Orphan (2009) - 5 questions

Question: When John discovers the disturbing paintings in Esther's room towards the end of the movie, a couple of them are life-size depictions of 2 people in sexual acts. To me, the man and the woman look like John and a "normal" sized Esther, as if she painted the scenario that she would have liked for herself. Did I see that correctly or were those just 2 random people?

Answer: Yes, I think it intentionally looked like John and a fully grown Esther; she was drawing her fantasies.

Question: I'm a little confused as to the reason why Esther wore dentures. Obviously she had to conceal her bad teeth to A) have a better chance of getting adopted and B) try to seduce the men in the families she lived with. But why didn't she just let someone in one of the orphanages see her real teeth and take her to a dentist/orthodontist? Seems a lot easier than having to wear dentures all the time, not to mention always being worried about someone discovering them.

Answer: Esther wanted to look like a young child who still had her baby teeth. Tooth size is not linked to pituitary hormones so her normal sized adult teeth would make people wonder about her age.

Question: Can someone verify the number of gunshots fired by Esther at the end of the film? I thought I counted 7 and I assume a revolver has only 6 bullets in the cylinder.

Answer: I counted - Esther fired 5 shots and Max fired one.

Question: When Kate goes through Esther's bible there are several photos of different men inside the book. Who are these men?

Answer: These are the husbands she's seduced from the other families she's lived with.

Question: Maybe I missed something, but how was Esther able to fool everyone practically all her life and hide the fact that she's a 33-year old sociopath? When Kate finally learns the truth by getting the phone call, they show a photo of the "real" Esther, so at least those records of her exist somewhere. How could the boarding school not have known her true identity?

Answer: The boarding school was going by the falsified records that Esther had with her. They did not suspect anything, so they had no reason to dig any further at the time.