• Shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit Award for Short Fiction

The stories in Permanent Tourists feature displaced characters loosely connected through a support group, all of them dealing with loss precipitated by an elusive father, husband or lover, by a wife’s death, a lost child, sibling rivalries. Tourists in their own lives, these characters are often paralysed by emotional inertia and are fleeing to evade their responsibilities, their failed relationships, their own shortcomings. Within the unfamiliar, their problems resurface and they’re forced to confront and re-examine them. Permanent Tourists presents physical, emotional and psychological tourists, all striving to delve more deeply into themselves, their friendships, their families, their love relationships, and ultimately, to spur themselves to action.

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The old mirror set in a wooden frame buckles and waves Ellen’s face as she applies mascara. She both recognizes herself and doesn’t, her features distorted with every move. If she were living in ancient times, she might interpret this as an omen of her fate. A distorted life. She shakes off the thought. She ought to throw out the old mirror, smash it into a million pieces just to prove those stupid superstitions wrong.

To the right of the counter, a strange object grows and shrinks across the surface according to her head movement. She frowns, sets down the mascara brush, and picks up a small glass jar with a pink lid, face cream. How did that get there? Mika, she thinks. But it’s impossible. Ellen opens drawers, looks under the sink, peruses the medicine cabinet, but nothing looks out of place. She takes a deep breath and tells herself to calm down.

She finishes applying makeup, combs her hair in an updo, aware of the jar at the corner of the counter. She doesn’t want it there. She touches it again, to make sure it’s something solid, real, then picks it up and takes it to the guest bathroom. She pauses at the door of the guest bedroom, almost afraid to look inside. However, when she pushes open the door, she sees only the pale blue bedspread and matching pillow shams. She lets out a long breath.

“Mika?” she says to the empty room, but no one replies.

She goes into the kitchen, brews coffee, then sits at the counter. There’s no reason to put on makeup or comb her hair, or get dressed for that matter, other than to make herself feel that she’s “participating in life,” as her daughter Joyce is always encouraging her to do. She hasn’t been out of the house in five years.

She calls Joyce and waits through eight rings. “Have you heard from your sister?” she asks, when her daughter’s sleepy voice finally answers.

“Mom,” Joyce says after a long pause.

“I found something in my bathroom,” Ellen says. “Maybe she’s back.”

“Mom,” Joyce says again. “Where are you?”

“In the kitchen.” Ellen’s voice lowers to a whisper. “It’s not what you think.”

“Take a deep breath,” Joyce says. “Calm down. I’ll get dressed and come by.”

Ellen hangs up and sighs. She goes back to the kitchen, opens the cutlery drawer, lifts the tray, and pulls out an Amber Alert poster. She stares at Mika’s twelve-year-old face. She’d be twenty-two now.

A half hour later, Joyce sits across from her at the kitchen table, her face anxious, her eyes questioning.

“Other children have been found,” Ellen says. “There was the one just last month, who was kept captive for ten years, then was found.” Ellen scours the internet for stories of abducted children who have been rescued. Jaycee Dugard was eleven when she was taken, only a year younger than Mika, and she was found after eighteen years. And that Austrian girl who was kept locked in a basement for twenty-four years. She was found. Or Elizabeth Smart or Steven Stayner, or Shawn Hornbeck or Abby Drover. They were all found years and years after their kidnapping.

“The police have done…are doing all they can,” Joyce says.

“No, they’re not. Or they would have found her.” Even as she says this, however, Ellen knows this is not true. How were they to find a child who disappeared without a trace?

For a long time, the police had investigated them all: husband, uncles, grandparents, friends. Everyone was suspect. The child had vanished so easily that she must have gone with someone familiar, someone no one identified as a stranger. She had simply not been there when Ellen arrived to pick her up.

Ellen does not believe the police. This is not the first time Mika has left her imprint in the house. A couple of months ago, Ellen discovered the cutlery drawer rearranged, and a strange-looking honey spoon added. Another time, she found two pairs of winter boots and a jacket in the hall closet, though it was summer. On yet another occasion, she was sure the photos on the mantelpiece had been switched around, and once, she found bedding folded on the couch, as if Mika had slept there. She called Joyce after each of these occurrences, but Joyce told her it was nothing, that she was imagining things, that she must have moved the items herself, fallen asleep in front of the TV. She must have forgotten, Joyce said. It was natural. Nothing to worry about. Ellen protested, of course, but in the end, she was cowed by Joyce’s shrugs and frowns which implied she was making it all up, that she was losing her mind, that she only wanted attention, that she was making an unnecessary fuss.

Ten years. She knows everyone believes Mika is dead, died probably soon after she was taken. That’s what all the statistics say: the first forty-eight hours are crucial. The more time passes, the less likely to find the child alive. They simply haven’t found the remains. She knows the police aren’t looking for a live Mika. They have only to wait until some hiker discovers a shallow grave deep in the woods somewhere.

“She’s trying to contact us,” Ellen tells Joyce now. “That’s why she’s been leaving me things.”

“That makes no sense,” Joyce says, reaching across the table to touch her hand. “If she wanted to contact us, she could just call.”

“I meant…spiritually…from afar…” her voice trails off.

“Mom, you’re talking nonsense. The evidence you’re using is physical. Either you’re moving things around and forgetting, or someone’s breaking into your apartment.”

“Never mind,” Ellen says.

After Joyce leaves, Ellen paces through the apartment, looking for other clues.

What tortures her is that just before Mika disappeared, Ellen, who is/was a social worker, was doing a wellness check on a pair of twins in a foster home, after which she’d stopped for a quick coffee and a chat with a friend at Starbuck’s, arriving at the school twenty minutes late. However, she’d been late before, and Mika had simply waited in one of the classrooms. Someone must have been watching the playground, must have seen the opportunity.

She plays and replays that last day, willing a different ending. What if she hadn’t gone to that last appointment? What if she hadn’t stopped for coffee? It’s all my fault, she thinks, though she’s never admitted this to anyone.