“Investigations like this take a long time,” said Tremblay in a recent interview.
“They put a big toll on first responders and investigators and I can’t imagine what the family’s going through every day.”
Tremblay repeated that every missing persons investigation is considered suspicious until they have reason to believe otherwise.
He said police have not uncovered any evidence to suggest the children were abducted.
Gray said a few days after the children went missing, police returned to take photos of her vehicles, ask for surveillance footage and questioned her son for about 20 minutes.
A few weeks later, they returned a third time, formally questioning Gray for two hours and Sullivan for an hour and a half in a police vehicle.
“I didn’t mind.… I wish they would have done it sooner,” she said. “My son was a little upset about it. He said they made him feel like he did something wrong.”
Last week, Gray said police contacted her and said “they weren’t looking his way anymore, that everything’s fine.”
She also dispelled online rumours that her son lives in Western Canada and is in jail.
Gray described Lilly as her “little dream girl.”
“I loved that she had the brown hair and she had a space between her teeth, which I had when I was a kid,” she said. “She was our little princess.”
Jack, on the other hand, was sober and serious, even as a baby, she said.
“You could tickle him and he would look at you ever so serious, like he was really studying you.”
Gray said she speaks of the children in the past tense because she does not believe they are alive.
“My heart tells me these babies are gone,” she said. “I just want them back.
“These are everybody’s grandchildren. They’re not just mine now. It does seem like the whole world cares.”
