Suppressing Section with Sub-Report in Crystal Reports

I have created a subreport which passes a variable to the main report.  The subreport is the only item in the detail A section.   If I suppress the detail A section, it causes the shared variable to become zero.   If I don't suppress it, even though I suppress everything in the subreport, it messes up my line spacing with a blank line.  I'm assuming I'm missing something simple.   Any help would be appreciated.