"I was always smiling when the mailman got there, and continued smiling even after he gave me the mail and I saw today wasn't the day" ("How I Met My Husband," 196).
That, Mr. Question One, is where my expectations as a reader were overturned definitively. That's not to say that there weren't elements throughout the plot that suggested the turn of events at the end of the story.
The plot structure was mostly chronological with two exceptions -- a flashback (the story of how Edie got her job) and a few subtle references to the future. For the most part, the flashback characterized Edie as common and humble (making her a sympathetic character) as she dropped out of school and started simple work (23-24). The future references, on the other hand, foreshadowed the end of the story. Phrases like "I see that now, but didn't then" (157) and "I didn't figure out till years later" (195) suggested an impending shift in Edie's life in which she would become wiser.
Another element within the plot was the slow revelation that Chris Waters was arguably very unsuitable for Edie. He was engaged to Alice (93), was not very close with her (117), and cheated on her -- without intimacy, of course (143). The simple girl, Edie, needed someone who was ready to settle down, a prerequisite Chris clearly did not meet (I originally typed "meat").
Although I did not completely expect Edie to settle down with someone other than Chris until the second-to-last page of the story, I recognize that the arrangement of the plot gave me, the reader, clues about Edie's future with not Chris but Carmichael.
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