You are correct; I am using only a local filesystem. I am unfamiliar with gio/gvfs, so if the issue is with them, I'll have to look into how they work.
I tried the test you suggested: I ran 'thunar -q' from a terminal, then ran a new thunar instance from the same terminal. I then navigated to an empty directory, created an empty file using thunar, then deleted said file using thunar. The results are the same; the file still appears until the reload button is pressed. Unfortunately, there was no terminal output, so it seems we're still in the dark. I may dig through the source code to see if I can pinpoint what's going on, but it's been a long while since I've done any programming, so I might not be able to figure it out.
