Why?

She would sit in her chair, and I would wander around the room, touching her things. I never looked at her, never studied her. I had assumed she would always be there. I would sit at the kitchen table and ask questions.
“Why do you have butterfly stickers on your window?”
“So the birds don’t kill themselves trying to fly in.”
My favorite thing was to walk around the house. The kitchen and living room were banal to me; I had been there so many times. I was very interested by the dining room, though. No one ever went in it, so when I did, I felt like its discoverer. The basement also fascinated me. It was dark and dank and scary. It smelled old. My favorite room was the children’s room. The room where my mother hid under the bed, unwilling to do her chores. The room where my mother and her cousin laid in bed and listened to the weather reports, praying for snow days. I have not seen that room, or the dining room, or the basement, or even the kitchen, in almost seven years. When my mother and I are nearby, we’ll drive past the house. It is different now. It seems to miss her, that woman I took for granted.