Sean's nature of being lecherous is Foreshadowed when he acts openly nice to Anya when she's wearing her shirt half open, exposing her cleavage.
Emily seems to dislike that Anya stand by while Dima is bullied, because in her time, "your people were like family." This is both a product of the time, given how immigrants were treated, but especially with Emily, who was of Irish descent and thus among those who would've been discriminated against.
There's a subtle hint that Emily's lying about what caused her death, when she talks about being engaged and her fiancee dying in the First World War. Even after she starts growing her hair out, she simply looks too young to have been engaged, even for the 1910s; if she was near Anya's age, she would have only been in her teens or slightly older at death.
Emily's Vague Age and looking young and skinny makes sense when you learn that Emily was an Irish immigrant and likely poor; she was probably small and slight due to malnutrition.
In the end, Anya has the well with Emily's bones buried. She isn't just making sure no one gets hurt and/or killed if they fall down the well, or giving her ex-friend a proper burial. Unintentionally, she's giving Emily a burial in an unmarked grave, just like a real murderer.
Anya, before getting pulled out the hole, told Emily that she wasn't going to solve her murder but would tell someone to come bury her bones. Her words were exact, though she didn't know it at the time — she solved the murder that Emily did, and after Anya ultimately gets rid of her, she does have someone come and fill in the well to bury Emily's bones.
At one point after she turns on Anya, Emily scares Sasha to tears by hovering over his bed and whispering. Seems like a case of Revenge by Proxy and she's trying to spite Anya through her brother. But second time reading it, things become clear: just a little while ago, Sasha found her finger bone and put it away in his specimen box. Emily wasn't just being mean for the sake of it, she's doing it in retaliation for (momentarily) compromising her freedom to move around the house.
Emily's story of how she was murdered (as untrue as it may be) actually mimics what happens throughout the story and at the climax. Emily's false story is that her family innocently let in a seemingly nice stranger sleep in their barn, learned that the stranger was a murderer who killed her parents, he chased Emily into the woods, and her story ends with falling down the well. Anya brought Emily into her home unknowingly, was kind to her without knowing the truth, then learned the truth. Emily attempted to kill Sasha and Mrs. Borzakovskaya, and Anya fled from Emily chasing her into the park. And in the end Anya throws the finger bone — and Emily with it — back down the well.
Emily's life ended with falling down the well. It's only fitting that her afterlife as a ghost Book Ends with her bones falling down the well one last time as she moves on.
Anya thinks she's extremely fat but isn't. Because of the bullying she had when she was younger, she has body dysmorphia. Brrr....
Anya was missing for two days before she was found in the well, had only her school lunch to eat, and was only found because a punk kid walked by and threw a soda can in that hit Emily's bones and Emily got Anya to scream for help. How many other people walked by when she was asleep or that she didn't hear and didn't know she was there?
Furthermore, Anya's mother had no idea where she was for two days. Her oldest child went off to school — as far as she knew — and then went missing, and was found in the bottom of a well. Her mom must have been terrified.
Not likely. They probably broke into bits when they fell back into the well once Emily's spirit departed. And Anya didn't say anything about the skeleton when she was rescued or when she suggested the well be filled, so everyone else probably took her word for it that there was nothing special down there before they filled the well up.
How did the newspaper get a picture of Emily looking all murderous and deranged if she fled the scene of the murder right after?
It's simply her looking disgruntled or deranged as she was. She's standing with what appears to be her parents beside her, so it's most likely an older family picture. It's not too far off to imagine that even before she burned the couple, she may have had murderous tendencies and a haunting look.
Additionally, the other images are clearly not taken when the event happened, but are Anya and Dima picturing what happened from the text of the newspaper. It may just be Anya mentally embellishing the image as she's reading.
